Like Something The Cat Threw Up

You know that we do Muffin Fridays right? There's no better way to get geared up for the weekend than by having cake for breakfast on Friday mornings. And while I try to eat healthy, I do realize that muffins are basically just cake. Delicious cake, but cake nonetheless. Even when garnished with blueberries, it's still cake. So I do make an effort to make them a little healthier.

When you're talking chocolate chocolate-chip muffins, that can be hard to do, but a couple of weeks ago I made them with some zucchini thrown in. The kids didn't even notice that they were different - they were moist and chocolatey-licious, just the way we like them. Success!

And most recently we had carrot muffins. You know, carrot cake in muffin form, complete with cream cheese frosting. Well, these have the advantage of starting out with carrots in them. That makes them a little healthier right there. And to improve it even more, I took my standard recipe and made the following changes.

• Replaced 1/2 of the butter with applesauce. (because you can do that without affecting a recipe, or so it's said).
• Added 1/4 cup ground flax seed (for the omega 3 fatty acids, or something like that)
• Dumped in 1/4 cup pureed green beans (just for the heck of it)
• Replaced 1/2 of the white flour with 100% whole wheat flour (for the whole grain goodness and fiber and stuff)

The batter looked like something the cat had thrown up. It was greenish/brownish with lots of orange lumps. Very gross. I thought doodlebug was going to hurl when he peeked into the bowl. He ran off making some awful sounds.

So, I put the lumpy, disgusting, barf-colored batter into the muffin tins and cooked it up. I slathered the resulting muffins in cream cheese frosting (no, I didn't try to make that healthier - I don't think it's possible. Oh, I know - low fat cream cheese and such, but I didn't bother. I don't use that much frosting anyway.)

Disgusting, right? No! Not at all! These came out super moist and delicious! The boys, of course, wouldn't touch them. Doodlebug because he never eats muffins and he saw the batter. Snickers because he knew they had carrots in them. But Sweet Pea, Hubster and I loved them!

Quack!