Adventures in cooking: Carrot muffins!
May. 3rd, 2015 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alpharaposaSome of you on Twitter and Facebook may have heard my lament on the sad state of carrot cake recipes out there. Mostly spices and sugar, carrot cake rests mostly on the deliciousness of cream cheese frosting. I, however, wanted a muffin. Not too sweet, with lots of carrots in it, that I could eat without feeling guilty. I finally found a recipe that yielded a wonderful muffin. Perfect, tender crumb, just sweet enough to satisfy, and loaded with carrots.
Ingredients:
2 cups shredded carrots (I like the texture of coarsely shredded better, but you can experiment)
2 cups flour (I use white whole wheat)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon (you can safely add much more spice if you want, though)
1 egg
1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup honey
3/4 cups juice (orange juice gives a fruity taste overall; prune juice makes it taste richer, and has added benefits)
Mix-ins (chocolate chips, etc)
Grate the carrots first. Unless you have a food processor, this will take the longest. Set aside.
Get out two bowls.
Beat the egg in the first bowl, then add the butter, the honey, and lastly the juice, while stirring (this order helps keep the butter from crystalizing as the juice is added).
Measure all the dry ingredients (except the carrots) into the 2nd bowl. Stir. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed. Fold in the carrots. Fold in any mix-ins.
Scoop into greased muffin tins. It's okay to fill to just below the top of the cup.
Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Test with toothpick. When a toothpick poked in the center of a muffin comes out clean, it's ready. Makes 12 if no mix-ins used. If you add additional items, it's more like 14-15 muffins.
Suggested mix-ins:
Dark chocolate chips- about half a bag of quality chocolate chips will make these muffins difficult to resist.
Coconut- add about a cup or so of flaked, unsweetened coconut to the dry ingredients before mixing.
I also tried this recipe with parsnips and it worked just as well. Parsnips have a radishy tang to them that was interesting. If I have leftover parsnips in the future, it's not a bad way to use them up.
Ingredients:
2 cups shredded carrots (I like the texture of coarsely shredded better, but you can experiment)
2 cups flour (I use white whole wheat)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon (you can safely add much more spice if you want, though)
1 egg
1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup honey
3/4 cups juice (orange juice gives a fruity taste overall; prune juice makes it taste richer, and has added benefits)
Mix-ins (chocolate chips, etc)
Grate the carrots first. Unless you have a food processor, this will take the longest. Set aside.
Get out two bowls.
Beat the egg in the first bowl, then add the butter, the honey, and lastly the juice, while stirring (this order helps keep the butter from crystalizing as the juice is added).
Measure all the dry ingredients (except the carrots) into the 2nd bowl. Stir. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed. Fold in the carrots. Fold in any mix-ins.
Scoop into greased muffin tins. It's okay to fill to just below the top of the cup.
Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Test with toothpick. When a toothpick poked in the center of a muffin comes out clean, it's ready. Makes 12 if no mix-ins used. If you add additional items, it's more like 14-15 muffins.
Suggested mix-ins:
Dark chocolate chips- about half a bag of quality chocolate chips will make these muffins difficult to resist.
Coconut- add about a cup or so of flaked, unsweetened coconut to the dry ingredients before mixing.
I also tried this recipe with parsnips and it worked just as well. Parsnips have a radishy tang to them that was interesting. If I have leftover parsnips in the future, it's not a bad way to use them up.
