The easiest Carrot & Date Muffins ever!

Carrots make a great ingredient for moist and sweet muffins. The usual carrot cake or muffin recipe requires you to grate the carrots first, which may already put some daring bakers off as it’s a bit more time consuming.

This recipe however doesn’t require you to grate the carrots, as you’ll just blend them along with the dates and the other ‘wet’ ingredients in your OmniBlend. Once your blender’s done the hard work for you, you fold the wet mixture into the flour mixture, and you’re ready to bake. Easy as that! Making your own treats, knowing what’s in it and using good quality ingredients, really doesn’t have to be a daunting task!

In this recipe we’re using only natural sweeteners, so no additional refined sugars are added. We sourced our raw honey from the lovely City Bowl Market (every Thursday, from 16h30 to 20h30, on Hope Street, Gardens, Cape Town), and hope you’ve got a good supplier too as it adds to the flavour of these muffins. We’re also keeping it dairy-free, by adding soy milk instead of cow milk.

We’ve used the Eureka Mills unbleached stone ground cake flour for these muffins. This flour is made from grain that’s locally grown in the nutrient-rich soil of the pristine Helderberg and Swellendam regions. It’s free of GMO nasties, chemical bleaches and harmful pesticides, because the grain is cultivated in a traditional eco-friendly way. It means it’s free of unwanted chemicals and additives. On top of that, the flour is milled in such a way that none of its essential nutrients are lost.

Ingredients:

The wet ingredients:

• 3 medium carrots
• 1 C dried pitted dates
• ¼ C canola oil
• ½ C raw honey
• ½ C soy milk
• 2 free-range eggs

For the flour mixture:

• 1 ½ C cake flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp ginger
• pinch salt

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven at 180C, and prepare the muffin tray, using either muffin cups or grease the tray.

Add all ingredients from the ‘wet ingredients’ list to the jug, and blend for about 1 minute at low to medium speed.

Sift all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, and mix.

Transfer the wet ingredients from the jug into the bowl, and fold the wet mixture into the flour.

Fill the muffin cups just below the top, and bake for about 20 minutes. Let them cool off slightly and then enjoy them as they are. These muffins are so full of flavour they don’t need any topping.

 This mix makes 12-15 small muffins.