Sweet Spring Carrot Muffins from the Mom that Makes her Kids Eat Veggies for Breakfast

Orange Is Such a Lovely Color

This is what real baby carrots look like. When you see the soft, perfectly orange, not dirty versions in little prepackaged plastic sacks, they are most often big carrots whittled down, and the flavor is therefor not nearly as fabulous.

When visiting with my fabulous friend and chiropractor Julie at her Wellness Studio last week, she mentioned something thrilling, the return of spring baby carrots to our Helena Farmers Market. I was so excited my mouth watered all the way home. I have not yet made it to the market to pick some up, but in my final Bountiful basket on Saturday we received a huge bag of beautiful carrots, so with them I made due for now.

Orange is such a pretty color and my fingernails are quite orange after an evening spent dehydrating and pureeing my 20 pounds of apricots, of which I still have two huge bowls to process. Orange fruits and vegetables contain carotenoids, which can lower blood pressure and LDL cholesterol and fight free radicals. After playing around with a few muffin recipes, I came up with a way to fit one more vegetable into our diet tomorrow, in a fiberlicious way that will fill us up without adding meat to our rotation.

ORANGE CARROT CINNAMON MUFFINS

15 minutes prep, 20 minutes baking

Dry Mix:

1 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/4 cup cane sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon cinnamon

Wet Mix:

1 pastured egg

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup orange juice

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

Later Additions:

3 whole carrots, shredded

1/4 cup melted salted butter

In a large mixing bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together.

In a separate medium sized mixing bowl, cream together the designated wet ingredients together with a fork until uniformly combined.

Melt your butter in a small bowl. Shred your carrots into another small bowl.

Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, start stirring and then start to drizzle in the melted butter and stir until incorporated. Add the shredded carrots and stir them in too.

Use a disher to fill muffin papers almost all the way. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Enjoy!