Carrot Zucchini Bars with Citrus Cream Cheese

Carrot Cake or Zucchini Bars?

We’re huge fans of Carrot Cake (so much that we’re serving it at our upcoming wedding!). It’s moist, flavorful, unique, and light. And one of our favorite parts about carrot cake is the cream cheese frosting. In our opinions this frosting is waaayyyy better than most traditional buttercream frosting.

We also love a good zucchini bread for similar reasons. A bagel store down the street from us makes a killer one.

Origin of the Carrot Zucchini Bars

At one point, we thought, “why can’t we combine these two delicious recipes?” And this is how the Carrot Zucchini Bar creation came to be. We had initially posted it on our site in the early days of GradFood (see photo below). Hopefully you can appreciate the difference in photography over the years. Anyways, since this is one of our favorite things to bake, we’ve tweaked it here and there to come up with the final form of the recipe below.

Breakfast or Dessert?

You may be thinking, “Carrot cake is served for dessert but zucchini bread is eaten for breakfast. So when do I eat this recipe?” Well, the best part about this recipe is its versatility. You can eat it for breakfast, for a mid-afternoon snack, or for dessert later on. Even though it has some sugar, it tastes much lighter than a typical dessert but still just as tasty.

It also has lots of delicious and nutritious ingredients like:

• Carrots
• Zucchini
• Coconut
• Ginger
• Walnuts
• Honey

Although you can eat these Carrot Zucchini Bars any time of year, we especially recommend them when it starts to get hot outside in the summer.

Other Similar GradFood Recipes

If you loved this recipe, you’ll be sure to also enjoy the following delicious GradFood creations. Make sure to let us know in the comments below what you think! Are you more fans of carrot cake or zucchini bread?

Carrot Zucchini Bars with Citrus Cream Cheese

Tyler & Zoe

If you're a fan of carrot cake and zucchini bread, you'll love this moist and delicious Carrot Zucchini Bar recipe.

Print Recipe
Pin Recipe

Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 30 minutes mins

Total Time 45 minutes mins

Course Breakfast, Dessert

Cuisine American

Servings 10

Ingredients

  

Bars

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 4 eggs slightly beaten
• 3 cups carrot shredded
• 2 medium zucchini shredded
• 1.5 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut
• 1/2 cup walnuts chopped
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Citrus-Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1 package cream cheese
• 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
• 1/4 cup butter room temperature
• Zest of one orange
• 1 tsp cinnamon

Instructions

 

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, ginger, baking powder, and baking soda. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, carrot, zucchini, brown sugar, coconut, walnuts, oil, honey, and vanilla.
• Add wet ingredients to flour mixture and stir until fully combined. Grease a 13×9 inch baking dish lined with parchment paper and pour batter in, making sure it is level.
• For the Cream Cheese Frosting, whisk together the ingredients into a creamy consistency.
• Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Once cooked, place in refrigerator until completely cooled, cover with Citrus-Cream Cheese Frosting and sprinkle over some cinnamon.

Notes

Make sure that it is completely cooled before you add the frosting, otherwise it will melt.

Keyword Baking, Cake, Carrot cake, vegetarian, Zucchini bread

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