Baking with carrots #2

After the carrot cake there were loads more carrots left. And now there are loads more after today’s delivery. I’m going to have to start eating only carrots from now on until this craziness ends. Not that I’m complaining mind you, I like carrots, it’s just that there’s really A LOT.

My second use for some of them was to try making carrot and bran muffins. I looked up some recipes on allrecipes.com and found a bran muffin recipe that was very simple, but called for applesauce. I forget the link to the recipe, apologies to the original creator. Mine’s much different actually though so I suppose it’s fine if I just claim this one for myself.

What I did was make a carrot sauce instead of applesauce and add lots of freshly grated carrot as well to the whole mix. And as far as muffins go I think this one is pretty healthy. Very little oil goes into it, not too much sugar (I think) and lots of healthy bran and carrots.

Carrot bran muffins (makes about big ones)

Carrot sauce:
1 cup packed grated carrot
½ cup light brown sugar
½ cup water

Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan and heat over moderate heat until sugar is melted and carrots soften. Allow to cool, then briefly puree in a blender.

Carrot-bran muffins:
1.5 cups bran
2 cups self-raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup grated carrot
1 cup carrot sauce
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
¼ cup plain yogurt (potentially more)
½ teaspoon vanilla
cinnamon sugar

Preheat oven to 200C and prepare muffin tins. Whisk all the dry ingredients together, add the eggs, carrot sauce, oil and yogurt and fold everything together until just combined. If the batter seems a bit dry, add more yogurt in small quantities at a time until it is just moist enough. Spoon large spoonfuls of the batter into the prepared tins, sprinkle with some cinnamon sugar and bake for about 15 minutes, turning halfway through. Allow to cool slightly before turning them out onto a cooling rack.