These Carrot Currant Muffins muffins are fluffy, flavorful, and loaded with nutrients! They make carrot cake for breakfast a totally acceptable option!
Confession: I dread being asked what my favorite food is. I clam up, nervously searching my brain, hoping that my indecision will lift its grip on me for just long enough to come up with an acceptable answer:
“Ummmm…”
“Oh come on, you must have a favorite!?”
“Uhhhhh…”
“Really?”
“Vegetables.”
“Ha. Ha. That’s a food group. Seriously though, what’s your fav…”
At this point I’m usually wide-eyed and biting my lip. I don’t know. I just don’t.
But if you ask me what my favorite dessert is….
“Carrot cake!!!”
Boom! Didn’t even stutter.
I can even tell you what exact type of carrot cake is my most favoritest. Publix. Hands down. Done deal.
I’ll eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I have the chance. Oh and I did have the chance. One word: Pregnancy. Spending the last month of my preggo plague in Pensacola, Florida meant there was a giant bar of carrot cake in my hotel mini fridge at all times. It really did make a fantastic breakfast. Adding coffee and a banana makes just about any food a breakfast food in my book!
Carrot Currant Muffins
(makes 10-12 fluffy muffins)
For those of you slightly confused over the use of currants in this recipe, fear not! They’re essentially the darling of the raisin family. Smaller and more flavorful than their popular counterpart, currants are made from seedless red or black grapes while raisins are made from white grapes. You can find them in the dried fruit aisle in many if not most grocery stores. Different varieties exist but I always grab the Sunmaid’s Zante Currants in the orange box!
Can’t find them? Grab a box of raisins or skip the dried fruit entirely and stir in some extra walnuts! As for the spoonful of vinegar, it takes your milk from plain old milk to fancy schmantzy “buttermilk” and adds a wee bit of extra fluff factor to the muffins. Game on.
Feeling fancy?
super simple cream cheese icing
- 4 TBSP cream cheese, softened to room temperature
- 1/2-1 TBSP milk or coconut milk
- a teeny drop of vanilla, to taste
- 1.5-2 cups powdered sugar
Carrot Currant Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 cup of old-fashioned rolled oats
- ¾ cup milk or dairy-free milk
- ¼ cup plain Greek yogurt
- 1 TBSP vinegar
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- ¼ cup whole wheat flour or white whole wheat flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp allspice
- ¼ tsp salt
- ⅛ tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 large egg
- ¼ tsp vanilla
- ¼ cup butter, melted and cooled slightly
- ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce
- ⅓ cup brown sugar, packed
- 1 cup shredded/grated carrots
- ⅓ cup currants
- ½ cup chopped baking walnuts
- cinnamon sugar for topping (optional)
Instructions
- In a large mixing bowl, combine oats, milk, yogurt and vinegar in a mixing bowl, stir to coat, and allow to sit for 30-60 minutes to soften the oats (oatmeal style!) and give the vinegar a chance to work its magic. You can also pull your egg and carrots from the fridge to reach room temperature alongside it for best results. Out of all three test batches, the one I set out for an hour came out the fluffiest!
- Next preheat the oven to 375 F and grease a non-stick muffin pan by spritzing with spray oil or butter.
- In a clean bowl, combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and salt.
- In the bowl with the wet oat mixture, stir in egg, butter, applesauce, vanilla, brown sugar, carrots, and currants and mix with a fork until fully incorporated.
- Whisk together the dry ingredients and, using a sifter or a sieve, sift the flour mixture into the carrot mixture slowly, stirring with a fork to combine. Mix until just combined, avoiding over mixing the batter.
- Lastly, fold in the walnuts. Your final batter should be thick, sticky, and springy and your fork should almost be able to stand upright in the batter.
- Pour into greased muffin tin. For small muffins, you can divide the batter equally into 12 muffins but I prefer to fill 10 of the 12 at least 3/4 of the way full, for larger muffins with a bit of a muffin top. For a slightly sweeter muffin, top each with an optional sprinkling of cinnamon sugar.
- Set your muffin tin atop an aluminum baking sheet (optional; this helps prevent the bottoms from over browning) and bake for 12-15 minutes for 12 smaller muffins and 18-20 minutes for 10 larger muffins.
- Test with a toothpick and allow to cool to room temperature before faceplanting.
- See post below for optional icing recipe.
Notes
Nutrition
so . . . how were they!?
“So what’s your favorite vegetable?”
“Uhhh….”
Dear Jenn, these look so delicious. These muffins are loaded with so may wonderful ingredients and flavors…I wish I could have on with my coffee in the morning. Pinning! xo, Catherine
Aw thank you Catherine@ <3
I made this recipe and it was damn good!
I’ve made this before and I am going to make it again today! I loved it! Thanks for the recipe!! 😀
This is really tasty. I will be making this again! Thank you!
I used gluten free mama’s coconut flour blend in place of the flour and it turned out great!
I can see why you couldn’t keep your hands off. The Hubby was just asking me for carrot cake last weekend too. I think I know what I’ll be making this weekend now. These are fabulous.
I could never pick a favorite veggie either. You’re in good company.
Oh, those look good! I’m going to have to play with them.
How on earth can anyone have a favorite food? When I’m stuck, I say cheese – but again, that’s really too broad, and it’s not true when what I really want is a cool cucumber salad, or warm comforting chicken soup, or…
These look amazing! I love carrot cake too! I need to try this recipe. 🙂 Oh and I have no idea what I would say if someone asked me my favorite vegetable either. 🙂
Hi Joannie! I have a similar recipe that’s gluten-free: http://peasandcrayons.com/2012/06/gluten-free-carrot-coconut-muffins.html and you could also sub the all-purpose and whole wheat flour in this recipe for a high quality GF all-purpose blend! I want to experiment with making a homemade gluten free flour blend but until then, I tend to gravitate towards the premixed ones for convenience! Hope that helps! xoxo
Oh my gosh, Jenn, these look amazing!!! It’s snowing by me today…and the gym is closed…so instead of working out I will be making these TONIGHT! Carrot cake is my most favooooooooorite cake in the world. I haven’t decided if I’m sharing these with my husband or keeping them all to myself yet…but I’m leaning towards the latter.
Any chance you have tried a gluten free recipe for these?? PLEASE!!!!!
And…you had to take a bite out of the one with the largest glob of frosting AND photograph it – this leaves me with incredible foodenvy!
excuse while I go bury my head in my unfrosted almond honey pancakes!
Hi Margaret! I think canning might curdle the cheese a bit, just judging by the ingredients used in most canned cheese-based soups. They tend to all go for processed cheeses [like velveeta and american cheese] and I suspect it’s because of the curdling issue and not just the cost. It freezes well though! I like to freeze the base of the soup minus the cheese and then when I’m reheating on the stove top, toss the cheese in. This could work for canning too actually! You can can the seasonings, milk, broth, veggies, etc.. and then when you heat up the can/jar add the cheese in before serving! Let me know if you wind up trying it out! And thanks for stopping by! xoxo
carrot cake is my favorite dessert too!!! YES! pinning this one 🙂 xo jillian – cornflake dreams
I need this in my life. Pronto. I used to dislike carrot cake but my tastes seem to have changed last year and now I Lovee it. Great recipe.
I have so many favorite foods. It is hard to pick. These look fantastic. Frosting included!
Oh, my. These look sooo good. We don’t have Publix in the god-forsaken midwest, but go there when we visit my best friend in Nashville. Their muffins and cupcakes are the best. I love that these are “fluffy”, which is what I will be if I make these and don’t put at least half of them in the freezer. Yum!
Yes ma’am!!! Carrot cake is second only to chocolate cake in my dessert ranking. My grandmother used to make it all the time, and I still request my mom to make the recipe for my birthday. So. Good.
These have oats in them. That means it’s a breakfast food, no? 🙂
My dad is a carrot cake junkie (seriously it’s a problem!) so I might have to whip him up a batch of these as a treat 🙂 They look seriously amazing… even before you added the frosting!
OMG, making these!! Carrot cake is my all time favorite dessert! Thanks for the recipe, Ill be pinning for later use!
I hate being asked my favorite food too! Ha I always end up saying something stupid like bananas? pretzels? protein bars? uhhh… Anywho…these look scrumptious! I do LOVE carrot cake. Especially the cream cheese frosting. I could eat that stuff by the spoonful 🙂