Morning Glory Muffins

Does Starbucks still sell Morning Glory Muffins? I'm not sure - I used to love them tho and woke up the other day thinking about trying to recreate them to take on our road trip to see the eclipse, Mt. Rushmore, Badlands, and all that. Found a recipe here, seemed right so I whipped up a batch substituting dried cranberries for the raisins, replaced half the oil with applesauce, and omitting the nuts so Dave could help me eat them. These stayed really moist for a few days, perfect for camping breakfast or a snack, only downfall is they got moldy before we could eat them all - next time I'll store them in the fridge instead of on the counter.

2 cups flour
1 1/4 cup white sugar (I only used 1 cup, these are plenty sweet)
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups shredded carrots
1/2 cup raisins (or dried cranberries)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I didn't add the nuts and didn't miss them)
1/2 cup unsweetened flaked coconut
1 apple - peeled, cored and shredded
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil (note I used 1/2 cup oil and 1/2 cup applesauce)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract


1. Preheat oven to 350'.  Grease or line with paper muffin liners, 12 muffin cups. (Note: I didn't fill the cups that full and ended up with 16 muffins).
2. In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Stir in the carrot, raisins, nuts, coconut, and apple.
3. In a separate bowl, beat together eggs, oil, and vanilla. Stir into the flour mixture just until moistened. Don't overtax. Scoop batter into prepared muffin cups.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean. (Note: since I didn't fill my cups up as much as the recipe called for they only took 15 minutes to bake).

one year ago today: Japanese Steakhouse Carrot-Ginger Salad Dressing

Japanese Steakhouse Carrot-Ginger Salad Dressing

comparing 3 different recipes. 

Our family has a tradition to make birthday dinner your "favorite things" - and it means just that, the birthday person gets to pick whatever they want...and it doesn't have to go together. I will say that in years past we've had meals that consisted of KFC, crab rangoons, pizza, no vegetables, and lots of chips - now everyone is fairly good about coming up with somewhat of a balanced meal. Except there's Brooke, who just turned 13, and has picked out some things that really don't go together! So we are having beef stroganoff with make-your-own-sushi, crabby mushrooms and buffalo dip, Japanese salad and cheez-its....sounds good, right? Ha, yuck. Anyway...My sister is making or getting most of the meal, but I thought it'd be fun to try to make the traditional orange salad dressing we get when we go to a Japanese Hibachi/steakhouse for the salad - I think it's Carrot-Ginger so googled a bunch of recipes and experimented with 3 different ones  (I went and picked up a small thing of restaurant dressing so I have something to compare it to) and I think I got pretty close - here's the winning recipe:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 medium carrot peeled and roughly chopped (I used baby carrots, about 4 ounces)
1/2 medium onion, roughly chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Put all the ingredients in a food processor, process until smooth. Chill until ready to use. Makes about 2 cups.

Note: this has a little texture to it, tiny little specks of ginger and carrot - you won't get it totally smooth and that's what you want. Serve over iceberg salad with shredded carrots and cherry tomatoes.

to use fresh ginger - buy the size you want (it's ok to break off a piece at the supermarket, you don't have to buy the whole thing...kinda like bananas). then remove the brown part with a vegie peeler and discard.

 different stages of the ginger - remove and discard the peel (on the right) and then grate it (on the left)

PS: there are a bunch of recipes out there that call for ketchup, celery, lemon juice...it doesn't taste like the one we are used to and isn't my favorite for sure - it just tastes like ketchup!