Birthday Carrot & Pineapple Muffins

Tuesday, 28 January 2014

It’s officially birthday season, hooray! I have been at birthday parties the last two weekends to celebrate with my lovely friends. What is even more exciting is there is another party this weekend and it’s mine! I will officially be a big girl – I, Lulu Ann Burt, will be TWO years old! As you know I (with a little help from M&D) like to cook with lovely things from the garden and that goes for birthday baking too. Here is one of the lovely treats in store for party-goers this weekend – carrot & pineapple muffins!

Yummy carrot & pineapple muffins, ready for my birthday party!

Carrots are a main ingredient of what I am going to tell you about today. Carrots store really well and you may be lucky enough to still have some left from your own garden. I love growing carrots – my top tips for growing carrots are:

Grow them in a sandy soil. If they hit stones they will grow in very funny shapes!
Sow your carrot seeds as thinly as possible. This means you will need to do less thinning and thus there will be less risk of them being affected by pests.
Keep the carrots well watered (so you get lovely juicy carrots in the end!)
Protect your carrots from carrot fly with a 60cm high polythene or cover with an insect-proof netting.

I love a carroty nibble! And look, my hair even looks like a pineapple!

There are loads of yummy things to do with carrots from eating them raw to cooking them to have with your dinner or in soups. I like baking with them too as they are sweet and healthy. Today I am going to share the recipe which my friends will get to try at the weekend:

Birthday Carrot & Pineapple Muffins

Ingredients:

100g/4oz plain flour
100g/4oz plain wholemeal flour
1 tsp baking powder
¾tsp bicarbonate of soda
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp salt
200ml/7fl oz vegetable oil
90g/3½oz caster sugar
2 eggs
120g/4½oz finely grated carrots
225g/8oz tinned crushed pineapple, semi-drained
100g/4oz raisins

To make:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

2. Sift together the flours, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and salt and mix well. Beat the oil, sugar and eggs until well blended. Add the grated carrots, crushed pineapple and raisins. Gradually add the flour mixture, beating just enough to combine all the ingredients.

3. Pour the batter into muffin trays lined with paper cases and bake for 25 minutes (1). Cool on a wire rack.Now I just need to work on growing pineapples 😉

Lulu

(1) If you want to make smaller ones you will need to reduce your baking time

Thanks to the very clever Annabel Karmel for coming up with this recipe. She rocks!