When you have kids that love carrots and your 2 year old opens the fridge to dig out carrots on her own to snack on, you might just need to buy carrots in bulk…
Thankfully Costco has a TEN pound bag of Organic Carrots for $6.00 – making them $.60 a pound and a regular monthly purchase for us. Walk around our house and you may find carrot “stubs” all over the place. You might even think we have bunnies living in here … as my 2 year old helps herself to the carrots and then walks around the house, backyard and even climbs in the car for a drive with a carrot stick in each hand.
The only part she doesn’t touch is the very end of the stub.
While making Carrot Soup is relatively easy to do (and super delicious) .. making Carrot Ginger Muffins is also great too. They are perfect to put in the lunchbox for the kids for school and they bake up so nice and light – not heavy and dense.
We used our Black & Decker Food Processor to shred the carrots – instead of doing 2-3 carrots and having to wash, we usually shred 15-20 carrots, and keep the rest in freezer bags in the freezer so we can pull out what we need to make veggie bowls and bake at any time.
If you make your own yogurt, you can use the leftover whey to make these muffins instead of using Buttermilk – it makes them light & fluffy.
You can also make these as a bread too – I’d use a loaf baking dish and make sure you grease it well. It will take longer to bake in that case – I don’t have an exact time as I haven’t done it in a bread pan yet but my guess is 45 – 55 minutes until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- 2 C. All Purpose Flour
- 2 tsp Baking Powder
- 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
- 2 Eggs
- 2/3 C. Brown Sugar (we used just over 1/2 and it was sweet enough)
- 1 C. Buttermilk (we used Whey from yogurt)
- 6 Tbsp (3/4 Stick) Unsalted Butter, melted
- 2-3 large Carrots, shredded
- Optional: 3 drops Lemon Vitality Essential Oil (we use Young Living)
- Optional: 1 drop Ginger Vitality Essential Oil (we use Young Living)
- Optional (we did not use): 1/2 C. Raisins
- Preheat the oven to 425, and line 12 muffin cups with cupcake liners.
- In your KitchenAid, combine melted butter, eggs, brown sugar and buttermilk (or, whey).
- Add All Purpose Flour, Baking Powder, Baking Soda, Salt, and Cinnamon.
- Stir just until blended.
- Add the Essential Oils (these are optional).
- Fold in Carrots, and add Raisins (optional).
- Spoon the batter into your muffin cups, fill 3/4 full... you should have enough for 12.
If you opt to use Essential Oils in your baked goods, we use and recommend Young Living. You can read more about cooking and baking with oils on our last post.