I was pondering what to make as a special treat for Easter this year when I received an email from O&H Danish Bakery in Racine, Wisconsin.
O&H specializes in the Kringle, an oval-shaped Danish baked good that is the official state pastry of Wisconsin. Personally, I think Massachusetts needs an official pastry. Our official dessert is of course the Boston Cream Pie, which is delicious but not technically a pastry. But I digress.
In recent years, O&H has been expanding its repertoire beyond the Kringle. The item shown in the email was a Carrot-Cake Brownie. It looked delicious, topped with cream cheese frosting and little carrots made of fondant.
However, it cost $57.99. I decided to make my own version instead of sending money to Wisconsin.
I am not much of a fondant person so I ended up topping my brownies with festive spring sprinkles. I may have gotten carried away while sprinkling; the little squares looked as though they had been decorated by a 5-year-old.
They appeared festive and homemade, though. And there was nothing wrong with their flavor.
I ran into a bit of trouble putting these together — though I hope your experience is smoother! The carrots I had in the house, it turns out, were extremely old and very tough. I started out trying to grate them with my box grater, the tool I usually use for grating carrots.
Alas, the carrots were so tough that I ended up scraping my pinky and bleeding into the batter. I was hoping to get a photo of the grating process, but the blood distracted me from my photography.
I donned a Band-Aid and hauled out my mini-chopper/food processor. Even it had difficulty shredding those carrots. It got there eventually — but it made a lot of noise in the process.
I suggest that you make sure your carrots are relatively young and moist. That way, you can grate them by hand, which is preferable to doing so by machine; the machines make pieces so small they blend into the brownies instead of peeking out of them.
The remainder of my elderly carrots have now been put out in the yard for the deer and the bunnies. I have a feeling after the winter we have had they will have no trouble eating them.
Bunnies, of course, bring us to the reason for using carrots at this time of year in the first place, their popularity with rabbits. We inherited the Easter bunny from Germany and England, where the Easter Hare was a popular religious and folk figure.
The word Easter comes from Eostre, a pagan goddess worshipped in those two countries who was often associated with hares. In many languages, the word for Easter is a variation of Pascha, adapted from the Jewish feast of Passover. The Germans and the English chose instead to repurpose their goddess’s name.
Rabbits make sense in the spring. This is a time not just of the resurrection of the Christians’ Jesus but also of rebirth everywhere in nature. According to the Georgia Wildlife Network, rabbits produce between three and seven litters a year, and each litter can have up to eight kits. That’s a lot of birth.
No wonder my dog Cocoa spends so much time barking at the warren our neighborhood bunnies have constructed under my walkway. Those critters are busy in there!
In the recipe below, you’ll note that I give you a range of grated carrots, from 1-/2 to 2 cups. Your choice there will affect the consistency of your brownies.
Fewer carrot pieces will give you cakier brownies. More will give you chewier brownies, which may be slightly harder to remove from the pan. If you do as I did and line the pan with foil and then grease and flour the foil, you should be reasonably safe.
Happy Easter!
Carrot Brownies
Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted sweet butter
1 1/2 to 2 cups grated carrots
1 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup flour
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8-inch-square pan with foil and grease and flour the inside of the foil (or use a baking spray such as Baker’s Joy).
Stir together the melted butter and the sugar, followed by the carrots. Mix in the egg, stirring well to incorporate it; then add the baking soda, the baking powder, the salt, and the cinnamon. Stir in the flour, and pour the orange-y batter into the prepared pan.
Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the brownies comes out clean, about 30 to 35 minutes. Makes 12 to 16 brownies, depending on how big you cut them.
Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.