Healthy Carrot Zucchini Bread

Time for the Home Baker's Challenge! After Niloufer's Malaysian Bakes of last month, this time Priyaakka came up with some quick breads for us to bake. From the interesting list that she put up, I was stuck up between this bread and the Chocolate Banana Bread and had a tough time deciding. Though Rasha loves chocolate, she hates bananas in her bakes and somehow she catches it very fast, so I was really not sure of how acceptable it would be. Even then, I have saved up the recipe so that I can bake it sometime in the future.

I replaced the all-purpose flour in this recipe to include part wholewheat flour and remaining with oats. Instead of using normal oil, I used olive oil. That is why I tagged it healthy. Seriously, I missed nothing. Since I was not able to land my hands on zucchini, I went ahead and added marrows into this bake. The result was a really moist loaf, crumbly and melt in the mouth! I was happy that I was having a healthy treat while putting down my BST devils!





Ingredients:

1 cup wholewheat flour
1/2 cup quick oats
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon powder
2 eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup olive oil (I used extra virgin)
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 large carrots, grated
4 small zucchini *, grated
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Spray a large loaf pan and set aside.

Grind the oats into a fine powder. Combine along with flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon in a bowl and whisk well.

In another bowl, beat the eggs and olive oil till well combined. Add the sugar and mix well. Add the carrots and zucchini. Now add the dry ingredients and fold in with a spatula, Finally add the walnuts and give a final mix.

Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 50 to 60 minutes till skewer comes out clean. I baked for 65 minutes. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Flip onto the cooling rack and cool completely before slicing and serving.

Notes:

* Since I was not able to find zucchini, I used marrow - which is a close cousin! - or as we call it, koosa in this cake. I learn that the water content in marrow is much more than that of zucchini. Make sure to squeeze out maximum water from the marrow or zucchini after grating. I was a tad bit lazy on that part. Squeeze I did, but not much I suppose. My loaf was too moist to my liking and I am sure it is because of the water in the marrow.

Tail end - this cake was baked when Azza was in her temper worst. She was crying her lungs out and was in a mood to dig her hand into anything she could harm or damage. The first thing she saw was the cake sitting on the cooling rack and knowing how I am, she immediately dug her hand into the warm loaf and tore down a part of the loaf! So I had a literally damaged loaf and had a tough time taking pictures as she was hell bend at damaging the remaining loaf.

Moral of the story: when the toddler is in a lousy mood, keep your cakes at a really high point for cooling! Duh...