Wearing a sunday dress – Breakfast carrot cake with coconut

It was one of my New Years resolutions: Eat better at work!
I was so sick of the every day returning bun sandwich with sausage or cheese I had for breakfast at work, the bun sandwich with sausage or cheese for lunch as well… And I was even more annoyed about myself not getting moved my ass to change this situation.

So, to help me kick-start my project and keep with it I had to make it cool and stylish – with time you know how your little mind works 😉 I invested in a monbento box. All black, veeery cool! It is a double box, so I can take breakfast and lunch with me. And what can I say: It’s about three months now and I’m still using it daily while getting jealous views from my colleagues.

I’m trying to vary my breakfasts and the small food cups come in handy when you want to separate the components of your breakfast. They came in a (extra) set of three and as they’re made of silicone you can use them as well as baking moulds matching the bento box.
This is great and I am experimenting a lot with omelette, muffin or cake recipes that I downsize to fit these moulds.
My favourite – so far – is this carrot cake. It comes together really quick and – as far as a cake can be – it’s a healthy one which justifies really to call this a breakfast cake: carrots, nuts, no additional fat, sugar kept low but enough.

The recipe you find further down is the result of intensive testing and variating: grounded almonds instead of coconut, no flour and only nuts, only sugar, only honey …

Finally – and just in time for approaching Easter – I ended up with this version, my favourite one. Coconut and carrot give a great pairing in flavour and texture. It’s a bit more dense than baking the cake with almonds, but still fluffy enough. The coconut makes this cake even more moist – and it keeps well for at least 4 days. I bake this on a sunday (besides preparing dinner) and take with me to work a slice of cake each following day, together with some fruits and/or yoghurt. And it is still far away from stale when I eat the last bite.
There’s just one difference to the cake on the pictures: For this post I added a cream cheese icing which isn’t part of my everyday breakfast cake. It’s the sunday dress 😉 … The freshness and additional coconut flavour suits this cake very well. For those days on which you need a little extra.

Breakfast carrot cake (450 ml baking mould)
[Inspired by this recipe. If you double the batter, you can bake the cake in a ∅ 20 cm baking pan.]

ingredients
1 big carrot (120 g), 30 g desiccated coconut, 40 g flour, 20 g brown sugar, 20 g honey, ½ teaspoon baking powder, 1 egg, dash of salt
for the icing (optional): 20 g coconut oil at room temperature, 30 g icing sugar, 80 g cream cheese

preparation
Preheat oven to 180° C. Wash and grate carrot. Separate egg. Add sugar and honey to egg yolk, salt to egg white. In a separate bowl combine coconut, flour and baking powder. Beat egg white until stiff. Beat sugar, honey and egg, add carrots. Combine carrot mixture and dry ingredients. Finally fold under egg white. Fill into a greased small loaf or round cake pan or mould. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool out on a wire rack.
For the icing beat coconut oil and powdered sugar on high speed. When both have come together add cream cheese. Top carrot cake with icing and give it a chill in the fridge before serving.

If prepared without icing the cakes keeps well 4 days on the shelf (covered).