Carrot Applesauce Muffins

The best muffins I’ve made so far, with healthy substitutions..
Source: Adapted from Passionate about Baking blog

Taste 5 (out of 5)

Difficulty 2 (out of 5)

Ingredients
- 200 g all-purpose flour (730 cal)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda + 1 tbsp lemon juice to activate
- 1 tsp ground orange zest
- 2 large eggs, separated (140 cal)
- 125 g canola oil (1105 cal)
- 125 g apple sauce (210 cal)
- 200 g sugar (775 cal)
- 125 g roughly chopped dried apricots (310 cal)
- 60 g chopped walnuts (390 cal)
- 150 g roughly grated carrot (60 cal)
- pinch salt
Total 12 muffins, 3720 cal, 310 cal / muffin

Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease 12 large muffin tins (or a 9″ loose bottomed ring baking tin).
2. Separate the eggs and lightly whisk together the two yolks. Add the oil, sugar and apple sauce and beat together with an electric mixer for about 1 minute until well combined.
3. In a small bowl pour lemon juice over baking soda and mix well, until only bubbles are left. Pour the bubbly liquid into the batter. Add the flour, the baking soda and the orange zest to the batter and mix until just combined. Add the carrots, the walnuts and the dried apricots and mix lightly. Be careful not to over mix.
4. In a separate dry bowl beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they form firm peaks.
5. Next, gently fold the egg whites into the carrot mixture. Again, be careful not to over mix; it is fine to have streaks of white remaining in the mixture.
6. Using a large ice cream scoop, pour the mixture into the prepared muffin tins and bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
7. Let the muffins cool completely, then remove from the tins.
8. You can freeze the muffins at this stage, if you like. Just wrap it in a double layer of parchment paper and put it in a polythene freezer bag.

Afterthoughts
- They are probably the best muffins I’ve ever made… even for someone like me who is not a big fan of carrot cake. Moist and soft, and when they were finishing baking, the house smelled like heaven.
- I had a lot of ingredients I wanted to use up, like carrots, dried apricots and applesauce. And I also had a new square muffin tin that I wanted to inaugurate. So I went looking for carrot cake recipes, and the one on Passionate About Baking caught my eye. I made quite a few substitutions, to accommodate my ingredients, but the result really exceeded all my expectations. If this is a blog of "trial an error," this recipe is a clear “trial and success.”
- Deeba (from Passionate About Baking) also has a recipe for frosting, but I skipped that part to save calories. Check out her site for that (and her gorgeous photos).