Bakery-Style Carrot Cake Muffins

Preheat oven to 450ºF and lightly grease a muffin tin with oil or butter. Use a silicone muffin tin and eliminate the need for greasing! These make for easy removal of the muffins from the tin once they’ve cooled, too.

Start by finely grating carrot using a cheese grater. Make sure you have enough to fill ½ cup. Wrap the grated carrot in 1-2 paper towels or a cheese-cloth and squeeze as much of the juice out as possible. Set aside.

In a large bowl, stir the dry ingredients: flour, oats, leavening agents, spices and salt. To this, add the roughly chopped nuts and roughly chopped dates. Toss the dates in the flour and make sure they don’t clump together. Next, add grated carrot and toss again to any clumps. Set aside.

Whisk together wet ingredients until smooth: mashed banana, sugar, buttermilk, butter, and eggs. Slowly, working in batches, pour this into the dry ingredients and stir gently after each addition. Continue to fold the wet into the dry just until no clumps of dry ingredients remain. This will be a very thick batter!

Scoop the batter into the muffin tin. Each one will be very full, and that’s okay—it makes for tall muffins! Sprinkle about ½ teaspoon of turbinado sugar on top of each muffin just before baking. Bake at 450ºF for 8 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 350ºF for the remaining 12–14 minutes. They’re done when a toothpick poked through the center of the muffin comes out with only a few crumbs on it. Cool slightly before removing from the tin.

Serve immediately with butter or yogurt (my favorite addition). Refrigerate leftovers in an airtight container for 1 week, or freeze for 2–3 months. Enjoy!