Carrot Muffins

4.95 from 17 votes

These Carrot Muffins taste just like a soft and fluffy carrot cake, but are still healthy enough to eat for breakfast. Studded with plenty of shredded carrot, chopped pecans and raisins, these are delicious and full of warm spice flavor.

Prep Time20

Cook Time20

Cooling time5

Total Time45

Course: Breakfast

Cuisine: American

Difficulty: Easy

Servings: muffins

Calories: 297kcal

Author: Nora from Savory Nothings

Ingredients

Dry Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour spooned and levelled!
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients

3 large eggs
⅔ cup sugar
¾ cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix-ins

2 ½ cups freshly grated carrot
½ cup raisins
¼ cup chopped pecans

US Customary - Metric

Instructions

Heat oven to 425°F (420°C) and line a 12 cup muffin pan with liners.
Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Whisk together wet ingredients in a large measuring jug until smooth.
Stir mix-ins into wet ingredients.
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and fold together JUST until combined. Lumps are fine, do not overmix.
Evenly divide batter between muffin cups (I use a cookie scoop/ice cream scoop for convenience).
Reduce oven temperature to 400°F (200°C) and bake muffins for 5 minutes. Without opening oven door, reduce heat to 360°F (180°C) and finish baking muffins for 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into middle comes out clean.
Cool muffins in pan for 5-10 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Notes

Ingredient notes

Flour: You can replace half of the flour with whole wheat, or all of it with white whole wheat. I do not recommend using all regular whole wheat, because with the large volume of shredded carrots in the recipe, the muffins easily get too dense.
Spices: If you don’t have all of the individual spices, only using cinnamon is also fine. If you have it, you can use pumpkin spice mix in place of the ginger and/or nutmeg.
Carrots: Please do not use the bagged, shredded carrots. Grate fresh. The pre-shredded carrots do not have the right texture for this recipe, and they will stay stringy instead of soften during baking.
Oil: Feel free to use melted butter in place of the vegetable oil if you want a more decadent muffin.
Sugar: Add an extra ¼ cup of sugar for a sweeter muffin, or remove ¼ cup of sugar for a just lightly sweetened muffin. Feel free to use half light brown sugar and half granulated sugar if you want a more caramelized flavor.
Pecans/raisins: Either can be left out, if you prefer. You will have a little less sturdy/less tall muffin, but they will still be perfectly soft and delicious.

Recipe tips

Measure your flour correctly: Spoon it into the cup, then level off with the back of a knife. Do not scoop the flour with the cup, this yields too much flour and your muffins will be dry and dense.
Make sure you do not overmix the muffin batter, or your muffins will come out dense and gummy. This is especially important here because we are working with a lot of shredded carrot. Use a rubber spatula or a wooden spoon, never a whisk to combine the wet and dry ingredients for muffins. Make sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl to catch all of the flour, so you do not end up mixing too much.
This really does bake just 12 muffins, even if the muffin cups seem very full. This is needed to get those big, nice, domed bakery-style muffins.
Do not overbake the muffins, or they’ll be dry. If you’re using the toothpick method to text for doneness, cake crumbs stuck to the toothpick are fine! It’s just liquid batter you want to avoid seeing on the toothpick.

Storage tips

Short term: Once the muffins are cooled, wrap them up in plastic wrap or place them in a storage container (do not store fully air tight, or they may develop mould pretty quickly).

Store the wrapped up muffins on the counter for up to 2 days, or in the fridge for 3-4 days.

Freezer: Wrap the cooled muffins individually in plastic wrap, then place in freezer bags or containers. Label with the name and use-by date (freeze for up to 3 months), then place in the freezer.

To defrost, remove as many muffins as you need from the bag. Allow to defrost on the counter for 15 minutes or until you can easily remove the plastic wrap. Unwrap and place the muffins on a wire rack on the counter to defrost for several hours, until no longer frozen.

Nutrition