EVERYTHING BUT THAT!

Hmm…I’m still think­ing about this one.  Quite unique.  The corn­meal cre­ates an inter­est­ing tex­ture and twist on fla­vor for this mildly sweet, high-fiber bread.

(This recipe was taken from Tosca Reno’s The Eat-Clean Diet Cook­book.)

Ingre­di­ents:

• 1 lb loose sweet car­rots, peeled and grated
• 1 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1 1/4 cups cornmeal
• Pinch seat salt
• 1/4 cup flax meal
• 1 1/2 tsp bak­ing powder
• 3 egg whites
• 1 yolk
• 2 Tbsp canola oil
• 1/2 cup organic honey
• 3/4 cup skim milk or low-fat soy milk
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries
• Cook­ing spray

Prepa­ra­tion:

1. Pre­heat oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a small saucepan place car­rots and enough water to just cover them.  Bring to a boil and cook for 5 min­utes.  Remove from heat, drain, and let cool.
3. In a medium mix­ing bowl place dry ingre­di­ents: flour, corn­meal, salt, flax meal, and bak­ing powder.
4. In another bowl, whip egg whites until stiff.
5. In a small bowl put egg yolk, oil, honey and milk.  Mix well.  Add to dry ingre­di­ents and mix until just com­bined.  Add dried fruits and cooked car­rots and mix until just com­bined.  Do not over-mix, or loaf will be tough.
6. Pre­pare a 5 x 9-inch loaf pan with cook­ing spray.  Pour bat­ter into loaf pan and bake for 60 min­utes or until cake tester comes out clean.  Makes 10 serv­ings, more or less depend­ing on how thick you slice the bread.

Notes:

I used soy milk instead of skim milk.  Also, I ground flax seeds in a cof­fee grinder for the flax meal and ground wheat ker­nels in a mill for the whole-wheat flour.   My bread turned out tougher than I think it should have been.  Had I used skim milk or processed wheat flour, the bread might have turned out softer.  Also, based on the instruc­tions, I may have over-mixed it.

The jury is still out on this recipe.  It is so dif­fer­ent that I think my taste buds and stom­ach are still pro­cess­ing it.  I will say this in favor of the car­rot bread, it is def­i­nitely fill­ing.  It doesn’t take much to sat­isfy and sus­tain the body.