A winner for rushed breakfasts, lunch boxes and after school snacks, these muffins are packed full of nutritious goodies. Cinnamon and apple are totally delicious together and a prefect combo for autumn days.
The cinnamon helps to balance blood sugar ups and downs. With a clever extra protein hit from chickpeas these should fill up even the most sporty and active child. The apricots and chickpeas add a nice dose of iron and the pumpkin seeds will boost up zinc which are both critical for immunity.
Makes: 15 muffins
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes
Ingredients:
3 eggs
100g coconut sugar (or light muscovado sugar)
0.5 courgette (medium sized, grated with a microplane)
1 carrot (medium sized, grated with a microplane)
1 apple (grated with a microplane)
1 tbsp olive oil
200g spelt flour (or wholemeal flour)
125g chickpea flour
2 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
0.5 tsp salt
4 tsp cinnamon powder
60g dried apricots (chopped)
15g pumpkin seeds (ground in a pestle and mortar/blender if you have a fussy eater!)
Instructions:
Set your oven to 180 degrees (160 degrees fan).
Whisk the eggs with the coconut sugar for a minute with an electric whisk until they are nice and creamy and bubbly.
Add the olive oil, grated apple, courgette and carrot stir through the mixture with a spatula.
Then add the flour, chickpea flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon and stir again until you have a smooth, fluffy mixture.
Finally, fold in the dried apricots and pumpkin seeds.
Line one 12-hole and one 3-hole muffin tin with paper muffin cases and drop a small ice-cream scoopful of muffin mixture into each case.
Bake the muffins in the oven for 25 minutes or until they have risen, and the tops are golden brown.
Cook's tips:
- If you don’t have chickpea flour, simply grind up some raw dried chickpeas in your food processor – this takes less than a minute to make a fluffy light flour.
- Egg-free: replace the egg with 21g (3 tbsp) ground flaxseeds mixed with 120ml (7½ tbsp) water.
- Gluten-free: use rice flour or gluten-free plain flour.
- Freezer-friendly