One Girl's Food Waste is Another Girl's Muffin

By Brooke Edwards

October 3, 2019

Last Updated: October 21, 2011

Healthy Carrot Raisin Muffin looks out over Heifer Village

Friend, colleague and fellow blogger Maegan Clark is on her personal path to living more responsibly with regard to the Earth's resources. Lots of people come to such a path on their own, but I think it's especially common here at Heifer. When you work somewhere with a mission to end hunger and poverty and care for the Earth, it becomes really hard to avoid recycling or to throw away food, if it wasn't already.

A couple of days ago, Maegan asked me if my chickens eat carrots. Sure, I said, they eat just about anything like that. Maegan had bought a big bag of organic carrots that had gone a bit past their optimal state. She knew she wouldn't eat them, but she knew she didn't want to just throw them in the trash. Living in an apartment, she doesn't have a compost pile out back or anything, so my chickens were the first thing that came to mind.

When I got the carrots home, I realized that yes, they didn't look terribly appetizing for snacking on, especially when I had carrots of my own in the fridge. But surely they'd be good for baking. They weren't rotten, after all. I did a little searching for a recipe, and I whipped these together this morning for my family to have for breakfast. My toddler loved the mini-sized muffins, and I like them enough to use the rest of the bag to make more and freeze, which I'll do this weekend before the carrots truly turn.

Healthy Carrot Raisin Muffins
Recipe adapted from this one from the Food Network.


Preheat oven to 350F

Ingredients
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup raw honey
2 Tablespoons wheat germ
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch fine salt
2 large eggs
1 serving unsweetened applesauce cup
2 cups grated carrots
a handful or so of raisins

Directions
Grease or line 12 muffin cups (I filled 12 regular-sized muffin cups and nine mini-muffin cups with my batter).

Whisk the flours with the wheat germ, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. In another medium bowl, lightly whisk the egg, then whisk in the honey, applesauce and vanilla extract.

Quickly and lightly fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients with a rubber spatula. Stir in the carrots and raisins until just evenly moist; the batter will be very thick. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserten in the centers comes out clean (20 minutes for mini-muffins and 25 for regular-sized worked for me). Turn muffins out of the tins to cool on a rack. Serve and enjoy.

What about you–Have you ever turned someone's food waste into your own meal?