Vegetable Muffins

Tips for Using Vegetables in Muffins

When making a veggie muffin recipe, you can prepare the veggies in a number of different ways depending largely on who is going to eat them:

Infants/Toddlers And Picky Eaters

If the muffins are for first-time eaters like a 6 -10-month-old infant to toddler age you may want to finely chop the vegetables using a food processor for easy eating and digestion.

The vegetables can also be prepared this way to disguise vegetables in muffins for a picky eater.

Use vegetables that are neutral or mild in flavor like carrot, zucchini, and butternut squash for first-time eaters and slowly start to introduce other flavors.

Older Children and Adults

You can process the vegetables in a blender until fine for fussy eaters, grate or coarsely chop the vegetables with a knife to give texture and bursts of flavor throughout the muffins.

How to Prepare Vegetables for Muffins

As mentioned earlier vegetables can either be processed in a food processor for a fine texture, roughly chopped with a knife, or grated. While most vegetables can be used straight away, others may need to be precooked or drained of liquid before using.

Grated vegetables like carrot, zucchini, yellow squash, and defrosted frozen spinach need to be squeezed to remove excess liquid. If the excess liquid is not removed your muffin batter can end up being too wet and the muffins won't bake properly.

You can either place the prepared vegetables into a sieve and use the back of a spoon to press out the liquid or place the veg into a clean tea towel and squeeze and wring out the excess liquid.

These grated vegetables can be added straight into the muffin batter without being precooked.

Soft types of vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, spring onions and kale should be finely chopped to ensure that they fully cooked after baking.

If using fresh corn, beans or peas these should be precooked and cooled before adding them to the muffin batter. You can either boil, steam or microwave these.

If using frozen peas or beans these can be added to the batter either frozen or defrosted. If the beans are large chop them into about 1 cm (0.40 inch) or smaller pieces.

Vegetables like butternut squash, leek, onion, sweet potato and diced carrots should all be precooked and cooled before adding to the mixture. Even if you finely chop them, they normally require a longer baking time to become nice and soft. So, it is best to precook and cool them before adding to the mixture.

Butternut squash and diced carrots can be steamed or microwaved. Sweet potatoes can either be baked or steamed. Leeks and onions can be sauteed with a little oil until soft and fragrant.

30+ Recipes For Vegetable Muffins

Take your pick from this list!

You will find traditional-style muffins made with flour, gluten-free muffins, flourless muffins, dairy-free and egg-free.

For your convenience, I have included notes referencing possible diets so that you can find the ones best suited to you.