Carrot Bread

Three weeks into our autumn CSA share, we had been given Enough carrots.

How many carrots is Enough? For us, about two pounds. It isn't that we don't like them - I mean, we don't. Not really. But there's only so many things you can do with carrots. Boil them... bake them? Put them in a stew? We were all carroted out from the last time we ate carrots, which was about a year ago.

And yet the carrots kept coming.

"We can't throw these away every week," we said. "And we can't just make carrot cake..."

Rebecca had a glint in her eye. "Or can we?"

So. With a little research, she found this carrot bread recipe. It's sweet enough to make anyone delighted and happy, but not so sweet that it becomes a dessert. It has been our breakfast during the last few weeks, and it is tasty.


Carrot Bread
Adapted from this recipe
Serves 8

Total prep time: 20 minutes
Total cook time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 35 minutes

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup oil
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 eggs
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 to 2 cups grated carrots (I use a cup and a half. The recipe is pretty pliable. This is the equivalent of 5-6 medium sized carrots.)
  
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts!)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

So! Here we go.
If you have a food processor, give it a hug. It will be your best friend in the world for this recipe. If not, I hope you have a grater and a wire whisk!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 Degrees C). Grease and flour a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan. Easy enough, right?


If you have a food processor, go ahead and use the grater attachment to grate your carrots. Set shredded carrots aside and wipe out your work bowl. Otherwise, grate your little heart out! Do you like grating carrots?


Beat together the two sugars and the eggs - or, if using a food processor, pulse for 30 seconds. Here's the neat trick taught to me by Cooks Illustrated: if you just dump in your oil, it's going to sink to the bottom of the loaf. But if you pulse steadily - or whisk steadily - while pouring the oil in a slow, steady stream, you'll get a thick, delicious, caramelly goo that will blend into your bread perfectly. It's the same way mayonnaise works! So mix in your oil very slowly until you have a thick, delicious cream. Whisk in the vanilla.


Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt into a separate bowl while stirring occasionally. Fold in the egg mixture, carrots, and nuts just until everything comes together and there are no more floury spots in the bowl. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.


Bake on middle rack for 60 - 75 minutes, or until a toothpick (or butter knife!) poked into the middle of the loaf comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, and then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.


Robert's take: YUM. This is my new favorite breakfast. An insult to carrots? Maybe, but at least they're getting eaten!

Rebecca's take: I LOVE THIS STUFF!! It really does make a delightful breakfast. The top of the bread is the best part, all sweet and crusty! And a side note about grating carrots: I don't think it's really that tough to do by hand if you have "normal" big carrots. The carrots we have are very organic, meaning they are little, odd-shaped root veggies with more greens attached than actual carrot. Grating them by hand is somewhat dangerous and very time consuming, so the food processor comes in very handy. Anyway, this is the best use for carrots, in my opinion!

Graham Crackers

And now, for something slightly different: these next two 'recipes' are lazy. Links and pictures only; no step-by-step instructions.

Why? Well, in this case, because this is a recipe that's not only viewable online at the Food Network - if you search youtube for "Alton Crackers", you can even find a video demonstration. Additionally, it requires equipment that not every cook has: a digital food scale and a food processor.

Photographs by Rebecca

Still, we have to share this. These graham crackers are absolutely delicious, and there's a feeling of power in knowing that - yes - if Kraft was ever overthrown by revolutionaries, you could make your own S'Mores from scratch.

So, helpful tips:

* Making the dough is as easy as weighing out the ingredients and pulsing them in the food processor. Then, roll out the dough to 1/8" thickness. How thick is that? Who holds up a ruler to their dough? Just try to make it as thin as a grocery store pie crust; that's my rule of thumb.

* Slice into identical sized crackers using a pizza cutter (or, you know, into drunken, haphazard semi-squares.) If you were sassy enough, you could sprinkle these with cinnamon and sugar!

* Use a fork to dock the crackers - in other words, fork each one 3-4 times so that they don't puff up in the oven.

* Bake for 20-25 minutes. I know that the recipe says 25, but check out the edges on these bad boys - they're a little darker than they should be!

* The best part is breaking them across the lines into squares. It feels so natural and healthy, like this is what man was meant to do. Just sit around all day and break graham crackers. Is this what we should be working towards as a species?

Serve and enjoy! Make S'mores! Drizzle with honey! Feed them to unruly toddlers! The ideas aren't endless - after all, they're just graham crackers - but they're still nonetheless tasty!


Robert's Take: While these aren't easy - and these require some equipment not every new cook has - they're really tasty. And way, way healthier than the storebought variety. I don't think I'd ever make these again; it's so much easier to just head to the store - but there's this feeling when you make your own graham crackers... like you've gained the ability to cross the Oregon Trail. It's magic.

Rebecca's Take: I'm really glad we can make these - it's always comforting to know how to make basic things you would normally buy at a store. These were a bit crunchier than store-bought, but they were so good! Above you can see how we used our imagination: we crumbled them up on frozen yogurt with honey! Robert claimed it was a healthy snack, but it was actually too sweet for me, and that's saying a lot.