Sunday, August 29, 2010

Summer Baking




We are enjoying The Sono Baking Company Cookbook to bake up some goodies featuring fruits and veggies from our garden and farmers' market. We adapted the recipes to use whole wheat flour and a lot less sugar (the original recipes are very sweet).

Emily made the Blueberry-Nectarine Buckle (we added strawberries too). And here is my variation of the Zucchini Carrot Muffins (the original recipe was Zucchini, Carrot, and Cranberry Muffins, which I'm sure is delicious . . . but we loved this version).

Zucchini-Carrot Muffins
This makes 12 large muffins . . . you might want to make these as mini muffins to add to school lunches. These freeze very well.

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup natural granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup oil (safflower, canola, etc.)
2 large eggs
3/4 cup grated carrots (about 2 carrots)
3/4 - 1 cup grated zucchini (about 2 zucchini)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Oil a 12-cup muffin pan. Sift together flour, baking powder and soda, salt, and spices. In a large mixing bowl, whisk sugars, oil, and eggs together until smooth. Stir in zucchini and carrots. Stir in flour mixture just until combined. Divide batter into the 12 muffin cups. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until tester inserted in center comes out dry. Let cool 10 minutes. Using a table knife, gently remove muffins from tin and place on a wire rack to cool.

5 comments:

Buffy said...

Yum, Cathe -- Thanks! We'll try these around here soon -- How do you think substituting applesauce for the sugars would work?

Unknown said...

These are already really moist from the veggies . . . maybe omit some oil and an egg if you use applesauce. Or just omit most of the sugar if you won't want it. You could just do the brown sugar . . . that isn't much for 12 muffins.

Susan said...

These look great! I always like to keep some frozen muffins around for my son's snacks. I'm also partial to grating raw beets into muffins. They're naturally sweet too!

Unknown said...

I haven't tried beets . . . great (grate!) idea.

Buffy said...

Fiestabeth (and sort of me, except really all I did was the grating for a double batch) has been fiddling with the recipe and it's been fun. I think she'll post about it on her blog and I will try to remember to send a link.