Apple & Carrot Muffins

Crunchy carrot & apple muffins

This recipe came across my Twitter feed a few days ago and comes from this website. It caught my eye because of the carrot. Carrot in muffins? It all sounded too healthy for me as I prefer chocolate sweets like this slice and or these wontons. But as I like Oscar to eat healthy snacks I decided to try them.

I also decided to stick to the recipe completed. I was tempted to leave out the sugar and salt, and add half the uneaten banana Oscar left on the bench but as it's my first time making them I wanted to know what they should taste like before I experiment. The recipe made exactly 12 medium muffins and I've put some in the freezer.

Combine wet & dry ingredients in separate bowls

Here's what you need:
1 1/4 cup wholewheat flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tspn cinnamon
1/2 tspn baking powder
1/2 tpsn baking soda
1/4 tspn salt
1 cup grated carrot (I grated it fine)
1/2 cup apple sauce
2 lighly beaten eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup canola oil
1 tspn vanilla extract

Here's what you do:
Preheat oven to 180C and grease a muffin tray. Mix together all the dry ingredients in one bowl (flour, sugar, cinnamon, powder, soda, salt). In a separate bowl mix together all the other ingredients. Add half the 'wet' ingredients to the bowl with the dry mix. Blend together well, then mix in the other half of wet ingredients. Fill each muffin hole to 2/3 and bake in the oven for 20mins. They didn't rise as high as I thought they might but are actually quite nice, even a little crunchy. I would eat them warm, enjoy!

Raisin Crazy #1: Chewy Banana & Raisin Mini-Muffins

Delicious!

My husband's parents are coming to visit us for a week, they arrive tomorrow, so as part of the mandatory clean up and getting ready I decided to clean the fridge so I could write a shopping list. Hiding in the back corner  I found a large packet of raisins. Who knows how long they had been there for! They were still within their 'eat before' date so I decided to cook as many recipes as I could with them. The problem is that I really don't like raisins and if I have to eat them I try to just swallow them whole.

So rather than search my cookbooks I turned to the internet today. I adapted the recipe used from SparkRecipes. I have never made chewy muffins before and these are definitely chewy so be warned. They were also so incredibly tasty that I ate 3 in a row, raisins and all! The recipe made 24 mini-muffins and 9 medium sized. I have frozen most of mine to use as snacks.

The original recipes lists sugar and olive oil as ingredients. I completely left the sugar out (who needs it!) and used apple sauce as a substitute for olive oil.

waiting to go in the oven

Here's what you need:
1.5 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup apple sauce or 1/4 cup of olive oil
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch of both cinnamon and nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 medium bananas, mashed
1/3 cup raisin
1/2 tablespoon honey
**1/4 cup sugar if you want


Here's what you do:

Place your mini cupcake papers inside your muffin tin and preheat your oven to 180C. In hindsight I would have used foil muffin holders or a silicone tray as mine became a bit stuck after baking.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl: baking soda, salt, flour, and combine well. Make a hole in the middle of the mix with a wooden spoon and then add your 'wet' ingredients: milk, banana and vanilla extract. Mix all together well. I use a KitchenAid (*love*) but by hand is just as easy. Add the raisins. While I was watching the mix combine I thought that honey would make a nice extra so I quickly drizzled about a half a tablespoon of honey into the mix.

Fill your muffin papers up to about 2/3 of the way or a little more. Mine were nearly to the top because I had so much mixture. Bake in the oven for about 17 minutes. Mine browned quite quickly and I panicked a bit and took one batch out too early and they were still quite doughy.

I was too impatient to let them completely cool before I tasted one and as a result the muffin stuck to the paper. It shouldn't happen once they are completely cooled. That's it, super easy and tasty! My mother-in-law has promised to teach me her amazing Lemon Tart recipe next week so stay tuned.