Mini Carrot Cake Muffins

I’m trying really hard to get back into a blogging/social media groove. Before Chief, I spent a lot of time planning dinners, experimenting with recipes, staging my food to get the perfect picture and I would post content about 3 times per week. Now, I spend all my energy planning his meals and Chase and I eat the crumbs.

Navigating solids and finger foods has been quite the challenge for me, but we’ve figured things out and now I have a few criteria when feeding my boy: I like to feed him whole foods (food that has been processed or refined as little as possible and is free from additives or other artificial substances), and I want the ingredient list to be short and recognizable. He eats like this probably 90% of the time. In order to keep my sanity, I try to make a few things on the weekends that I can pull out in a pinch to create a meal or offer as a snack.

One of Chief’s favorite breakfasts/snacks is an easy apple cinnamon blender muffin recipe from BabyFoode. He loves it because they’re sweet and delicious, I love it because it’s made with oats and sweetened with bananas and maple syrup. Her blender muffin recipe inspired me to use some leftover carrots that were on the verge of going to the compost pile to create these mini carrot cake muffins. Even Chief’s veggie-hating Dad will eat these.

Mini Carrot Cake Muffins (Print Me!)

• 1 cup dry old-fashioned oats
• 1 ripe banana
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 1/3 cup shredded carrots
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup golden raisins (roughly chopped)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray or line a mini muffin tray.
2. In a blender, add in the oats, banana, applesauce, carrots, egg, maple syrup, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Blend until all of the oats are completely broken down.
3. Add in the baking powder, baking soda and salt, and blend on low for 20 seconds. Add in the raisins and mix by hand.
4. Spoon the muffin batter out of the blender and fill the muffin tin 2/3 full.
5. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown on top. Let cool completely and then serve.
6. Once cool, place muffins in plastic bag and store in the freezer. To reheat – remove liner, wrap in damp paper towel, heat for :30 or until warm.

Yield – 24 mini muffins