Dairy-Free Carrot Muffins

Carrot muffins have been one of my favourite muffins since childhood. Actually, I really enjoy anything baked with carrots like carrot cake. If you too are a fan of carrot-infused baked goods, you will want this recipe to my dairy-free low-sugar carrot muffins as a perfect fibre-filled breakfast. Top them with some tahini, natural peanut butter, almond butter, or any other seed/nut butter of your choice for some added protein and healthy fats. You can also enjoy them as a mid-afternoon snack with a cup of tea or coffee.

FIBRE: The whole-wheat flour, oats, and carrots add a good punch of fibre to these muffins. and the

MILK SUBSTITUTE: If you don’t care about keeping it dairy-free, you can use cow’s milk. To keep it dairy-free, you can use any dairy-free milk alternative as long as it is unsweetened to keep the sugar content low.

OIL:  For the oil, you can use 2/3 cup of only olive oil or only grapeseed oil but I like combining the two so the olive taste isn’t over-powering but you still get some of that olive oil taste which tastes amazing in muffins… or maybe that’s just me. That’s why I used 1/3 cup olive oil and 1/3 cup grapeseed oil. You may be even able to substitute avocado oil but I haven’t tried that. If you try it, let us know what it tastes like in the comments below.

SWEETNESS LEVEL:

These muffins are not very sweet at all but I intentionally wanted to keep it that way so I used ¼ cup of the date sugar.  If you would like them sweeter, you can experiment with using 1/3 cup or ½ cup of date sugar.  The date sugar I used is from Now Foods Canada.  It is a natural sugar from dates but doesn’t contain the vitamins and minerals and fibre that eating whole dates would provide so I wouldn’t consider it nutritive but since it is natural, it makes it a better option than refined brown or white sugar. Date sugar contains less grams of sugar per teaspoon than coconut sugar.

INGREDIENTS:

Makes 12 muffins

• 1 1/2 whole-wheat flour

• 1 cup Rolled oats

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 2 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 tsp cinnamon powder

• 1/4 tsp all spice

• 2/3 cup unsweetened oat milk

• 1 large egg

• 1/3 cup olive oil

• 1/3 cup grapeseed oil

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1/4 cup date sugar

• 1 1/2 cups grated carrots

METHOD:

1. In a mixing bowl, mix the whole wheat flour, rolled oats, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon powder and all spice.

2. In a separate bowl, mix the milk, egg, oils, vanilla extract, sugar, and carrots.

3. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix just until the flour and everything is just combined.

4. Preheat your oven to 375 F

5. Line a muffin tin with 12 liners.

6. Scoop mixture into each liner, almost filling each cup to the top (about 3/4 full).

7. Bake at 375 F for 20-24 minutes or until a knife/toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean (with a few crumbs is okay).

8. Let them cool in the muffin tin for a couple of minutes and then move them to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Enjoy on its own or with some of your favourite nut/seed butter, curl up on the couch and watch your favourite holiday movie.