Carrot and Cardamom Muffins
This world of ours is full of contrasts and contradictions.
We’re told that obesity is a prevailing issue of our time and yet, this year, the KFC Double Down came into existence.
Over the past few months, Tony Abbott has cast aspersions on Julia Gillard for usurping Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister without being voted in by the public, yet he himself became Leader of the Opposition through the same process of usurpation, and the public didn’t get to weigh in then either.
In San Francisco, I walked out of the Ferry Building Marketplace after spending an unwholesome amount of money on fancy cheeses, pastries, and fruit, only to see a homeless man pulling food scraps out of a rubbish bin.
Pre-baking.
The corps de ballet in Swan Lake are presented onstage as ethereal, delicate, and unaffected by physical pain, and yet their ballet shoes hide a myriad tales of blisters, lost toenails, and torn ligaments.
The media presents paedophilia as utterly and incontrovertibly wrong (no arguments from me there), but at the same time teenage celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Momsen are earning oodles of money dressing like coked-up prostitutes.
Nutrition guidelines dictate that I should eat five servings of vegetables and two servings of fruit every day, but peanut butter, blue cheese, and dark chocolate taste better*.
Post-baking (in my swanky silicone tray)
And a week or so ago, I showed you a holiday-spiced chocolate that I couldn’t stomach because it included orange essence, whereas yesterday I baked a batch of 18 muffins made with orange juice.
More to the point, I’ve already eaten seven of them. Just goes to show that not all contradictions in this world are bad.
It’s what’s inside that counts.
A few words on these muffins: the best way I can think to describe the taste is Grown-Up. They aren’t particularly sweet, and while neither the cardamom, carrot, nor orange dominate the flavour, there is definitely something interesting and almost-but-not-really-bitter going on. The texture is intriguing, too – more doughy than crumbly, but in a good way. Almost like crumpets, but without the holes, so, really, nothing like crumpets.
I’d never proclaim these to be as splendiferous as my Spiced Sesame Slice or Date and Banana Bread, but they’re unlike anything I’ve made before, and that has to count for something. Plus, I’m an avowed anti-orange lass, and I foresee no problems in finishing these muffins myself. So that’s something else to count for something. What does that mean, anyway? I stopped counting when I quit maths in Year 11.
Smurf Kitchen’s blueness makes me happy sometimes.
Carrot and Cardamom Muffins
Makes 12-18. I made 18 because the original recipe said to use 12 x 1/2 cup muffins tins but I only have 1/3 cup muffin tins, so I feared the batter would spill everywhere if I made only 12. However, I’m certain you could safely make 12 slightly-bigger muffins than 18 slightly-flatter muffins. I don’t really mind, though. This way, I can eat seven in thirty-six hours with nary a qualm.
- 1 large carrot, finely grated (mine came to 150g)
- 1/4 cup (90g) honey
- 2 tablespoons olive oil (or macadamia oil, if you’re wearing fancypants)
- 1 cup orange and passionfruit juice (or just orange juice. Whatever floats your boat.)
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups (250g) self-raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
- Preheat oven to 190°C and oil or line a 12-hole muffin tin. (I used my silicone muffin tray for the first time since receiving it over a year ago. It worked like magic! No need for lining or greasing, as the muffins popped out as easily as babies don’t.)
- In a large bowl, mix together the carrot, honey, oil, juice and eggs.
- Sift the flour, baking powder, and cardamom into the wet ingredients, and stir quickly to just combine. Don’t overmix - you want it to look a bit lumpy.
- Spoon into muffin tin and bake for 16 minutes, until golden. (16 minutes worked for me as I was making 18 muffins… if you make only 12 muffins, I’d estimate letting them cook for 18ish minutes.) Cool in tin for a few minutes, then turn out and serve warm. Or, if you are like me and have to eat almost all of these yourself, pop some in the fridge and some in the freezer and eat them at any temperature you see fit.
Question Time: What contradictions or contrasts in the world have you noticed recently?
*Little bit of a fib there. I adore vegetables as much as chocolate, and in fact I’m crankier if I’ve had a day without greens than if I’ve had a day without chocolate.
My own personal one is happening right now – goofing off by reading my favourite blogs instead of writing a paid article on time management!
That’s pure gold – love it!
Oh Gawd.., I think one is happening now too…, I would have put money on the fact you could not go a day with chocolate, so much so that I was becoming convinced I didn’t at least try sampling enough chocolate
Mmmm, Canberra pollys & their contradictions, so true. Methinks they are a soap opera where they live in an altered reality and perhaps its a weird contradiction that we Aussies don’t get that…., but don’t get me started on that one
Have an awesome day Hannah….
Cheers
Anna
A day without chocolate is a very rare occurrence, but you know what? It happened yesterday. The horror! (And no matter how much chocolate you sample, you should always have more.
)
Hope you have a lovely day too!
Ooops! typo…., that’s “you could not go a day without chocolate” (but I’m figuring you worked that out huh)
I am really intrigued by the flavour combination of these muffins! I must try them sometime soon!
I’d love to know what you think if you do… they’re kind of odd!
Loved this post. Great writing and love the list of contradictions! Muffins look good too.
Thank you Tammy! Means a lot
mmm. noms.
reckon I could turn them vegan? :p
Absolutely! In fact, I was going to make them with flax eggs, but then I realised my real eggs were about to expire. Next time, though!
Those five vegetables a day are so intimidating. I like vegetables just fine at fancy restaurants, but I’m TERRIBLE at cooking them myself. I’m not the biggest stir fry fan, don’t enjoy raw salads with dressing. Just about all I can manage is asparagus or sweet potato with olive and salt. But then, is sweet potato a tuberous root? Aiya! I will have to follow your lead and fill my muffins with carrot, my bread with zucchini, and follow other recipes that mothers use to sneak vegetables into their bratty children’s diets.
(Or, I’ll adopt a raw food diet and avoid cooking altogether. Tempting …)
Wow, we’ve finally found a point where we differ? I *love* huge bowls of simply-cooked, unadorned vegies. Because of budget reasons I’m having to stick with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and peas at the moment, but give me a bowl of brussels sprouts and my eyes light up
Raw food can be enticing sometimes… but I love my food super hot, so I doubt I could do it!
*olive OIL. And add some spinach and garlic in there. Otherwise? Hopeless.
Give me a carton of blueberries, though, and it’ll disappear in an afternoon.
You Americans and your cheap berries. ENVY.
The orange muffins against the SmuK-blue background make me happy, too. Also, chocolate totally counts as a fruit.
Oh what a fun flavor for muffins!
Bizarre and fun!
LOL life is indeed full of contradictions although we would probably hope that they’d be as delicious as this!
Yes, delicious contradictions are the best ones
I do love the smurfness of your kitchen too. Makes a great backdrop. I’m really not one for cooked orange either, can’t abide it with rhubarb for instance when everyone else in the world seems to deem it essential. Back when I used to bake muffins (and I think we need to head back to the 80s for that) one of my favourite muffins was called Sunshine Muffins and involved putting a whole orange in the blender! Now that’s a contradiction. I should try and do some baking this weekend, this weather is totally miserable.
Rainy weather always equals baking weather, to me
Clearly you should have grown up in my family – we ate a lot of rhubarb but never with orange, because grandma and mum are allergic. Orange with rhubarb just sounds weird to me! 
A few of points to make:
- the double down is clearly a health food as it doesn’t have any evil carbs! The full day’s worth of sodium in them is actually great because then you don’t have to worry about getting enough sodium for the rest of the day! (do we have them here? I can’t remember the last time I went into KFC but I’m pretty sure I’d remember seeing a picture of that if I did)
- Tony Abbott has been casting aspersions? Umm.. pretty sure you mean casting nasturtiums.
- lost toenails? Gross.
The end.
1. You’re clearly right. I should’ve had a double down for breakfast, not my namby-pamby natural yogurt with the new flavour of crunchola. (Except, as you guessed, it’s only available in America. That really, really healthy country.)
2. He does make some pretty awesome flower arrangements.
3. Finding them later is grosser.
Despite my own orange hatred, I’d try these. Just for you :] And DEFINITELY if you used passionfruit juice!
Oooh, what if I used *only* passionfruit juice? That would be fantastic! And I would do that just for you (well, and for me, because it would be tastier).
A combination i shall have to try!
I’m usually full of contradiction stories.. but today.. I’m all out! dang.
Lucky you! You had a perfectly balanced, harmonious, uncontradictory day
Anti-orange? ANTI-ORANGE? BLASPHEMY!
(The fruit shop near me was suddenly and unexpectedly blessed with a delivery of blood oranges, and every second day for the past week, I have carried away as many blood oranges as my weakling arms can manage, and I have stored most of them in the freezer for posterity, although I have used 1kg of them so far to make blood orange and dark chocolate muffins and a blood orange and white chocolate cocktail. My love for orange, and for the combination of orange and chocolate, knows no bounds. My brain melts to read that you are not a fan! Oh the humanity! Is there anything I can do to convert you or will you forever be an orange-averse heathen?! *collapses onto fainting couch*)
But you know how much I love peanut butter, and tamarind, and salted caramel, and all those other wonderful flavours that you work your magic with! *fans Jess with old-school-nineteenth-century-style handkerchief* Very rarely I’ll eat an orange (or blood orange, if you will) fresh, but I just can’t do it in baked goods or chocolate. Don’t hate me! Love me! Love me!
Plus, this way, more for you. That’s a good thing, right?
Those muffins have carrots in them, so they count as one of your 2&5.
Exactly! All I need to do is eat five every day! (Wow. I’ve totally done that.)
Well, carrot cake has got to be one of my favorite contradictions, then! Yours look fantastic, and not too sweet like they often can be.
Thanks Hannah! They definitely aren’t overly sweet at all – quite the opposite in fact, which I love. I’m actually liking them more and more… the orange juice is mellowing out for me
After a long race all I want are vegetables…preferably broccoli and raw carrots. But I always thought peanut butter and dark chocolate were vegetables anyway
Contrasts?
Most people think I am a small, quiet, fragile girl who is likely to fall apart when the going gets tough…but clearly they haven’t raced with me (I scared off one of my adventure racing partners ’cause he couldn’t hack the pace!). I tend to wear pink where possible because I like the contrast of mud and really tough, physical races against a mountain bike helmet with pretty pink flowers on it.
Contradictions?
I say that I find this boy creepy and annoying but my actions (and quite possibly my head but I’m a bit mixed up lately) say otherwise…
I’m scared of heights and yet I like rock climbing, especially the really tall wall at our local climbing place.
I hate it when people remember my birthday but yet I feel sad when they forget.
I like carrots. Not quite convinced with carrots and oranges in baking though…
I’m tired and it’s making me rant but I find the homeless man one distressing because it’s something I’ve experienced too…
I wish you’d get tired and rant on my blog more often
Because seriously, lady, you’re *killing* me with all these gossipy tidbits. I sincerely think you should email me with your creepy-or-perhaps-not boy story. I might have a few of my own to share 
Ah, I used to love climbing the rock-wall type thing at my gym when I did gymnastics as a kid. Maybe once my toe is finished with its epic tantrum? And HAPPY BIRTHDAY in advance!
Hahaha!! I’ll consider it…
Carrots and oranges sounds good, but honey would take it to another level for me – and if I had a blue smurf bench to put them on I would be even happier. So is this your orange breakthrough that is convincing you there may be hope for your orangephobia or do you occasionally fall off the wagon?
It’s funny, I’ve always preferred maple syrup to honey, so was a bit hesitant about buying honey for this for fear I’d end up not using the rest of it. Luckily, at the same time I bought an on-sale peanut butter that turned out to be really bland, so I’ve been getting through both jars at a rapid pace by mixing them together. By their powers combined…
Really should clear this orangephobia thing up… I don’t have an issue with fresh orange, although I almost never eat them. Every now and again I’ll get a craving for fresh orange, or a glass of orange juice. But somehow, the use of orange as a flavouring in chocolate and other desserts makes me queasy. I am enjoying these muffins, though, so there might be hope for me!
Ahh. I have so much to catch up on.
These muffins looooook fantastic.
YOU look fantastic. Swish.
They look fabulous … love the colour. And the texture looks great too.
Definitely happy and bright colours
I wonder how this would go with a you-appropriate juice (and gluten-free flour)?
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