Healthier Carrot Cake Muffins

Still stuck at home, this morning I was searching for something new to bake, and I remembered this recipe on the back of my Bob's Red Mill Whole Wheat Pasty Flour that I had been meaning to try - it was for Carrot Cake, and the label was that it was the "Grand Prize Winner" on a recent natural foods baking contest. Here's the link on the website.

For those like me who try and eat clean, which of course includes a healthy breakfast, muffins in the world are kind of our nemesis--I'm constantly amazed at the people that think these are good for you. Although some can be, most are filled with fat, sugar, and few beneficial foods (maybe a few blueberries).

Since I knew I'd be sending this to my husband's work, and cake isn't as easy to divide up, I decided to try and make this recipe into some healthier carrot cake muffins. Here's the recipe as I made it, I actually doubled it for 24 muffins, but I wrote it below for 12 since I figured that is what most people would use. I reduced some of the sugar, used 1/2 applesauce for the oil, substitued some egg whites, deleted the walnuts and didn't make the frosting, instead I sprinkled cinammon sugar on top after they baked.

I ate 1/2 of one, and I thought they were very good, nice and light! I think they'd be really nice for visitors in the morning or for serving with tea in the afternoon. Since I made some adjustments and deleted some things, the nutrtition information on Bob's website isn't valid, I plugged it into a nutritional calculator and came up with 112 calories each with 24.9 g of carbohydrates, 12 g of sugar, 0.7 g of fat, not including the sprinkling on top. But, each has 27.3% of your Vitamin A requirements for the day!

Whole Grain Carrot Cake Muffins

Preheat over to 350 degrees.

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 cup canola oil

1/4 cup applesauce (I used unsweeteend)

1 whole egg

2 egg whites

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinammon

Mix together above ingredients and then add the following:

1 cup whole wheat pasty flour

1 cup grated carrot

8 oz. crushed pineapple

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp baking soda

(I mixed the baking powder and soda with the flour first before adding)

Fill 12 muffin liners almost full to the top.

Bake for approximately 18 min at 350 (check after 15) until a toothpick comes out clean.

Here's what they looked like right out of the oven:

If you want, frost with cream cheese frosting, or for something lighter, sprinkle with a little cinammon sugar mixture.