Wednesday, February 27, 2008

muffins for those who dont want muffin tops




i've been on a muffin rampage. bakin' up a storm over here in san diego. today i made these after my trainer session and run. i ran in the house like a crazy person and started mixing stuff up super fast. You would have thought it was T1 or something the way i was iron-cheffing because i wanted to get outside by the pool (75 and sunny!) to do some studying (gotta love grad school). James' roomate's gf was like, "are you going to use a recipe?". i told her no, because i vaguely know some sort of basic muffiny base (flour+sweetener+egg+applesauce+baking soda) and i just put in fruits, nuts, vegetables and spices that i like to flavor it up. sometimes this means that my concoctions suck, but i usually like them even when other people don't (hey, i like all the ingredients on their own, they must be good mixed up!). MORE FOR ME! and healthy tastes great, right?
today i made what i call:

CARROT CAKE PUMPKIN PIE MUFFINS
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup splenda (or your sweetener of choice- good ole cane, agave nectar, brown rice syrup, HFCS if you want to slowly kill yourself)
1 cup shredded carrots
1 can canned pumpkin (NOT p. pie mix)
1/2 cup egg whites (or you can whole egg it up, make it the omega fortified kind)
1/2 cup no sugar added applesauce
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (or just more cinnamon and some nutmeg)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder

heat oven to 350 degrees. mix dry ingredients. mix in wet ingredients. actually, i just mix it all up at the same time but this is how they typically tell you to do it. spoon into muffin pans (like a 1/3 cup mix in each) and bake away. i think mine took 40 minutes, but it may take less. James' oven is wack (who says wack? sorry). just bake them until an inserted knife is dry-ish.
i made half the recipe as shown above, and in the other half of the mix, i threw in a cup of wheat bran and a 1/3 cup of blueberries and a little extra egg white to make some fiber bomb muffins..the blueberries and the egg were to balance the extra dry fiber (just balance out the wet/dry stuff when you bake and it should be good to go)

i think they came out pretty good. kind of like chewy pumpkin pie carrot cake which is what i was going for (see recipe name). they don't get too cake-y, they are more sponge-y and that's because if you look at the recipe, for every muffin, at least 3/4 of it is straight up fruits and veggies and nuts. just a little flour and egg glue to hold it all together.

last week. i made pretty much the same muffins but instead of pumpkin, carrot & raisin, i substituted 1 1/2 cups (or 3 whole) bananas...banana walnut goodness.

last night for dinner james made grilled swordfish steaks with avacado corn salsa fresca. and kitchen sink 2-pound salads as usual (last night they had sprouts, spinach, tomatoes, pickles, artichoke hearts, broccoli, carrots, red onion (which rachel ray thinks should be renamed purple onion and she tells you in EVERY show), red and yellow bell peppers, sugar snap peas, mushrooms and i think that's it). with some awesome miso dressing that we love. oh, and i put fiber one "croutons" on my salad. yes, i am a weirdo with fiber. can't get enough. maybe i am writing this so that james will post a picture from dinner and review all the wine he drank this week. wine is like rocket fuel for james. oh, and post about our favorite new breakfast-y find from trader joes too! please! i'll be nice and make you muffins...oh, wait...

3 comments:

Paul said...

I'm all about muffins. Ever try Kamut flour? No need for sweetner..it's teh best.

kerrie said...

thanks for the hfcs link....i can't believe how much crap it is in here - it is so hard to avoid. it is so strange cause you can't find it in canada, but yet you get the exact same product here and it is the first ingredient. my older daughter rain has been scouring labels for it since she was old enough to read when we grocery shop so she can loudly proclaim "sorry mom, we can't get this cause it has hfcs in it" lol...

TRI-ROB said...

Bah ha HA! All I could think about while reading this post was Chet from the movie "Weirrd Science" when he said, "I wanna butter your muffin.". Bill Paxton... ya gotta love that dude. Uh... did I just date myself? Are you two even old enough to know about "Weird Science"? CRAP!... *sigh*... I'm old

Seriously though... those sound DELISH!

NOW... bring on the wine reviews James!

Breathe...