I bought a 5-pound bag of organic carrots and was running out of things to do with them. Then I thought, "LUNCHES". I try and have a few things stacked in the freezer for easy-peasy-kid-lunch-making on busy mornings.
I googled "carrots applesauce cocoa muffins" (the cocoa because I have to hide any strands of orange for fear the kids may toss them *boo*) and found a recipe at The Live-In Kitchen (here). But. It had brown sugar. And way too much white flour. So - I did some substitution homework (here and here) and came up with this: a clean, no-white-sugar and no-white-flour recipe.
They are light and not terribly sweet, very different from the chocolately-dense Quinoa muffins. They are both SUPER good - and these ones have little bits of almond from the almond meal. This recipe is DEFINITELY a keeper, though it is a little time consuming with the puree.
Now - their recipe also suggests sweet potato instead of carrot for the puree - just a note there. And since I don't have a food processor, I had to improvise. Here's what I did ::
Clean Eating Cocoa Applesauce Mini Muffins with Carrot Puree
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup carrot or sweet potato puree
1/3 cup maple syrup
5 + 1/2 tbsp honey
1 + 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 large eggs
2 tbsp coconut milk
2/3 cup almond meal (Trader Joes)
1 cup gluten-free flour mix (or whole wheat / spelt / other flour **)
1/4 cup Trader Joes chocolate chunks
Directions:
1. Steam/cook/prepare carrots or sweet potatoes.
2. Mix butter, applesauce, maple syrup and honey.
3. (As I don't have a food processor) Place cooked carrots in VitaMix and add eggs. Blend until pureed.
4. Add carrot/sweet potato mixture to butter mixture. Mix.
5. Add baking soda and coconut milk. Mix lightly.
6. Stir in almond meal and gluten-free flour mix with a wooden spoon.
7. spray mini muffin tin with coconut oil spray (Trader Joes), or prepare as you wish.
7. Bake at 375F for 15minutes, or until done.
yields :: approx 30 mini muffins
** I wanted to try and use coconut flour - but I didn't have enough eggs to substitute.
