Sometimes I get a little distracted while baking and forget to put an ingredient in. Baking soda, sugar, oil, salt — if you bake for long enough, you’ll forget one or all of these ingredients at one time or another.
Usually, it spells disaster for the final product. But every once in a while you make a fortuitous omission, discovering after the fact that forgoing what you thought was an essential ingredient leads to no disaster at all, or even improves the final product.
It happened today.
I forgot to put any sweetener in my muffins.
And they were delicious.
They were also moist, flavorful, and — yes — sweet.
Not carrot-cake sweet. More like the sweetness of a yam. If you want your muffins sweeter than that, well — I’ve left in the option of adding xylitol or sugar. These muffins are great either way.
Supplies
- measuring cups and spoons
- 1 mixing bowl
- blender
- muffin tin with 12 2½-inch cups
- cooling rack
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1½ tablespoons flax seed
- 1½ cup very ripe banana
- 2¼ cup grated carrots
- 1½ cups white whole wheat flour or gluten-free oat flour
- ¼ cup xylitol or sugar (optional)
- ½ teaspoon salt (optional)
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon ground cardamom
- ¼ teaspoon allspice
- In a blender, puree the banana with ½ cup of the carrots, the flax seed, and the oil until smooth.
- In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking soda and spices, as well as xylitol or sugar if you are using sweetener.
- Add the remainder of the carrots and mix until well blended.
- Pour the banana-carrot mixture into the bowl and stir until just blended.
- Use a spoon to drop the batter into a greased or lined muffin pan, filling each cup at least ¾ full.
- Bake 20-25 minutes in a 375°F oven. Muffins are ready when inserted toothpick comes out clean.
- Set on a rack and cool.
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