Wholesome muffins with a sweet heat...

It has been a fairly long time since we made some muffins and our freezer was lacking in the snack department. While I was waiting for the dough to rise for our favorite homemade hamburger buns, I went ahead and threw together a batch of these Ginger-Carrot Muffins.

These wholesome muffins have quite the nutritious ingredient list. While we included a bit of regular all-purpose flour to ensure a stable texture, we also tossed in some whole wheat pastry flour, oat flour and ground flax seed. Oat flour is not always easy to find, but you can make your own fairly easy - just grind up rolled or quick oats in a food processor, blender or spice grinder (which is my favorite way) until it is powdery. It usually measures cup for cup, so 1/2 cup whole would equal roughly 1/2 cup ground up.

You could get away with simply flavoring these with cinnamon , but to warm up the muffins, ground ginger, enticing cardamom and chunky bits of crystallized ginger are blended with the floury dry ingredients. A couple cups worth of grated carrots are folded in once the batter is combined, along with a small handful of toasted walnuts for a nutty crunch. As these baked, the muffins puffed up to have beautiful crowns and a rich golden exterior. You can see that we left our ginger pieces fairly large to get that extra punch of sweet and heat, but feel free to mince it instead for a more subtle and dispersed flavor. Don't forget that muffins, especially ones like these, will freeze well and thaw in a snap for those quick snacks or breakfasts on the go!

Recipes
Ginger-Carrot Muffins