Who doesn’t love Carrot Cake?

These muffins strip away the not-so-wonderful-for-you cream cheese icing and minimize the extra ingredients (I left the walnuts and raisins in the pantry) for a fresh, simple, delightful Carrot muffin recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups grated fresh Carrots
• 2 cups grated zucchini

Usually I hand grate my vegetables , but 4 cups (2 carrots / 2 zucchini) is a bit much for my wee little grater. So I pulled out the food processor.

• 1 TBLS lemon juice
• 1/2 TBLS Lemon Zest
• 1 cup Brown Sugar
• 1 cup regular Sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tea Vanilla
• 1/2 cup skim Milk
• 1/2 cup Vegetable OIl
• 1/4 cup Honey
• 1 cup Whole Wheat Flour
• 1 cup  White Flour
• 3 tea Cinnamon
• 1 tea Baking Soda
• 1/2 tea Salt
• 1/2 tea Baking Powder

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prep  18 muffin cups with spray.

2. Grate the Carrots and Zucchini. Toss with Lemon Juice and Lemon Zest.

3. In a large bowl mix together Sugars, Egg, Vanilla, Milk, Oil, and Honey.

4. Sift together Flours, Cinnamon, Baking Soda, Salt and Baking Powder.

5. Combine the Dry and Wet ingredients.

The batter awaits the Carrots and Zucchini

6. Add the Carrots and Zucchini.

7. Divide evenly into muffin cups.

8. Bake for 25 minutes or until the muffins pass the toothpick test.

9. Remove from oven and let cool 5 minutes.

This is not a muffin that needs much. It is sweet and moist and nicely balanced. Maggie S. longed for a bit of cream cheese icing, and wondered if we could somehow inject a dollop into the center for a delightful surprise. But I say fie upon your frosting, madam, this muffin is perfect the way it is.

Bonus Muffin Recipe: Ice Cream Muffin

As you may be aware… we are in the home stretch leading up to ritaLOVEtoWRITE’s 500th BLOG (I know… get the balloons ready! Right?) So I thought I’d do a little early celebrating by sending along a BONUS Recipe today. This is from my creative sister-in-law Jean.  I’m not sure where she found it, but it has Ice Cream in the  title so how could I resist. (Please note I didn’t alter this recipe — except to make them muffins as opposed to “bread”)

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups of Ice Cream, any flavor, softened (I used a combination of Chocolate,
  Strawberry and Black Cherry.
• 1 1/2 cups Self-Rising Flour

(That’s it. Two ingredients.)

DIRECTIONS:

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare muffin tin by spraying with cooking spray and dusting with flour.

2. In a medium bowl mix the Ice Cream and the Flour until just combined.

3. Scoop into muffin tin

4. Bake for 25 minutes or until the muffins pass the toothpick test.

5. Remove from pan to cool.

I’m not one to waste perfectly good Ice Cream, so I wasn’t so sure about this recipe. But the muffins came out very nicely. A little dry, so definitely serve with some butter.  They picked up the chocolate flavor from the ice cream. I’d say these were a cross between a biscuit and a dry brownie.  An interesting experiment.

Hmmm You know what these would go well with? A scoop of  ICE CREAM!

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