Healthy Carrot Cake Muffins

These sugar-free, low-fat muffins are made with only whole-food ingredients and are full of nutrients, fibre and slow release carbohydrates. They make for the perfect sweet treat, healthy snack or dessert. Thanks to the carrots, each muffin contains almost 1/3rd of your daily Vitamin A requirements! Prep them on a Sunday so that you have some healthy snacks for the week ahead or make them for friends and family as a healthy treat.

Carrot muffins (2).jpg

For my patients on calorie-controlled meal plans:

1 muffin (1/24th of the recipe)=

  • 1 starch serving
  • 1/2 fat serving

SERVES 24 muffins

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups whole-grain flour of choice (I use a mix of stoneground wholewheat flour, chickpea flour, rye flour, and sorghum flour. For a gluten-free version you could use a mix of oat/ brown rice/ chickpea/ buckwheat flour).
  • 2 tbsp ground flax seeds + 6 tbsp warm water
  • 1 heaped tsp baking powder
  • 1 heaped tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup granulated sweetner of choice (I use a xylitol/ stevia blend called Suki). Depending on the brand you may need to adjust the quantity of sweetner used.
  • 1 tbsp canola oil
  • 125ml apple sauce (I use baby Purity)
  • 125ml unsweetened almond milk
  • 1/2 cup dried sultanas
  • 50g chopped walnuts
  • 200g grated carrot

Method:

  1. Preheat your oven to 180°C.
  2. Spray your muffin tins generously and set aside. You will need approximately 2 x 12 well muffin tins.
  3. In a small bowl, mix your ground flax seeds with the water and set aside for it to thicken.
  4. In the meanwhile, mix all of your flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, sweetner and spices together in a large mixing bowl.
  5. In a separate bowl, mix together your wet ingredients (apple cider vinegar, almond milk, vanilla extract, canola oil, flax paste and apple sauce). Add your wet ingredients to the flour mixture and stir until well combined.
  6. Lastly, fold in the carrots, sultanas and walnuts and pour your mixture into your muffin tins.
  7. Bake at 180 for 40 minutes.

Jessica KotlowitzComment