Healthy Home Baked Muffin

For the past year, my son has been picky with food. He eats what he likes a lot, and often but isn't easy to coax him (or threaten or bribe) to eat new food.

So, when he gladly devoured the trail mix bar I brought home one day, I felt it's time to introduce healthy food to his diet again.

The original menu is here. I stuck close to the original but substituted/reduced some ingredients to make it healthier and the tweaked version is here:

Ingredients

* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 cup whole wheat flour- bought mine from Baker's Depot at Rob Manila
* 1 cup washed sugar- this is the one lighter than the brown sugar
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 2 tablespoons wheatgerm
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 cups shredded carrots
* 1 cup raisins- i love this
* 1 cup chopped walnuts
* 1 apple - peeled, cored and shredded
* 1 apple and 2 ripe bananas- blend until smooth
* 3 eggs
* 1 tbsp olive oil
* 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease 18 muffin cups, or line with paper muffin liners.
2. In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, wheatgerm and salt. Stir in the carrot, raisins, nuts, and chopped apple.
3. In a separate bowl, beat together eggs, oil, and vanilla. Stir egg mixture into the carrot/flour mixture, just until moistened. Stir in the blended apples and bananas. Scoop batter into prepared muffin cups.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

I'm so excited to try other new, healthy recipes. I cooked green pea soup a few weeks back but he sadly didn't like it. Can't blame him though, the color is a shocking avocado green. =)

I just don't let these failures in the kitchen front keep me from trying to prepare healthier stuff for him. It's the little success experiments that I celebrate.

So, here's to a healthier us!!!