jump up and down: what's for breakfast: banana carrot muffins

We have some very early mornings (well, very early for what I have been used to in the more recent past) around here lately. We are up and out the door by 7:30 or 7:45 every weekday. That means that there's not much time for breakfast and since my kids are grazers, especially in the morning, I have been trying to have some to go foods that I can pack to go to the babysitter or that they can eat in the car on the way to preschool. For us, that means muffins. My boys love muffins, or "uffins" as they like to call them. No matter how hard I try, I cannot get them to say the "m". Oh well, it certainly is adorable.

We have a few favorite recipes for muffins. One of them is this Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffin over at Angry Chicken. Another is a Sweet Potato Muffin that uses shredded sweet potatoes and is super delish. It's from a vegetarian cookbook that I have - I will share that the next time we make it. And this one, I got off of the internet somewhere. I've modified it a bit to make it healthier. It called for Crisco originally and I don't believe in trans fat (well, I do believe in it - I believe it will kill me if I eat it and I ate plenty of it in my childhood before we knew it was bad, so I have to lay off now), so I substituted a combination of oil and applesauce.

Banana Carrot Muffins

1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
5 bananas
1/3 c. orange juice
2 cups grated carrots
2 cups white flour
2 cups wheat flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 c. canola or vegetable oil
1/2 c. applesauce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium bowl, combine flours, soda and salt. In a large bowl, mix oil, applesauce, and sugar. Mix in eggs and juice. Using a fork or potato masher, mash bananas thoroughly. Mix the carrots and bananas into the egg-sugar mixture. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet until just moistened. Spoon batter into lined muffin tins, filling each cup 2/3 full. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until light golden. Makes 24 muffins.

This last time I made them, I tried making them even more healthy by reducing the oil to 1/4 cup and increasing the applesauce to 3/4 cup. I also cut the sugar to 1/2 cup. It was really hard to get the paper off when they first came out of the oven, but after a day or two in a plastic bag getting moist, I can peel the paper off fairly easily. And more important, the boys will still eat them in their ultra healthy state. I'm not sure what I will do next time I make them - perhaps somewhere inbetween - 1/3 c. oil and 2/3 c. applesauce? We'll see...Enjoy!