These moist and flavorful carrot muffins have a delicious carrot cake flavor with a hint of cinnamon. They’re tender in the middle with perfect muffin tops! 
These carrot cake muffins are filled with grated carrot, warm spices and brown sugar. They’re moist in the middle and the top of each muffin is beautifully domed with a nice crunch. I call these carrot cake muffins, as opposed to just carrot muffins, because I find that the texture is reminiscent of the perfect carrot cake. I’m also not trying to claim that these are healthy muffins by any means, but they’re definitely more muffin than they are cupcake.
Carrot Cake Muffin Recipe
This recipe uses oil, as opposed to butter, to make them extremely moist and tender. You won’t taste the oil whatsoever because of all the flavor that comes from the carrot, warm spices and vanilla.
- To make the muffins, you’ll first whisk together the dry ingredients: flour, spices, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisking the dry ingredients together first ensures that the spices and leaveners are evenly mixed throughout the batter.
- Then in a separate, larger bowl, you’ll whisk together the wet ingredients and sugars. We’re using a combination of brown sugar and white sugar for more flavor. Two eggs add tenderness to the batter.
- Then you’ll carefully whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Note that at this point, the batter will seem quite sticky. This is expected.
- Fold the grated carrot and chopped walnuts (or pecans) into the batter. Note that I like to finely grate the carrot so that it dissolves more into the batter. You can also leave out the nuts if they’re not your thing.
- Spoon the batter into your lined muffin pan. Each muffin paper will be quite full – a little more than ¾ full.
- They’ll need to bake for about 25 minutes at 375F. When they’re done baking, they should be domed at the top and an inserted toothpick will come out clean.
Baking Tips
My best tip for making these carrot cake muffins is to use freshly grated carrot, as opposed to a bag of pre-cut julienned carrots. Pre-cut or pre-grated carrots won’t provide the same flavor or the same amount of moisture that’s needed for moist and flavorful muffins.
Looking for more delicious muffins? Then be sure to try:
Carrot Cake Muffins
Equipment
- 12-cavity muffin pan
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (250 grams)
- 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup vegetable oil (120 ml) or canola oil
- 1 /2 cup brown sugar (100 grams)
- ½ cup granulated sugar (100 grams)
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ cup milk (60 ml) I recommend 2% or whole milk if possible
- 1 ½ cup grated carrot*
- ¾ cup chopped walnuts (about 75 grams) or pecans, optional
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375F (190C or 180C on a fan forced oven). Line a 12-cavity muffin pan with muffin papers.
- Whisk together the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- In a large bowl whisk together the oil, sugars, eggs, vanilla extract, and milk until there are no lumps.
- Gently whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. I typically do about ½ at a time. Whisk until smooth.
- Stir the grated carrot and chopped walnuts into the batter until evenly mixed.
- Spoon the batter into the lined muffin tin, dividing the batter equally between 12 muffin papers. They will be a little more than ¾ full.
- Bake in the preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes, or until the tops are domed and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
- Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.
Notes
- Carrots: Make sure to use freshly grated carrot. Do not use pre-packaged julienned carrots, as they won't provide the flavor and moisture needed.
- Walnuts: Feel free to use chopped pecans instead or simply leave them out.
- Storage: Muffins will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for about 3 days. Muffins freeze well, just make sure they're fully cooled before freezing.
- Nutrition: Nutrition information is an estimate only and based on 1 muffin (with walnuts), assuming the recipe yields 12 equal-sized muffins
Vary annoying that I need to scroll down 5 min to get to the ingredients list… change it
At the top of the post, there’s a button that says “Jump to Recipe”. This will take you directly to the recipe without having to do any reading or scrolling for anyone who may be in a rush
Vary annoying that you can’t spell “very.” Also vary annoying that you felt the need to complain over something so stupid. Grow up. If anything, (in my opinion) she made it easier for me to understand the recipe before I went into the pantry and started taking out random stuff. She gave us the layout telling us what’s about to happen, and then came in with what we were going to need. You complaining like that is just a cry for attention. Lol bye
I was eager to try this recipe and followed it exactly. My muffins came out hard and dry 🙁 very disappointing.
I’m sorry these didn’t turn out for you. My guess for them tasting dry and hard could be due to a few things. First, if there was too much flour added they could definitely be dry – always when measuring flour it’s important to whisk it first, then spoon into a dry measuring cup and level off the top or use a scale. It could also be due to expired baking powder or baking soda – because that would cause the muffins to not rise properly and therefore be too dense. Lastly, I always use freshly grated carrots – as I find the bags of grated/shredded carrots often don’t have enough moisture for baking.
Just made these today, but left out the nuts. . Super tasty and the whole family really likes them. Will definitely be making these again.
Ugh these were painfully dry. Waste of ingredients, will not be making again
My muffins came out a bit dry and not as moist as I hoped. I saw your comments above for reasons for this. I will try again to see if I get better results.
I was too lazy to measure the carrots, but I grated four medium ones (I think about a cup and a half) and the muffins came out perfectly!