Carrot Pineapple Loaf

My mom made this for our Easter dinner.
It made with regular wheat flour, but I am posting it in case anyone was wondering how it was made! I'd love to try it sometime with a GF flour.

Makes 4 small loafs

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 3/4 cups baking stevia
• 2 cups shredded carrots
• 8 oz can crushed pineapple, drained

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and dust with flour loaf pans.

Mix flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, baking powder together. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs, oil, and applesauce until thickened, about 2 minutes.

Mix in carrots and pineapple. Add flour mixture and stir until just combined. Stir in nuts, and pour into loaf pans.

Bakes 50 min. or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean with a few crumbs. 

Gingerbread loaf with orange glaze

Gingerbread, take 2!

With glaze

We're calling this the 'gingerbread frosted donut' bread at home because it reminds us of a tastier, gingerbread variation of a Dunkin Donuts glazed chocolate donut.

We are loving this loaf…it turned out much better than the last gingerbread! It was moist and pleasantly spiced. I had thought about omitting the orange glaze to cut back on the sugar, but I'm glad I didn't, because the hint of orange flavor really added something special to this bread.

You can go here for the recipe!

Here's what it looked like without glaze

Gingerbread snacking cake

I must say, it was fun cutting out the paper snowflake for the design on this cake. Back when I had a job working with kids, I was able to indulge a little in my love of crafts, so I've missing coloring, cutting, glueing, and such (oh, and the kids of course too!). 

This was my first attempt at making a gluten-free cake, and I didn't have all the right ingredients. I also didn't want to bother buying lots of different special flours that I don't know well (it can get quite expensive eating gluten-free!), so I worked with what I had already. Unfortunately, it looked prettier than it tasted... It's not bad, but didn't rise at all, so it's very dense, and tastes a bit too salty for my liking. I think next time I will have try to better adhere to the original recipe, and/or increase the amount of liquid (make it more batter-like consistency), and omit or reduce the salt by half. On the positive side, it was sturdy enough to pick up and eat, and since I've significantly reduced my sugar intake, I have reduced tolerance for the super-sweet; so I appreciated that it wasn't very sweet.

So on that note, I encourage you to compare both recipes, and you can figure out what you want to do from there! I welcome anyone's suggestions on how to improve this, or ideas on what might have happened… haha. Maybe I just baked it too long…? Anyway, here's the recipe I followed.

This was adapted from Angela's Kitchen Gluten-free Dairy-free Gingerbread Cake.

Ingredients

• 1  1/4 cup white rice flour

• ¼ cup coconut flour

• ¼ cup cornstarch 

• ¼ cup potato starch

• 2 teaspoons gluten free baking powder

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1 teaspoon xanthan gum

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 1 teaspoon ground ginger

• ½ teaspoon ground allspice

• ½ teaspoon ground cloves

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 1 cup unsweetened gluten and dairy free milk substitute of choice

• ½ cup molasses

• ¼ cup oil

• 1 egg (or 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed mixed with 3 tablespoons hot water)
• optional: about 1/3 cup powdered sugar

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease an 8″ x 8″ pan or 8″ round cake pan. Set aside.

In a medium sized bowl, sift all dry ingredients together.

In another bowl, blend wet ingredients together.

Incorporate the dry & wet ingredients together in thirds.

When all ingredients are well-blended, pour the batter into the greased pan. Smooth out the top of the batter with a wet spatula.

Bake 45 minutes or until the cake springs back when touched lightly. (Original author says if you test this cake with a toothpick, the toothpick will come out clean before the cake is actually done.)

Freezing suggestions: 

Allow cake to cool completely, then wrap it well, and freeze.

To serve, let the cake thaw, and then dust with the powdered sugar.