Carrot bread tastes like carrot cake in bread form, with no added sugar! I’m honored to be a PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese Ambassador this year, sharing delicious recipes including this carrot bread. Pass the Honey Pecan PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, please!

Call me crazy, but whenever bread, muffins or other carb-loaded pastry is baked and laid out on the counter for the entire family to enjoy, they hardly get touched. WHAT?!? I know they’re watching their figures, but I just can’t resist!

Then, I made this carrot bread. I pre-sliced it for the family and laid it on the counter. It was gone within 12 hours of baking.

Now, how’s that for a testimony?

If you’re planning on making this bread. I highly recommend starting it the night before.  It requires one LONG rise (12-18 hours) and one short rise (1-2 hours). It takes minutes to assemble the bread, so after we were finished with dinner, I whipped it up around 7pm and let it rise.

Then, when I rose the next morning, I prepared the bread for baking and allowed it to rise for another hour. In the meantime, I sipped on coffee enjoying the quiet morning before my toddler jump-started my day. Before you know it, you’ll have fresh baked bread for breakfast! And if you were wondering, the toddler LOVED it!

The first thing I thought to spread on this lovely bread, was PHILADELPHIA’s Honey Pecan spread. The flavor is outrageous (only in the best way) and we used the entire tub with this one loaf.

We couldn’t get enough of it!

You see, PHILADELPHIA has recently made some awesome changes.

For the first time in 17 years, they made significant changes to the cream cheese spreads, adding more fruits and veggies to the already delicious and nutritious cream cheese. Now, when you open a package of Blueberry, Strawberry, Chive & Onion or Garden Vegetable flavors, you’ll see whole, juicy blueberries, sun-ripened strawberries, or more crisp vegetables, such as diced carrots, red peppers and onions. In addition to the changes inside, they also changed the packaging, making them easy to stack and easier to read!

So boom. And if you needed more reason to devour PHILADELPHIA, they use real ingredients, and there are no artificial flavors in 22 of their most popular spreads.

I <3 PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese. Enjoy the bread!

Carrot Bread

adapted from Chez Cateylou

Ingredients

• 3 cups unbleached bread flour
• 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups carrot juice (You can freshly juice carrots or what I did was purchase carrot juice.)
• 3/4 cup raisins
• 3/4 cup pecans pieces

How-To

1. In a large bowl combine the flour, yeast, salt and cinnamon together. Stir in the carrot juice until mixed in, You want the dough to be sticky, so if it’s too dry, add a little bit more carrot juice. Mix in the raisins and pecans. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for 12-18 hours. I did this portion at 7pm to have bread at breakfast.
2. Place a large piece of parchment paper in a 10 inch pan and spray with cooking spray. Turn the dough out onto a generously floured surface and with lightly floured hands. bring in the edges into the middle of the dough, tucking and creating a ball. Gently dust off the ball to remove excess flour and place seam side down onto the prepared parchment paper. Spray plastic wrap with cooking spray and loosely cover the dough. Allow it to rise for 1-2 hours in a warm, draft free place.
3. Preheat the oven to 450°F and place a 10 inch skillet (or dutch oven) in the oven to preheat too.
4. Place the parchment paper and dough right into the preheated skillet (or dutch oven) and loosely cover with foil (or lid to dutch oven) and bake for 25 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 5-10 minutes until the top is golden brown.
5. Remove from the skillet and place on a cooling rack to cool completely.

This post was sponsored by PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese and Kraft. I am a PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese brand ambassador because I truly believe in their products. I received compensation for this post and posts to follow. All opinions are my own. Please read my disclosure policy for further information.