Bran Carrot Squash Muffins

If you find yourself with lots of carrots or lots of extra zucchini, you can change the recipe to accommodate. If you happen to get an extra juicy carrot or zucchini, try to remove some of the liquid by squeezing a cup at a time in a paper towel. You can grate the veggies by hand, but if you have a food processor, by all means, save yourself some time and use it!

A few times when I've made this recipe, the muffins came out a little too sweet for my taste, likely because the carrots I used were super-sweet already. Consider crunching on a bite of your carrots before shredding, and cutting the sugar by up to half.

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/4 cup wheat bran
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg (optional)
2 large eggs
1/2 cup organic canola oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups grated raw carrot
1 cup grated raw zucchini or other summer squash.
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
1 cup raisins
1 cup walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 400. Grease your muffin tin really really well and consider using muffin liners to make things easier on yourself -- this is important. The bran and all the carrots make these muffins fall apart more easily, so you'll need to take care or your muffins will stick and your tops will fall off. This is okay in a Seinfeld episode, but less cool in real life. If you're filling the muffin pan to the top because you want big crispy muffin tops, also make sure that you grease the top of the pan and not just the inside of the cups or it will stick.

Mix dry ingredients: flour, bran, salt, bkg pwdr, bkg soda, nutmeg, cinnamon. In separate bowl, mix eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar.

Add carrot & squash into wet stuff and mix to coat, then gently fold in dry ingredients 1/4 at a time until just combined.

Add raisins and walnuts, stir gently, then fill greased muffin cups 3/4 to all-the-way full. Cook 20-25 minutes at 400

A yummy breakfast treat -- goes great with a steaming cup of coffee