The Creative Process and Carrot Muffins

I'm a scientist through and through.  In some ways it's because of my upbringing; science and maths results were praised; arts, English, languages etc., well I could come top of my class every week and it would barely pass comment.  That kind of thing rubs off on you but also, sadly, follows you in life through the hang ups and self criticisms we all have.

I don't blame my parents for this I should add.  You do what you think is best for your children and sometimes that's difficult.  Sometimes it's going to have consequences beyond your control on their whole lives; their choices of GCSEs, A Levels, Degree, Job, life partner.  It's daunting.  You can't think about it in that way, you just have to cope from day to day and hope that your influence gives them the opportunities in life to do what they want.

So, yes, I have a few hang ups about my creativity (or lack of) and about my abilities to write due to having a lot of criticism from a school English teacher and not much support at home.  So, here I am, taking a bit of control of my life and doing something which requires me to communicate in the written form and use some creativity.

Anyway, a combination of availability (only 1 egg in my fridge and no sweet potatoes) and urgency (said egg was going out of date today), I've done a bit of baking.  If you like and are happy with the sweet potato muffin recipe, feel free to stick to it.  Although I slightly prefer these, they are a similar flavour to that recipe and so wouldn't really expand your repertoire.  I may experiment further though...  The joy with these though is they are a touch lighter than my other muffin recipes, they only use 1 egg and contain a lot of dairy which is useful if your child is going through a "I don't like milk" stage which they all seem to at one point or another.  Again, I've called these sugar free as there's no sugar in the recipe but there are natural sugars in carrots, dried fruits, milk, ya-de-ya-de-ya.  Yep, I know, I've said it before.  You know what I mean.  Still, it's another muffin recipe and one done in a slightly different way.  Perhaps this recipe will be the jumping off point for a touch of creativity for someone else?

Sugar Free Carrot Muffins for Babies (BLW and finger foods) and Toddlers  Makes approx 24.

Ingredients

Dry mix:

85 g Carrots, finely grated
250g SR Flour
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Ground Nutmeg (freshly ground or grated has way more flavour)
110g Sultanas

Wet mix:

50g Oil (sorry about the grams thing, I've got some funky new scales so small quantities of oil are easier to weigh than measure.  I used olive oil as that's all I had but any vegetable oil will do.)
1 Egg
190g Full Fat Yoghurt
4 Tbsp Full Fat Milk

Method

Preheat the oven to 200oC.  Spray oil / butter or oil some silicone or regular non stick cupcake or mini muffin tins.  Weigh out and mix the dry mix, measure out the wet mix then add the two together.  Mix quickly together, don't totally mix, leave some hints / streaks of flour.

Spoon into the tins and bake for 15 minutes or until golden and springing back lightly when touched.