Carrot Nut Bread

Another classic recipe from The Joy of Cooking. Making bread satisfies all kinds of food requirements: breakfast, snacks, maybe even dessert. This one makes me feel kind of healthy as it uses carrots and either pecans or walnuts. You'll need a 9x5 inch loaf pan.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cup grated carrots (a food processor with the right attachments makes this easy to do)
  
• 1 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, blend sugar, eggs, vegetable oil, vanilla and salt. Stir in the dry ingredients. Then, mix in with a few strokes the carrots and pecans.


Pour batter into greased loaf pan. Bake until the bread pulls away from the sides (for me, that was about an hour). Cool the bread in the rack for about 10 minutes before taking it out of the pan and cutting.

I topped this with cream cheese frosting and left over pecans, but it is also good alone.