Our healthy remake of these classic cafe Morning Glory Muffins is bursting with flavor! Not to mention 100% whole grains and a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables.

My family loves muffins… pretty much all muffins! So I’m always looking for something beyond the usual blueberry or bran. I was excited to discover and cook a muffin I’d never tried before, called a Morning Glory Muffin. As soon as I took my first batch out of the oven, I was hooked.

So, what IS a Morning Glory Muffin? The story of its origins is kind of fun: it was created in the Morning Glory Cafe in Nantucket in the 1970s, and became known as a kind of hippie muffin, because it’s full of so many earthy-crunchy bits and pieces.

The flavor is fantastic: sweet and surprising in every bite, and spiced with cinnamon and ginger, almost like a carrot cake (for breakfast! YES.)

Nutritionally, we love these muffins because they’re packed with fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. Look at all SEVEN of these plant-powered add-ins:

Carrots
Raisins
Orange juice
Sunflower seeds
Coconut
Walnuts
Apples

Healthy Makeover

When I was tailoring these classic muffins for my kids, I knew I wanted to make some healthy changes.

First, I cut the amount of sweetener down by more than half. The muffins were still delightfully sweet! (I don’t know why it still surprises me that I can get away with this in baked good recipes, because it almost always works!)

I also used honey in place of the sugar, and whole wheat flour instead of white flour, for extra fiber and vitamins. Finally, I cut back on the oil, and used virgin coconut oil, to complement the flavor of the dried coconut.

The end result was a sweet, moist, gently spiced muffin chock full of chewy-crunchy textures. Such a comforting, healthy breakfast for my kiddos and me!

Don’t be intimidated by the long list of ingredients in the recipe. These muffins are easy to make, and you’ll get a good 17 muffins per batch. so you can throw a few in the freezer for school lunches or snacks.

First, stir together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Then mix in the carrots, apples, nuts, and seeds, until they’re all coated with the dry ingredients. You’ll get a funny-looking mixture like this:

Whisk the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl, then pour them into the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients:

Then fold in the raisins, and spoon the batter into your muffin pan. This is my hack for fitting all the muffins into the oven in one round: squeeze a few extra muffin liners in beside my main muffin pan.

Then bake for 20 minutes, until firm to the touch. Enjoy!

P.S. My five-year old loves these muffins, with no qualifiers. But my two-year old can be wary of textures (or foods with “things in them”) If you’ve got one like this at home, do give these muffins a try.  The sweetly-appealing flavor is a great enticement to bite right in! Here’s my 2-year-old, taking the plunge: