We made these with our preschoolers to celebrate “C Week” (moving through the alphabet, one letter per week). It’s an easy recipe to use, and the kids had a great time helping to measure the ingredients and mix everything together. The kitchen also smelled yummy all afternoon! It’s true that this recipe is not all that different from others I’ve posted here, but I want to include it because it’s the one we used in school. It’s also somewhat sweeter than the breads I usually make, since it’s technically a recipe for cupcakes and not muffins.
I found this recipe on about.com’s dairy-free cooking section because one of our children can’t drink milk. She can eat dairy yogurt, however, so I substituted plain dairy yogurt for the original recipe’s soy yogurt to make these cupcakes soy-free. I also substituted raisins for the walnuts, and left off the frosting since there’s plenty of sugar in the recipe as-is. For those of you with a bigger sweet tooth, add cream cheese frosting on top to make them true cupcakes.
This recipe filled two muffin trays of 24 mini muffins each. It would also be easy to use regular muffin cups, an 8×8 pan, or a loaf pan. If you do this, just increase the cooking time accordingly.
Ingredients
- 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/3 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups white cane sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
- 3/4 cup canola oil
- 3 Tbsp. plain yogurt
- 1 3/4 teaspoons vanilla
- 3 cups shredded carrots
- 3/4 cup crushed pineapple
- 3/4 cup raisins
Equipment
- Food processor is very helpful but not required
- Whisk or electric hand mixer
- Muffin pans (recipe makes 48 mini muffins or 18-24 muffins)
- Two mixing bowls (one large, one medium)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease muffin pans or line with paper liners.
- Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in medium mixing bowl.
- Combine white sugar, brown sugar, oil, yogurt and vanilla in large mixing bowl. Blend with whisk or mixer until smooth.
- Add carrots, pineapple and raisins to wet mixture. Stir until evenly distributed.
- Gradually add dry mixture to wet mixture, stirring as you go, until it’s all evenly distributed. (If making these with preschoolers, note: The dough can get somewhat thick, so it works well if you do the stirring at this point, with a child helping by spooning in the dry mixture.)
- Spoon batter into muffin pans.
- For mini muffin pans, bake about 8-10 minutes, depending on your oven and how full the muffin cups are. Watch it, they burn easily! For full-size muffins, try 15 minutes and then check. Coffee cake or loaf pans will take longer. At any size, they will be done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Source
Adapted from about.com’s recipe for Dairy Free Carrot Cake Cupcakes.