A couple of years ago my sister and I were away for Easter backpacking through Europe and decided to treat ourselves to little holiday treat on the road. We were in England at the time and there were advertisements everywhere for this Cadbury crème egg McFlurry. Normally this sort of allure wouldn’t appeal to me because it’s a McFlurry, but you could put a Cadbury crème egg into a shoe and I would eat it.

So that day we made a plan… After our day of exploring London we would head back to our hostel chill for a bit and while everyone else was getting ready to go out and PARTAY my sister and I would get ready to go out for an ice cream.

Clearly I picked the right travel buddy.

I remember thinking I wonder how many chocolate crème eggs they’ll mash up into this McFlurry concoction?!? I had played out the scenario a few times in my head and by the time we walked up to the counter I was pretty much drooling. I walked up to that counter like I owned it… I’ll have one large Cadbury crème egg Mcflurry please, and I didn’t just travel 20 minutes in the rain on public transit to only order a small. Pfffffft small.

So the kid behind the counter grabs a cup and fills it half way with what sort of looked like ice cream, and then this next part kind of confused me, they had this dispenser that looked almost looked like a mustard squeeze bottle, aka the yellow filling from the cream egg I guess followed by a scoop of chocolate pieces, and he was cheap on the scoop, then he slapped a lid on it and handed it to me with a smile.

You know that feeling that comes over you when you find out as a kid that the Easter bunny doesn’t really exists, this moment was worse.

So this year we skipped the creme egg ass and opted for 24 carrot gold. The greatest part about this recipe is it’s a two for one deal, you can either make carrot cake or switch up the spices and make carrot gingerbread muffins.

Carrot Cake / Muffin base
Makes 12 Muffins

Ingredients
1/2 cup of almond milk or milk of choice
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 3/4 cups Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free all-purpose flour
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp gluten-free baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup applesauce or pumpkin puree
1/2 cup coconut oil melted
2 tbsp organic blackstrap molasses
1 1/2 cups grated organic carrot
1/2 cup raisins

For the Carrot Cake Muffins

Spices:
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
Fold ins:
1/2 cup walnuts

For the Carrot Gingerbread Muffins

Spices:
1 tbsp ginger
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Preheat your oven to 400

Line your muffin pan with paper cups and set aside.

In a small bowl combine the milk and vinegar and let it do it’s thing for about 10 minutes, this is the vegan version of buttermilk.

In a large bowl, sift flour, baking soda, spices and salt.

In a medium bowl, mix applesauce, coconut oil, maple syrup, molasses and “buttermilk”. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix well using a spatula. Fold in grated carrots and raisins and walnuts depending on what version you’re making.

Scoop the batter into the muffin cups to pretty much full. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a knife inserted in the centre comes out clean.