Healthy Chocolate Chip Carrot Cake Bread
Published 2/13/2020
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This Healthy Chocolate Chip Carrot Cake Loaf is ready in an hour and made with 100% whole wheat flour, shredded carrots, walnuts, chocolate chips, and yummy warm spices. You won’t find a more delicious carrot bread on the internet.
We Love Carrot Cake!
Carrot cake oh carrot cake, oh how I love the carrot cake.
If I had a choice, I’d choose carrot cake every time over any other kind of cake. I love the moistness (hate this word), the spicy flavor combination, and the cream cheese frosting.
I’m sure you’re like WTF Lee, this recipe doesn’t have frosting. I know I know, I had to make the executive decision to ditch the frosting when we added chocolate chips. It had to be one or the other.
Carrot Bread Made Healthier
This carrot cake bread tastes like a combination of chocolate chip banana bread and carrot cake. I guess you could call it banana carrot bread (with chocolate chips, of course)?! And good news for you, we took some steps to make it better-for-you!
Sweetener: We used mashed banana and maple syrup for the sweetener. The shredded carrots and chocolate chips help out, too. If you’re not a big fan of banana, feel free to applesauce or another mashed fruit.
Fat: Instead of using a full 1/4 cup of coconut oil (which is what we would normally do), we subbed out some for nonfat Greek yogurt to lighten things up. I love using Greek in bread because it gives the recipe a hint of tang and a ton of moistness without the fat.
How have I already used the word moist more than once in this post?
Flour: We’re big fans of white whole wheat flour because it’s lighter than normal whole wheat flour and perfect for healthy baking! We do NOT recommend subbing out a grain-free flour as it would change the composition of the entire recipe.
How to grate carrots
If you are wondering how to shred a carrot (mysterious, right?), we used…a cheese grater.
I’m totally that weirdo that owns multiple cheese grater because #1 we love cheese and #2, we shred a lot of veggies. Here’s a good one if you’re in the market.
Pro tip: If you really want the carrots to stick out, we recommend using a larger grate. However, if you want to try and hide the carrots in your bread for the kiddos, you can use a smaller grate size.
More Carrot Cake Recipes
Healthy Carrot Bread Recipe
Ingredients
Wet Ingredients
- 1 medium size banana, mashed
- 2 large eggs
- ¼ cup plain Greek yogurt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup plain, unsweetened almond milk
- ½ cup maple syrup
- 2 tablespoons melted coconut oil
Dry Ingredients
- 1.5 cups white whole wheat flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamon
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1.5 cups finely grated carrots, packed*
- 1/2 cup chopped pecans
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350ºF and spray a standard-size loaf pan with cooking spray.
- Start with the wet ingredients. In a medium/large size mixing bowl, mash a banana until there are minimal to no lumps, then add the rest of the wet ingredients to the bowl (except for the coconut oil). Mix well.
- In a separate bowl mix together dry ingredients.
- Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix. Once combined, add the melted coconut oil to the batter and mix again.
- Transfer batter into bread pan and then sprinkle on some additional chocolate chips on top.
- Bake at 350ºF for 38-42 minutes.
- Remove and let cool for 5 minutes before removing from bread pan.
Tips & Notes
Watch It
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Looks so Yumm!
Baked for an extra 21 minutes and still doughy in the middle. No subs. Made it exactly as described. Taste is pretty good, my kids don’t seem to mind the dough.
Had to cook it a full extra 12minutes for it to be cooked through! Only subs I made were part white whole wheat and part whole wheat pastry flour and apple sauce for the oil…
Followed to a T — still got a mushy loaf.
What can I use instead of greek yogurt? We are dairy free in our home
Any dairy-free yogurt works!
use bob’s red mill or any cup for cup GF blend
Can I use oat flour or coconut flour instead ?!
Hi! Unfortunately, we don’t recommend either of those flours. Maybe try searching for a gluten-free loaf!
I followed the instructions but my loaf ended up very dense and spongey, any idea why?
Hey Sophie! Did you make any ingredient changes at all?
Hi, can I use regular cow’s milk in lieu of almond milk?
Do you think honey or agave would be an acceptable swap for the maple syrup? I have those on hand at the moment 🙂
Yes, absolutely!