I am kind of terrible at eating breakfast. The complete opposite of a morning person, when it comes to the most important meal of the day – I want it fast and easy. My waist line would also like it to be healthy and filling. I do a lot of protein / veggie smoothies lately because I can just uncap, drink and go but sometimes you want something a little more on the fun and indulgent side!

A friend shared this recipe from pillsbury.com for pineapple carrot muffins made with raisins and walnuts and using half all purpose flour and half wheat flour. Scanning the ingredients list, I was pleased to see it used ingredients I mostly already had on hand. While grocery shopping this morning I added some chopped walnuts and a can of crushed pineapple to my cart and I was good to go!

Making the muffins was a breeze. I had a bag of carrots from our local CSA that I ran through a food processor to shred – making way more than I needed so I might have to make the recipe again soon! The recipe calls for 1 cup of shredded carrots. This is probably the most labor intensive part of the process and you could totally cheat and buy pre-shredded carrots but it only took me a couple minutes to shred mine and I could feel good about using straight from the farm produce!

When my son came home from school I gave one to each of the kids to test out and they were gone seemingly within seconds. They both loved them and trust me, they are a tough crowd! I had one myself and I have to agree with them. It was sweet without being too sweet and the texture was perfectly moist with a nice crunch from the walnuts. The pineapple gives it a nice, fresh citrus flavor without being over powering and the half wheat flour will make the muffin more filling without tasting like “health food”.

This is a great versatile recipe – you could swap in different nuts or dried fruits to change up the flavor profile and maybe even play with what canned fruit you use. And you can eat it guilt free pretty much any time of the day. It’s perfect for a fast breakfast or a healthy afternoon snack for the kids – or you can “sneak” one at night and call it a super sensible dessert! The recipe makes about 16 muffins and each muffin has only 200 calories. Not bad!

Check out the recipe at pillsbury.com!