Somebody's Dinner: Sweet Strawberry Carrot Muffins

When I bought a lot of strawberries, I started dreaming of the things I could make with them, including strawberry muffins. One of my goals is to eat more vegetables so I decided to make some strawberry carrot muffins. Unfortunately for the world, searching "Strawberry Carrot Muffins Recipe" does not yield lot of results that just feature the strawberry and carrots. Fortunately for me, I had some ideas about how to put them together.

Our entire family likes carrots, especially my miniature dachshund, Little Foot.

Whenever I peel or grate or chop carrots, he is always there, underfoot and hopeful that a carrot slice will roll to the floor to his domain.

When I was photographing the muffins, I decided to peel a carrot to place in a few pictures. After taking lots of photos, I started cleaning up and decided just to eat the carrot. (It's part of a complete breakfast, right? I'm sure the rest of you eat raw carrots at eight in the morning, right?) The moment I took a bite, my dog ran into the room, ears perked and a very hopeful look on his face.

Apparently he's able to hear and identify the sound of eating carrots from rooms away.

Ingredients

1 cup diced strawberries (about 6 large)
1 cup finely shredded carrot (about 2 large)

2/3 cup flour

1/2 cup wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup applesauce

1/3 cup oil

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

1) Preheat oven to 400 F.

2) Combine flour, wheat flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.

3) In a separate bowl, whisk together sugar, applesauce, oil, eggs and vanilla.

4) Mix the flour mixture into the egg mixture until just combined, then carefully add in the strawberries and carrots and stir until just mixed.

5) Scoop into greased muffin tins, filling 4/5 full. For mini muffins, bake 10-13 minutes; for regular muffins bake 16-22 minutes, until tops spring back when pressed with the tines of a fork. Yields 32 mini muffins or 12 regular muffins.