Healthy Carrot Cake Muffins

My first year of blogging is almost up. I started writing for RecipeSpinoff in April and it is now September, five months, and I have written fourteen posts and learned what writing for an audience means—not in the technical sense, Sister Aisha handles the technical sense—but in the sense of responsibility, of knowing that words go somewhere and land in someone, that the woman in Memphis who went back to the kitchen is still out there somewhere reading what I write and that what I say matters to her in a way I can't predict and must take seriously.

I have been trying to understand why the food writing works when other kinds of writing about grief don't, and I think it is this: recipes give structure to shapeless things. Grief has no structure—it comes in waves, it ambushes you, it changes shape without warning—but a recipe has steps, an order, a sequence that leads somewhere. When you are grieving and you write about food, you give grief a container. You say: here is the thing that feels uncontainable. Here is how you hold it. Here is what you put it in and what you do with it and what comes out the other side, which is warm and edible and able to be shared. The food holds the grief the way the pot holds the soup. Without the pot, the soup is just heat and liquid going nowhere.

This Sunday we had a church anniversary Sunday—New Hope AME's thirty-fifth year as a congregation, which means thirty-five years of Calvin's ministry, which means thirty-five years of this kitchen. I made a cake. A big one—three layers, white, with buttercream that I made with real butter and enough care that it held its shape without being stiff. Thirty-five candles, which is more candles than a three-layer cake can reasonably hold, but we held them anyway, and Calvin blew them out in two breaths because that is the kind of man he is: a man who finishes what he starts, even when it takes two.

The big cake was for Sunday, for the congregation, for Calvin and the thirty-five candles we crowded onto three layers of buttercream and hope—but the week after an anniversary, when the celebration has settled and the leftover feeling is still warm in your chest, I reach for something smaller and still sweet. These carrot cake muffins are what I make when I want to carry the occasion into Tuesday, into a quiet morning, into a brown bag left on a deacon’s chair. They have the same spirit as that anniversary cake—spiced, careful, made for sharing—just scaled down to the size of an ordinary day, which is the only size most of our lives actually are.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 22 min | Total Time: 37 min | Servings: 12 muffins

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/3 cup pure maple syrup or honey
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup melted coconut oil or light olive oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups finely grated carrots (about 3 medium carrots)
1/3 cup raisins (optional)
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners or grease lightly with oil.
Mix dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt until evenly combined.
Mix wet ingredients. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, maple syrup, applesauce, melted coconut oil, and vanilla extract until smooth.
Combine. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined—do not overmix. A few lumps are fine.
Fold in carrots and add-ins. Fold in the grated carrots, and the raisins and nuts if using, until evenly distributed throughout the batter.
Fill and bake. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake for 20–22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool. Allow muffins to cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Nutrition (per serving)

Healthy Carrot Cake Muffins — What I Bake When the Occasion Calls for Something Made with Love