Carrot Raisin Muffins – Tall, fluffy carrot muffins are studded with golden raisins and chopped walnuts to make a hearty, spiced muffin perfect for any time of day

Today’s recipe is just in time for Easter. When I think of Easter recipes, I gravitate towards carrot cake. The Easter Bunny likes his sweets too and I imagine carrot cake is one of his favorites.

Instead of cake, I’m making Carrot Raisin Muffins. It has all the flavor of carrot cake but less sweet and a little more dense. It’s a great treat for Easter Brunch and can be frozen for use again on Mother’s Day, if you’d like!

Here are my Carrot Raisin Muffins in all their sweet and spicy glory!

How are these muffins made?

Lucky for you, muffins are some of the easiest treats you can bake. No mixer or waiting required! That means, when you get a craving for muffins, they’ll be ready to eat in less than 30 minutes.

To get started, you mix together all the dry ingredients. The key is to mix the combined batter as little as possible. Therefore, we must ensure that the dry ingredients and wet ingredients are well-mixed SEPARATELY. Once they are thoroughly mixed, they are combined and slowly folded together with the grated carrots to produce the batter.

Once the batter is ready, it’s time to scoop the muffins into the prepared cupcake/muffin tin. I always use paper liners to make it easier to extract them from the tin once they’ve baked. Plus, the liners make the muffins neater and easier to serve.

The muffins are then baked in a 400-degree oven until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle muffin. It takes longer for the middle muffins to cook so it’s important to test those muffins for doneness.

Tips & Tricks

1. The most important tip I can give you about these muffins (and muffins, in general) is DO NOT OVERMIX. Muffin batter is very dense so that natural tendency is to keep mixing it to make sure it’s all combined. But the truth is that the more you mix it, the more you’ll develop the gluten in the flour and the tougher the dough becomes. That is why we mix the dry and wet ingredients separately before adding them together.
2. I went back and forth on whether to use my shredded carrots or to grate the carrots myself. I finally decided to grate them myself because I wanted the muffins to be extra moist. I haven’t tried making them with the pre-shredded carrots but I think they could work – you just may want to chop them up a bit to bring out their moisture and help them mix into the batter better.
3. The raisins and walnuts are certainly optional here. Feel free to swap them out for other dried fruits and/or nuts or leave them out entirely.

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