Morning Glory Muffins with Spelt Flour

What do you do with 3-4 cups of leftover raw shredded carrot and apple salad? Make morning glory muffins, of course!

One of my many fun food jobs is being a free-lance lunch lady at North Coast Preparatory Academy and usually the kids are fairly food adventurous. But too much carrot apple salad was just that, too much. So I found this muffin recipe and used up my leftovers. Voila! Repurposed salad in a hand-held breakfast.

Since wheat flour is out of my diet, I used spelt flour. And despite the original author's admonishments about the "correct" way to measure flour (which I didn't follow), and my need to just keep adding until the mixture looked right (spelt needs less liquid than wheat), these muffins turned out wonderfully! My husband's co-workers thanked me profusely for sending them in with him for the staff lounge.

Morning Glory Muffins with Spelt Flour (adapted from Sally's Baking Addiction)
(makes 16-20)

2 cups spelt flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 almonds, roughly chopped
1/4 cup honey
3 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup coconut sugar or 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup pineapple juice (juice strained from 15 oz can crushed pineapple)
7 oz crushed pineapple (from 15 oz can pineapple)
1/2 cup raisins or craisins or golden raisins
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups shredded carrots
1 1/2 cups shredded apple (skin on or off, up to you)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Mix together the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger and salt and whisk well. Beat the eggs with the honey, sugar, oil and pineapple juice. Add in the vanilla extract and whisk well. Add the pineapple, nuts, raisins, carrots and apple. Lastly, fold in the flour and gently combine so that no flour shows; it will be a very shaggy dough, drier than you expect.

Oil spray muffin papers and place in muffin tin and spoon in batter, just slightly heaped up. Bake at 425 degrees for 5 minutes then turn down to 350 degrees and bake for 15-18 minutes until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Allow to cool for at least 30 minutes before trying to remove from papers.

Hugs!