Carrot Cake Banana Bread

A delicious healthy recipe for carrot cake banana bread made with no refined sugar, plump raisins, and an easy and delish vegan cashew cream cheese frosting! Enjoy for breakfast or to bring to a holiday brunch!

If you love healthy carrot cake or vegan banana bread, well I’ve got the perfect match for you. Bet you didn’t ever really think to combine two of life’s greatest desserts into one? Well, I did.

Anytime I can get away with eating carrot cake for breakfast is a perfect day to me.

Carrot Cake Banana Bread

Something about the two of these combined just tastes like my childhood in a loaf. It’s almost like sweet, healthy banana bread made with ripe bananas and fresh carrot cake filled with plump raisins and walnuts just had a baby.

This recipe is a healthier twist on the traditional banana bread recipe and the traditional carrot cake recipe.

Carrot Cake Banana Bread Muffins

Yep! I said it, you can easily turn this carrot cake banana bread into muffins if you want! All you need to do is line a muffin tin with liners or spray it real good with nonstick spray, then pour batter into each cup until it’s 2/3 full.

You’ll want to bake for 17-20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out nice and clean.

Ingredients in carrot cake banana bread

• Bananas and grated carrots, of course! Super ripe bananas and fresh grated carrots work best in this recipe.
• White whole wheat flour – you can swap this with all purpose, regular whole wheat flour, or gluten-free 1:1 flour but I prefer the fluffy texture of white whole wheat best.
• Coconut oil – more below on my tips for baking with coconut oil
• Honey – one of my favorite ways to sweeten a banana bread is with natural sugar. Bananas already have some sugar in them so you don’t need much!
• Eggs
• Spices like cinnamon and nutmeg
• Raisins
• Walnuts or pecans

Baking with coconut oil

If you haven’t realized by now, baking with coconut oil is my absolute favorite way to make anything sweet. It’s the only oil I use when baking, actually, because it can be fragrant and subtly sweet for baking. But it can also be completely flavorless!

Since most coconut oil solidifies at room temperature, you’ll want to measure it once it has been completely melted. I sometimes even buy liquid coconut oil so that it always stays liquid at room temperature and is easier to measure.

My biggest tip for working with coconut oil that isn’t always room temperature: bring all of your other ingredients to room temp. If you try to whisk eggs straight from the fridge with your coconut oil, it will solidify and clump up. I bring my eggs to room temp placing them in the oven for about 5 minutes while it starts to heat up.

This same thing is to be said with any other ingredient that you’re using straight from the fridge!

Unrefined vs. refined coconut oil

Unrefined coconut oil undergoes minimal processing, which causes there to still be a little bit of coconut flavor in the oil, whereas refined coconut oil does not have any flavor whatsoever because it has been high-heat processed, and ‘refined’ a little bit more.

Other banana bread recipes

• Healthy Banana Bread
• Peanut Butter Banana Bread
• Tahini Banana Bread
• Cinnamon roll banana bread
• Perfect Paleo Banana Bread

If you make this recipe, be sure to comment below and let me know how it was! Also tag @erinliveswhole on Instagram and use the hashtag #erinliveswhole so I can see it and feature you!