Thursday baking - carrot loaf

As we bake our way through A Treasury of New Zealand Baking

This carrot loaf is so so much more delicious than it looks so don't be put off by its dull, brown exterior. And don't be put off by the fact that it's gluten-free - I promise you can't tell the difference. It's a great recipe that everyone can eat regardless whether they can eat gluten or not but particularly for anyone that can't eat gluten, this recipe is a keeper. It is a great base-recipe that could be adapted to suit - you could add sultanas or walnuts, swap the grated carrot for grated pumpkin or courgette, or double the recipe, bake it in a round tin, ice with cream cheese icing and call it carrot cake.

This recipe had a couple of typos - one funny and one that was just plain annoying. The funny one was that is said to "sprinkle with extra grated cheese" after pouring the mixture into a loaf tin. There was no mention of cheese in the ingredient list and cheese-topped carrot loaf sounds revolting so I'm pretty confident this was a typo - but a pretty major one to slip through the editor. The second was the amount of salt - the recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of salt, which sounded a lot but I thought perhaps it was necessary because of the gluten-free rice flours, I reduced the salt to 3/4 teaspoon but it was still too much and you could just taste it. Next time I will only use 1/4 teaspoon. I've written up the recipe as I think it should be made - minus the grated cheese, using less salt and with the zest of an orange rather than a lemon.

Carrot loaf - Sean Armstrong (week 20)

150g brown sugar
150g caster sugar
150g oil (I used rice-bran)
Zest of one lemon or orange
100g white rice flour
100g brown rice flour
10g tapioca flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
150g grated carrot (about 2 medium sized carrots)

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Grease/line a large loaf tin.

Mix the two sugars with the oil, eggs and zest. Mix well with a whisk, then fold in all the dry ingredients using a spatula. Fold in the grated carrot.

Pour into prepared loaf tin and bake for one hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.

Slice and serve. I tried a slice spread with a little cream cheese and it was delicious!