Morning Glory Muffins + Sweet Harvest Muffins

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I get quite tired of "sweet" muffins and scones. What I mean by "sweet" are things like fruit muffins or scones, or things with chocolate. They're okay sometimes but I usually lean towards the savoury side. However, these morning glory muffins are SO good, moist and flavourful that I would be happy to eat them all the time. I love that they're so packed full of stuff, and you can use up whatever you have (which was the reason I went searching for a recipe like this actually - to help use my wheat germ and Costco sized bag of apricots). I did make efforts to make this muffin recipe healthier than the original, though in this case I don't think you can tell.

Speaking of muffins that are more sweet than savoury (oops I had it the other way around before), I also love these sweet harvest muffins from Ricki's cookbook Sweet Freedom. I can't share the recipe with you but can tell you that they're really delicious and soft, and each muffin gives you a serving of vegetables! I'll definitely be making them again.

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Spiced Carrot Muffins
Banana Crunch Muffins
Grandma Jennie's Date and Nut Bread
Garden Harvest Cake

Morning Glory Muffins
Adapted from King Arthur Flour

Note: The original recipe calls for 2/3 cup vegetable oil and 1/4 cup orange juice. What I did was kind of complicated/weird but it worked for me. I reduced the vegetable oil to 1/3 cup, and added in some extra juice to result in using 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp juice. Leave it as it was in the original recipe if you don't mind the amount of oil.

3/4 cup dried apricot, chopped (or any other dried fruit)
2 cups whole wheat flour
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups (7 ounces) carrots, peeled and grated
1 large tart apple, peeled, cored, and grated
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup wheat germ
3 large eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup + 2 tbsp mango juice (all we had was mango juice, but the original recipe uses orange)

Preheat the oven to 375F. Lightly grease a 12-cup muffin tin, or line it with papers.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, spices, and salt. Stir in the carrots, apple, coconut, nuts, and wheat germ. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla, and juice. Add to the flour mixture, and stir until evenly moistened. Stir in the dried apricots. Divide the batter among the prepared pans.

Bake for 25 to 28 minutes, until nicely domed and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven, let cool for 5 minutes in their pan on a rack, then turn out of pans to finish cooling.