Eat your veggies

This morning I had my favourite combination for breakfast: a cup of hot coffee, a banana, and a delicious little muffin. Not a regular muffin but a pumpkin-carrot one with light orange glaze. OK – the glaze part doesn’t really sound like healthy breakfast but we are eating our veggies here, so no complaints!

I love vegetables. Raw, steamed, sauteed or baked in any way – they are a healthy and tasty ingredient and make an appearance in almost every one of my meals. Not all vegetables taste delicious in sweet foods but some are great -- use your imagination and try out a few!

My muffins combine the sweetness of pumpkin and carrots with ground spices like cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg – not unlike pumpkin pie. I simply added these few things to flour, oil, eggs, raw sugar and voila – you have fresh muffins!  Of course, to add a little extra citrus sweetness, I made an orange icing.

spiced pumpkin-carrot muffins with orange glaze

makes 12 muffins

use organic where possible

muffins

1/4 cup oil (any non-fragrant oil)

1/4 cup sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 tbsp (30ml) milk

1/2 cup (200g) pumpkin – cooked and roughly chopped or pureed*

2 small carrots, grated

1/4 cup (30g) spelt flakes (use oat if you can’t find)

1 cup (130g) plain flour

pinch sea salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg and ginger

1 tsp baking powder

glaze

40g icing sugar

zest of 1/2 orange

juice from 1 quarter orange

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C.

In a large bowl, place oil, sugar, eggs, vanilla and milk, and mix well. Add carrots and pumpkin and mix further. Next, add all the dry ingredients – spelt flakes, flour, spices, sea salt and baking powder. Place batter into muffin cases or greased muffin tin and bake for 25-30 minutes or until knife inserted comes out clean.  Take out and let cool.

For the glaze: in a small bowl mix all ingredients until forms a slightly thick pouring consistency. Pour over cooled muffins and serve.

*for the pumkin, I used leftover cooked pumpkin – I placed it into the food processor and pulsed a few times to give me a slightly pureed texture – some larger pieces are fine.