Surprise! Healthy Veggie Muffins

What a crazy few months it has been! I've been training for a half marathon (which is this Sunday!), I turned 35, we celebrated our one-year wedding anniversary, we finally upgraded our living room and bedroom furniture and work has been super duper busy.

All of this hasn't left a ton of time for cooking, but I have managed to have a few kitchen adventures since my last blog post.

One of the fun things I tried to make was veggie muffins. I got the idea from the recipe book that came with the juicer I bought (and since returned.) It was a sucky juicer that shot most of the fruit and veggies straight through. So, they had several recipes for what to do with the pulp.

I couldn't stand the thought of wasting all of those veggies, so I gave it a try.

I found a recipe for vegan zuchinni muffins and used the juicer pulp in place of the zuchinni. My juicer pulp was made up of carrots, apple, collard greens, tomato, cucumber and maybe some other stuff. You could totally make this using shredded zuchinni or a combo of zuchinni and carrots or other veggies.

It was kind of risky, but they turned out pretty good. They were super moist and dense. Pat wasn't a big fan (I think he was afraid they had too much fiber), but my mom and sister really liked them!

Here's how I did it:

Veggie Surprise Muffins
1 cup whole wheat flour    
1/2 cup white all-purpose flour    
1 cup dry oat bran
1 tsp table salt    
1 Tbsp baking soda    
1 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon    
1/2 Tbsp ground nutmeg 
2 Tbsp ground flax seed meal    
1/2 cup water    
3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce    
1/2 cup canola oil    
1/2 cup organic evaporated cane juice   
1/2 cup maple syrup    
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice    
2 1/2 cups juicer pulp    
1 tsp vanilla extract    
   
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly grease two muffin pans. In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients, mix well and set aside.

In another bowl, mix together the flax meal and water. Add and mix the rest of the ingredients.
Add the wet mixture to the dry, stir to combine and pour into muffin tins.

Bake 35 - 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

I added some chopped walnuts and raisins to one batch, but I think the ones without tasted better for some reason.

I plugged all the ingredients into the Weight Watchers recipe builder tool and they came out to 3 "pointsplus" each.

Yummy and healthy!