Dish of the Day & Spelt Carrot Cake Muffins

Muffins are so Monday. If you can get yourself out of bed, and get these into the oven, you are going to have a good week. Guaranteed.


Imagine this:
You have breakfast (all together, at the table, with heaps of butter for the muffins and a coffee for the grown ups). You pack lunches (healthy ones, with lots of colour and texture). You drop the kids at kindy. You get into work. You smile at all your co-workers - because out of all of you, who else made muffins this morning? No one. That's right - just you. Be proud.

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Spelt Carrot Cake Muffins

Makes 10-12 muffins (depending on how overly-generous you are early in the filling of muffin cups)
10 min prep + 15 min baking

Adapted from Deceptively Delicious

The ingredients
1/4 c rapadura sugar
1/4 c olive oil
1 egg
juice of 1/2 an orange
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 carrots, peeled and shredded
1/4 c chopped dried apricots
1/4 c chopped prunes
2 c wholemeal spelt flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder

+ one lovely thrifted dish, to hold your muffins

*Try to use organic ingredients when you can, and unsulphured dried apricots.

**You can substitute brown sugar for the rapadura if you don't have any ... but try to get ahold of some. You can also substitute regular wholemeal flour for the spelt, but I encourage you to try the spelt - it makes the muffins so incredibly soft and yummy!

The process
1. Preheat the oven to 180C (350 F). Line a muffin tin with paper cups.

2. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, oil, egg, orange juice, vanilla, carrots and chopped dried fruit.

3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and stir to combine. Careful not to overmix - that'll make for flat muffins. Gently stir until the batter is all mixed together, wet and dry.

4. Divide into muffin cups. Put into preheated oven and bake for 12-15 min, or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the muffin comes out clean.

5. Remove from the oven, remove from the muffin tray and cool on a rack for a few minutes before eating!

I used all organic ingredients, and my muffins came to about $0.60 each (for 12). 


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Dish of the Day

Oh, and $0.50 for the gorgeous enamel dish you see the muffins sitting in. I love enamel. Want to see some more thrifty finds? I play along here.

Have a great week - muffined or not!
Amanda xx

Comments

  1. Anything to help out a Monday!!! Thanks for the muffin recipe to try.

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  2. Not sure how to get my hands on these ingredients but I have to recommend whole wheat pastry flour for muffins-- turns out amazingly! I'm glad you're getting into baking this week, I'm going to try my hand at a crusty loaf of whole-grain bread for the first time soon. EXCITING! Butter, bread, carbo-overload yayyy!

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  3. Hope your Monday was a good one! My daughter lost it, and ended up having a 3 hr nap in the afternoon - so I had some unexpected free time (yay!)

    Karen, do you live near a Wholefoods? Betcha they'd have the ingredients! I really want to try wholemeal pastry flour, but I have the problem that I can't seem to find it here! Good luck with the bread! :)

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  4. I love the addition of the apricots and prunes. I really like serving whole spelt berries as a side-dish. They have a wonderful chewy texture. But I'll have to grind some down into a flour and try these out.

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  5. I'm with you Matthew - the dried fruit makes these amazing! I've never tried spelt berries ... will have to find them somewhere and give them a go! Thanks for the tip :)

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  6. If I were to substitute honey or maple syrup for sugar, how much should I use? I was also wondering is 1 and a half carrots about 1 cup shredded?

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  7. Hiya, thanks for asking that ... I'm a bit of a dabbler in the kitchen (as in, I look at the texture and thickness of the batter and play with proportions). So .... I googled this for you!

    Check out this link for sugar substitution tips:

    http://allrecipes.com//HowTo/baking-with-sugar-and-sugar-substitutes/

    And I'd say 1-2 carrots = 1 cup usually.
    Hope this helps!

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  8. This is something I was looking for. Surely I am going to try it and let you know how it goes. Thank you so much for sharing such a nice recipe.

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  9. Just made your recipe! It was so delicious! I think I put too many carrots in so I had to add more liquid to make it work. I added buttermilk and they turned out perfect. Thanks!

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  10. I Made these today,absolutely delicious! Thank you for the recipe. :)

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Thanks for commenting! Amandaxx