Fruit and Veggie Mini Muffins

We love a muffin here at the Elam house. I usually have a bag of large ones in the freezer for grown ups and a bag of smaller ones for kids. We love them for breakfast with fruit and either scrambled eggs, yogurt, or nut butters. As snacks, we pair them with either yogurt, string cheese, cream cheese, cashews, or nut butter.

These hold a special place in my heart because my kids love helping me make them. Any time we use a kitchen “power tool” they are excited and ready to help. We use my food processor shredding attachment to grate the apples, carrots and zucchini. Usually I grate a bit extra because they love to play with the shreds and snack on them… who knew my squash hating children would gobble up zucchini! I guess anything is better in fun, tiny shred form!

I first made this muffin recipe as written from The Busy Baker, but then I started to make a few adjustments and came out with something we really enjoy! I added cinnamon, vanilla, and…sugar. Yes, the dietitian added sugar. Sugar doesn’t only add flavor. It helps create texture, leavening and browning. I only added 1/4 cup of brown sugar to the entire recipe so there’s only 2 grams of added sugar per muffin. My kids are two and four. Added sugar in small amounts is fine for them. I would definitely not add sugar if I was serving these to a child under one. I’ll allow you to use your own judgement for children between one and two years.

But, lets focus on the real glory of this recipe - CARROTS, ZUCCHINI, APPLES, and BANANAS! All packed into a delicious muffin that my two year old hunts in the freezer for every morning. He’ll eat them frozen! I haven’t made them into larger muffins, but will experiment with that soon, because I’d love a larger serving of these tasty morsels.

I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!