Pumpkin, Carrot Chocolate Chip Muffins

I love pumpkin. I love carrots. I love chocolate. So that's how my pumpkin, carrot, chocolate chip muffins came to be!
Here's the recipe and it's very low fat and not too bad on the calorie count either!

1/2 cup of maple syrup or agave nectar. (I used part of one and part of the other and then a pinch or stevia. Add more sweetener if you wish up to a half cup more.)
1/2 cup of unsweetened apple sauce. (I buy mine in a jar, then freeze the rest in ice cube trays and put in ziplocks for future use)
2 large eggs
1 cup pumpkin puree (or fresh pumpkin if you're energetic. I'm not) (Again, I freeze leftover pumpkin but in muffin tins)
1 large carrot, peeled and grated.
1 1/2 cups of flour
3/4 tea. baking powder
1/2 tea. baking soda
1 tea. cinnamon (you can use some ground gloves but just cut your cinnamon in half and use 1/4 tea to 1/2 tea. of the ground cloves)
1/4 tea. salt
1/4 tea. nutmeg
1/2 cup chocolate chips or chopped chocolate of choice

Pre-heat oven to 400F. Grease muffin tin.
 Mix all wet ingredients until well blended.
Combine all dry ingredients in a separate bowl and mix well, then mix with wet ingredients until well blended.
Fill cups about 2/3 full. Bake in pre-heated oven for 20-25 minutes. If making mini muffins, cut back on time to about 15 minutes or so. Check after about 12 minutes for minis.
Enjoy!
btw, they may not look great but they taste REALLY good!!!

CHOCOLATE BANANA CREAM PIE

CHOCOLATE BANANA CREAM PIE

2 Ripe  Avocados

2 med. Bananas

1 teaspoon vanilla (I’ll increase that to two next time)

2 Tablespoons maple syrup (or agave nectar or sweetener of choice)

½ teaspoon cinnamon (I’ll increase that to about 1 tea. next time)

3 heaping Tablespoons of pure cocoa ( I used the Epicure). If you use regular cocoa, then adjust to taste and how deep you want the colour to be.

¼- ½ cup of chocolate chips or pure chocolate from a bar ( 90% cocoa level or of choice)

OOPS!!! My bad! Cat food WAS NOT used in this recipe.

That's better!

Process avocados, bananas till smooth. You may have to scrape the sides every so often. Once smooth, add everything else except the chocolate chips.

Once smooth and blended well, add chocolate chips and process until chocolate is in smaller pieces or until desired. You can skip the processing altogether of the cc and just have them as chips.

The pudding will be quite thick, so carefully spoon into prepared shell of choice (I used a Corn Flake crust recipe that I made up myself). Find below.

Carefully spread pudding over all the crust area and pie plate (I used a 9 inch).

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate to firm up more although this pie is ready to eat as soon as it’s finished!

CORN FLAKE PIE CRUST

1 ¼ cups Corn Flakes (110 calories)

1 Tablespoon almost melted coconut oil (120 calories)

25 gr. Dates (85 calories)

Process Corn Flakes for a few seconds, then add dates and process until it’s a fine crumb mixture. Add melted coconut oil while processing. Carefully spoon into pie plate and pat down with a spatula until bottom of plate is covered. If you want to also have the sides covered in the crust, increase your amounts by half again. The crust as I made it will be about 315 calories. Divide by 8 servings will be about 40 calories for the crust portion only.

Total for pie as I made it is about 120-130 calories per serving with 8 servings per pie. If you add lite Cool Whip, add those extra calories for each serving. Or you can arrange sliced banana to top off the pie.