Healthy Carrot Cake Muffins with Cream Cheese Filling

Oh hey strangers!

Hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas and January! I spent my holidays at home in New Brunswick which was nice and relaxing, full of family visits, and wedding planning. I returned to Toronto and dove back into work, tutoring, commuting in the snow, and trying to sell a car. I also got totally sucked into the book/tv series Outlander, and have been reading like a fiend....and totally ignoring the blog.

Which reminds me, this little blog is 4 years old now. Thanks for reading! To celebrate, I am sharing this muffin recipe. I have collected quite a few frozen bananas, and have been put to the task to using them up. For the past couple of Sunday's I have been trying new muffin recipes...which lead to a Frankenstein mishmash of ideas that lead to this...

I started with the concept from Running with Spoons, but converted into Carrot Cake, after my friend Brittany and I were discussing how February 3rd was Carrot Cake Day. These Muffins are actually pretty healthy! Lowish sugar, no oil, no butter, and made with Oats! Yes, there is cream cheese. I'm justifying it by pledging to do a little more working out. I work out for food. Truth.

There is also a full serving of fruit, and good fibre things from the oatmeal, but you won't even know it is "healthy"....they are sneaky muffins...like Ninjas. Carrot Ninjas. They are pretty much a bowl of oatmeal in muffin form. With cream cheese. Guys..I tried to make it healthy ok, the cream cheese just fell in the bowl.

Mostly Healthy Carrot Cake Muffins

Time: 

20 minutes Prep

20 minutes cooking

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients: 

2.5 cups of whole oats (slow or quick, whatever you have)

0.5 Cups of flour (whole wheat, oat flour, whatever you have)

1/2 Cup of Yogurt (Plain Greek, or Vanilla, or non greek, whatever you have) 

2 eggs (I used 1 XL egg instead)

4 Small defrosted frozen bananas

1/2 Cup of Grated Carrot

Additional 1/4 Cup Grated Carrot (reserved)

1 Cup of crushed Pinapple Drained

1/4 Cup of Brown Sugar 

1 1/2 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp of baking soda

2 tsp Cinnamon

1 tsp Vanilla

1/2 tsp Nutmeg

1/4 cup of walnuts (optional)

Cream cheese filling (totally worth it. Do it, don't omit, just don't eat 10 of them at once). 

1/2 Pkg of light cream Cheese (4oz) softened

1/8 Cup of White Sugar

Preheat oven to 375. Grease muffin tins

Add the oats, yogurt, egg, bananas, 3/4 cups grated carrot, pinapple, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, in a food processor. Pulse until oats breakdown. Mix in walnuts and reserved grated carrots. If mixture is too liquidy add flour as needed until batter becomes thick, but not doughy. 

In another bowl mix cream cheese and sugar. Do not eat the whole bowl of cream cheese mixture while waiting for the oven to preheat. DON'T DO IT. 

Pour muffin batter into tins, filling half way. Add a spoonful of cream cheese mixture, then top with muffin batter mix. (Hide the evidence) 

Bake in the oven for 15-17 minutes. 

When they come out of the oven go "Oh how did that cream cheese get in there...oh darn, guess I will have to eat it anyway!"

Check if done if when inserting a toothpick if it comes out dry. 

Enjoy...feel good about eating a healthy version of carrot cake, cream cheese and all!

The Onion

One of my things to do during my free time is to clean/organize my apartment. During the past 2 months me and the roomies were quite busy (exams, final projects, living at school for 18 hours a day), so cleaning was something that happened as a method of procrastination, quickly and only touching the surface. The apartment wasn't unlivable or anything, just needed some TLC. There was also a funky smell in the kitchen that I assumed was from the fridge, which scared me. 

Yesterday I started by rearranging some stuff in the kitchen. For the 2.5 years that I have lived here, the microwave was placed so that it took up most of the limited counter space. Cooking was a hassle and often the table became the counter space. It was something that in the hecticness I put up with, but was constantly annoyed with.  So yesterday was the day I moved the microwave. This became a domino effect that got me cleaning the kitchen. 

In the process, I cleaned out the drawer where the onions are kept (in an old desk, left over from previous tenants..yay student living!). A few sprouts here and there. No big deal, in the compost they went. However, there was still a lurking smell of rotten onion. I suddenly realized that the drawer below hadn't been opened in a while. I opened the drawer and two bags of onions were in there. One had sprouts at least 10 inches long on each onion. The other was barely recognizable as onions. I wish I had taken a picture (an idea of the monster from google here)  to post here, but my first priority was to get them in the garbage. In the garbage, double bagged they went, and I felt that I had conquered the beast.

As disgusting as it was I felt a real sense of accomplishment. I finally fixed something that annoyed me. This is something I want to continue during my free time. I have a really bad habit of putting things off that bother me, just living with something that doesn't work only because it takes a little effort to fix. What I have realized is fixing these little problems makes me feel better in the long run. 

So today I got to prepare supper (Asian Pasta Primavera from Chatelaine's Holiday Detox meal plan) on a free counter in a clean kitchen. Success. Side note, it was delicious!