Wholesome Cinnamon Breakfast Muffins

This is a cinnamon flavoured Breakfast Muffin filled with wholesome ingredients like apple, carrot, dried fruit and nuts. A variant of the popular Morning Glory muffins, it’s healthy enough for breakfast, but just sweet enough for morning tea!

Cinnamon Breakfast Muffins

This is a muffin that just makes the cut into breakfast-land in my books. It’s barely sweet, with only 12 grams of sugar per muffin, less than a quarter of what you find in sugary cereals like Fruit Loops, and there’s a surprising amount of good-for-you fresh carrot and apple in it.

To quote Stephen, my head chef at RecipeTin Meals (my food bank):

“I actually really enjoyed it. It was sweet but not too sweet. I didn’t think I was going to enjoy it because it’s not my kind of thing but yeah, good texture, nice taste and not too heavy.”

(By “his kind of thing”, he is referring to wholesomeness masquerading as a muffin. Or, a muffin masquerading as wholesomeness. He’s a burley northern English lad. I don’t know why, but I feel that explains a lot, in reference to these muffins. 😂)

PS This is Stephen. He is one of the funniest people I know. He has been known to have me collapse on the floor laughing!

Ingredients in Cinnamon Breakfast Muffins

Muffin add-ins

This is a good recipe for using leftover bits of dried fruit and nuts. You can literally use anything you want, or even seeds like pepitas and sunflower seeds.

• Raisins and walnuts – These are the fruit and nuts I used, but as mentioned above, you can use whatever you want or have. I like raisins over sultanas and currants because they’re bigger and plumper! And I feel like the earthy flavour of walnuts just works in this whole breakfast muffin.

• Coconut – For flavour, moisture retention in the crumb, and a touch of sweetness (though note, I use unsweetened not sweetened). I use desiccated coconut which is the really finely shredded coconut. Shredded coconut (the fine strands) will also work but flakes will be too large.

  If you don’t like or don’t have coconut, leave it out and add an extra 1 tablespoon of flour into the batter.

• Granny Smith apple – This is my choice of apple because I like that it’s tart-sweet. But any colour and variety of apple will work here. Use a medium to large one. We need 1 1/4 cups of shredded flesh, including the juices. Don’t tightly pack the cup to measure (ie don’t press the shredded apple down into the cup with your hand),

  Also, I don’t peel. There’s extra nutrients in the skin!

• Carrot – This recipe calls for 2 cups shredded carrot. As wth the apple, don’t tightly pack the cup to measure and don’t peel!

muffin batter

Not as many substitutions for the batter because baking is a bit of a science so there’s a reason for the amount and use of ingredients. But there are still some options, which is always nice!

• Wholemeal flour – Also known as whole-wheat flour, it has more nutrition in it than plain white flour. Though you can use regular flour if that’s what you’ve got!

• Brown sugar – The muffin only calls for 3/4 cup which, across 12 muffins, is only 12 grams per muffin which puts it in “acceptable breakfast” territory in my books! You can reduce down to 1/2 cup but expect the crumb to be a touch less soft than ideal.

  White sugar can be substituted however, the muffin colour will be paler and it will have a slightly less caramely flavour. Also, if you use white sugar instead of brown sugar, don’t substitute the orange juice with milk. See FAQ if you want to get nerdy (in summary: baking soda needs an acid to give it a kick start, in this recipe there is acid in brown sugar and the orange juice. So don’t substitute both).

• Baking soda (aka bicarbonate soda) – This is what makes the muffin rise. You can substitute with 5 1/4 tsp baking powder but the muffin will have a slightly less soft crumb and the dome is a touch less golden (because baking soda makes baked goods more golden in the oven). It’s not a big deal though and wouldn’t stop me from making it!

• Cinnamon powder – The main spicing for the batter and also gives the muffin a gorgeous warm brown colour!

• Ginger powder – Extra spicing so not essential. Substitute with all spice, pumpkin spice or similar, or just leave it out.

• Oil – Any neutral flavoured oil is fine here. I like to use plain olive oil (don’t use extra virgin olive oil, the flavour will dominate). Liquid coconut oil will also work but I’d recommend being careful not to use one with a strong coconut flavour as it will overwhelm the muffin flavour.

  Butter and non-liquid coconut oil (ie the type you have to melt) will work but the muffins are a bit less moist inside.

• Orange juice – You can substitute with any fruit juice you have, or substitute with milk. It’s not critical, and you can’t taste it. I just needed a little more liquid for the batter and chose orange juice to be on-theme for these breakfast muffins.

  💡 For fellow cooking nerds: Yes, the acid in the OJ helps activate the baking soda to make the muffin rise but so too does the acid in brown sugar (yes, there’s acid in brown sugar) so it’s ok to substitute with milk as we have another acid source in this batter.

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How to make Cinnamon Breakfast Muffins

You might get little bits of carrot and apple all over your kitchen and yourself. But the actual muffin batter part is super duper easy!

The add-ins

1. Toast the walnuts for 8 minutes in a 190°C/375°F (170°C fan-forced) oven. This will bring out the flavour so you can actually taste walnut when you bite into a piece in the muffin. It’s especially important if your walnuts are a little on the stale side.

2. Chop – Cool the walnuts on the tray then roughly chop.

3. Grate the carrots using a standard box grater. I don’t peel the carrots. Free nutrition!

4. Grate the apple as well. Again, I don’t peel!

Add-ins prepped. Now onto the batter!

The batter

1. Dry – Whisk the dry ingredients in a large bowl to combine.

2. Wet – Whisk the wet ingredients in a separate bowl until combined.

💡 Whisk dry before the wet ingredients. If you do the wet ingredients first, the flour gets stuck to the whisk when you whisk the dry ingredients. It matters – what if it’s all baking soda that gets stuck to the whisk?!

3. Add wet into dry – Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients bowl.

4. Add-ins – Then add all the add-ins. The carrot, apple, fruit and nuts.

5. Mix with a rubber spatula just until you can no longer see flour. The mixture will be fairly thick, thick enough to stay in a mound in in the muffin tin (see step 6 photo).

6. Fill – Fill the holes in a muffin tin sprayed with oil or lined with muffin cases. Use all the mixture – it will mound above the rim, like pictured, guaranteeing muffins with lovely domed tops! You don’t need to worry about overflow with these muffins, they will rise and dome.

💡An ice cream scoop with a lever is a fast way to fill muffin tins evenly and neatly.

7. Bake for 25 minutes or until the muffins are a deep golden brown and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

8. Cool in the muffin tin for 5 minutes then transfer to a rack to cool for at least another 5 minutes before grabbing one! Don’t skip the cooling time. The muffins are quite fragile when piping hot so are susceptible to breaking when you lift it out of the muffin tin. The resting time also allows the middle to finish cooking (it will taste a little under-cooked if you eat it straight away, something impatient people like me will have experienced first hand).

You can eat these plain – they are full of flavour and the crumb is so soft and tender, it’s great even at room temperature.

But I highly encourage experiencing these at least once with a smear of lightly salted butter. Softened. Don’t try to spread rock hard butter on this soft muffin, you’ll smush the crumb!

Bake them this weekend to tuck into lunch boxes next week, for after school snacking, book club, and breakfast on the run. Fitting for so many purposes! And a great shelf life of 5 days. Enjoy! – Nagi x

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Watch how to make it

Life of Dozer

Home video from Bayview dog beach! Living life to the max in his Golden Years. ❤️