Carrot Muffins – Sugar Spun Run

My carrot muffins are made with freshly shredded carrots, brown sugar, and warm spices. They are easy to make (no mixer!) in a matter of minutes. Recipe includes a how-to video!

Classic & Easy Carrot Muffins

These moist, tender, fluffy, and oh-so-flavorful carrot muffins are absolutely perfect for spring! They’re not as sweet as carrot cake, but I do top them with just a sprinkling of turbinado sugar, which adds the perfect touch of sweetness and a lovely textural crunch. 

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• Uses two oven temperatures for nice, tall muffin tops. I use this technique with many of my muffin recipes, like my banana muffins and bakery-style chocolate chip muffins.
• Moist and flavorful, thanks to carefully chosen ingredients including sour cream, brown sugar, and spices like cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.
• Easy to make without a mixer (please don’t use one!) in just a few minutes.
• Customize with your favorite toppings like rolled oats or streusel. They also taste great with a bit of cream cheese or honey butter spread on top after baking!

I know some readers have been making my carrot cake cupcakes as muffins for years, but I wanted a standalone, dedicated carrot muffin that wasn’t quite as sweet (and didn’t feel like it was missing anything without a swirl of very not-breakfast-y cream cheese frosting!).

Ingredients

Most of these should be in your kitchen already. Let’s talk about some of the key ingredients before we dive in.

• Carrots. Use fresh carrots and grate them yourself; do not use the pre-shredded “matchstick carrots” as those are too thick and too dry. I talk more about how I shred my carrots below, but I recommend using a cheese grater or food processor to do this.
• Sugar. We’ll use three types of sugar here; brown sugar and granulated sugar in the muffins, and turbinado sugar on top just before baking (if you don’t have turbinado, a sprinkling of regular granulated will also do the trick here!). The brown sugar adds flavor and moisture, while the turbinado sugar on top adds a nice crunch!
• Cornstarch. This helps create a tender, melt-in-your-mouth texture.
• Spices. I add ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg to my carrot muffins. These are almost the same as the spices I use in my cupcakes, except for the ginger. I felt that the ginger added a nice bit of extra bright flavor and depth here.
• Sour cream. Much like buttermilk (or my buttermilk substitute), sour cream gives our muffins moisture and depth of flavor. You won’t actually taste this in the final product, so if you’re not a sour cream fan, don’t worry! If you don’t have sour cream, you could use full-fat, plain greek yogurt instead.

SAM’S TIP: Use room temperature ingredients! Your eggs, butter, and sour cream should all be at room temperature so they easily incorporate into your batter. This prevents over-mixing, the nemesis of quick breads like muffins and pancakes.

Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!

How to Shred Carrots

While you can use a cheese grater to grate your carrots, I like to use my food processor. This method shreds, then chops the carrots so you’re left with carrot bits instead of strings. In my opinion this creates a much more pleasant texture.

1. Start with the shred blade first. Shred your carrots with the shred blade, then switch to the regular blade.
2. Pulse the carrots into fine bits. Just be careful that you don’t process your carrots too much, or you’ll end up with carrot puree!

SAM’S TIP: I recommend peeling your carrots before shredding them. If you don’t, your carrot muffins might become a not-so-pretty shade of green after baking.

How to Make Carrot Muffins

1. Whisk the dry ingredients and sugars together until combined, then set aside.
2. Whisk the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl.
3. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until 50% combined. Be gentle while doing this–the batter will be thick (it’s supposed to be!), and you don’t want to over-mix it.
4. Add the carrots and keep folding until the batter is just combined.

1. Portion your batter into muffin liners, top with turbinado sugar, and bake. We’ll start our muffins at a higher temperature for a few minutes, then reduce the temperature for the last few. Make sure you don’t open the oven door at all during this process or the muffins could fall in on themselves!
2. Let the carrot muffins cool in their tin for a few minutes before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely. Removing from the pan after a few minutes prevents the bottoms from becoming oily or greasy.

SAM’S TIP: While I didn’t opt for it today, you could absolutely add a crumb topping to these carrot muffins. My recipe is SO easy because it uses melted butter, so there’s no pastry cutter needed! Or for a simpler topping, you can sprinkle some rolled oats on top with the turbinado sugar. They may need an extra minute or two in the oven with the topping!

Frequently Asked Questions

These muffins would look so pretty and polished in my parchment paper muffin liners!

Enjoy!

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