Carroty Carrot Muffins

One of these days I'll figure out wake up early enough in the morning that I can actually sit down and eat a piece of toast for breakfast. I've never been much of a breakfast person though. This is not to say tht I don't like breakfast foods, or don't eat breakfast. It's just that I need to be up and about for a while before I eat something.

Sleep is a precious commodity in my world. I will take sleep over most other early morning activities. That's why I've got my morning routine down to a 17 minute science. Really sucks on days when the the overnight low was below -20 (i.e. every night from now until April) because I have to get up four minutes earlier to run out in my pajamas to start the car before I start getting ready. And there are still mornings when I'm ready to go before the car is. 2 more years of school. 2 more years. 2 more. 2 ...

Carroty Carrot Muffins

What You Need:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup ground flax seed

• OR 2 cups flour

• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 c carrot juice (or orange juice or milk)
• 1/2 c vegetable oil (I used peanut)
• 1/2 c unsweetened applesauce
• 1/2 c honey
• 1 1/2 c grated carrots (at least)

Nope, no sugar at all. And no dairy. These will never be entirley vegan though (even if you did use some kind of egg substitute) because of the honey. Poor little worker bees, working so hard.

What You Gotta Do:

Preheat the oven to 350. (and yes, I really did remember)

In a small bowl, combine the flour, flax seed, baking soda, baking powder, and the salt.

A whisk works well for this.

In a large bowl, dump in everything else except the carrots.

Whisk this all together. The spices really contribute to the colour.

Tip the floury stuff from the small bowl into the wet eggy stuff in the large bowl. Mix this with a whisk. Yes, I know I'm making muffins which only need to be just-mixed. It is possible to merely stir things with a whisk.

What you can't do with a whisk really, though I suppose if you really wanted to you could probably pull it off, is fold. Fold the grated carrots into your just-mixed batter.

The balance of my bag of baby carrots only made for about 2 cups of grated carrots. This recipe can definitely take more than that.

You should end up with enough batter to generously fill 12 muffin cups. (I think I may try this as a snack cake next time. The texture is soft and cake like.)

Bake them for about 20 minutes at 350. Then let them cool a bit before you try taking them out of the pan. If you use the paper cups, you can get them out right away, but I prefer my muffins without cups.

These are fabulous with a bit of cream cheese on them.

This recipe is decidedly not sweet, but it's also not savoury. You could add chocolate chips, dried fruit (I'm thinking chopped apricots would be very tasty in them), or even nuts (weirdo).

You could probably even top them with cream cheese icing and pass them off as a carrot cake. Sneaky.

How do you hide vgetables?

liquid lunch

It's exam time. Finals. Two down and two to go. Really not looking forward to three hours of calculus on Saturday night.

I need energy here. Lots of it, in a fast, easy to make, and quick to consume form.

And for that, we break out the blender.

No, it's not margarita time yet. Though, wow, I could totally do with a tall frosty glass of slushy booze.

Gah! Exams! Must. Study. Must. Eat.

Berry Berry Smoothie

What you need:

• 1/4 cantaloupe
• 1 mango
• 1 c frozen blueberries
• 1 1/2 c frozen raspberries
• 1 c vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 c pear juice

What you gotta do:

If you've got one of those little single serving blenders, I totally suggest it. You won't have to wash an extra cup.

My berries were picked over the summer by a coworker and frozen on a cookie sheet before bagging. I really think frozen fruit is the way to go with smoothies. It removes all temptation to use ice cubes in them. The smoothie will be perfectly chilled, and not watered down at all. It also won't separate if it sits for a few minutes.

Chopping a mango is something most people need to learn how to do. It's not an intuitive process, and it does take a bit of practice to maximize the mango recovery, but it's fairly simple once you know what to do. 

The pit is wide and flat and runs lengthwise down the middle of the fruit. Stand the mango up and align it so that it's long side is pointing away from you.

Don't slice down the middle of a mango. Ever. Offset the knife by about 3/4 of an inch.

Slice straight down. Do the same to the other side.

You can trim the last little bits off the middle, but what you have here is the bulk of the flesh.

Score it just to the skin, lengthwise and then crosswise.

Then, with your thumbs on the edges and your fingers on the bottom, flip it inside out.

Perfect bite-sized chunks just waiting to be bitten.

Or sliced off and put in a smoothie.

You can do something similar with the canteloupe. My dad always did this when I was a kid; they're called canteloupe caterpillars.

Both the mangos and the canteloupe go into the blender on top of the berries.

You can use any flavour of yogurt that you want in your smoothie, but I had a good quality, high fat (8.5%, which is insanely high for yogurt, but really not bad compared to most dairy products) vanilla. 

Pour in your pear juice. Again, the kind of juice is flexible. More what you need here is some lubricant to keep the mixture moving in the blender. Yes, vodka would work just fine.

This starts looking smooth so fast I barely had time for a picture. I did have to poke at it once to get everyone moving around (I'm not going to warn you to turn the blender off before you stick a spoon in it. If you can't figure out not to stick metal objects into fast moving and sharp blades, I expect to see you on the Darwin Awards).

It will look totally done after only a few seconds on high, but this is deceiving. There are still chunks.

Once you've got it whizzing around on high speed, give the smoothie a full minute in there. You'll need it, but you'll still likely end up with the odd blueberry that manages to escape unscathed.

Pour your delicious dinner into a tall glass and add a bendy straw!

That's your average 10-12 ounce glass. I was able to fill it up twice. 

And while I was slurping down the first one, the stuff in the blender didn't separate at all.

Smoothies store in the fridge just fine for a couple days and are totally portable. They make great grab-and-go breakfasts if you make them the night before and keep them in the fridge, or awesome afternoon snacks if you need a boost at work.

And if you get yourself some bags of prechopped frozen fruit, they take less than 3 minutes to make.

What's your favourite blender drink?