Whole Wheat Carrot Pineapple Muffins

Whole Wheat Carrot Pineapple Muffins are sort of a 'creation from leftovers' special.  New Year's Eve here at my house was a family friendly affair, and we made eight different kinds of homemade pizza for all the kids and adults.  One of the pizzas we made was a Hawaiin pizza (we'll talk about the steak dinner pizza later!), and I ended up having a half can of pineapple tidbits leftover.  From the veggie tray, I managed to salvage a few carrot sticks - and the inspiration for Carrot Pineapple Muffins was born.  I added in some whole wheat flour, mainly because I have some lingering around, and I thought it would add some flavour and 'healthy' to a nice treat.  The amount of whole wheat flour can be adjusted up, if you'd like more whole wheat in your muffins, but in my experience, a little white flour is needed to lighten them up. If you do try all whole wheat and they turn out great, then let me know, I'd love to hear about it. To get the crushed pineapple called for in the recipe, I whizzed the leftover pineapple tidbits in my food processor until I had something probably more correctly called pureed or pulverized pineapple, but it worked.

For the New Year's Eve party, we had a Nintendo Wii competition for the kids, and a Playstation2 Sing Star competition for the adults!  I highly recommend Sing Star - what a hoot!  I'm pretty confident saying we all had a great time, and I can't wait for the next party.  

Whole Wheat Carrot Pineapple Muffins
makes about 12 muffins
400* oven
22 to 25 minutes

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 salt
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1/3 cup cooking oil (see note)
1 cup grated carrot (1 large carrot, peeled and grated, OR two double handful of sort of dried out carrot sticks, grated)
1 cup crushed pineapple with juice

Preheat oven to 400*. 

Mix together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.  After mixing, make a well in the centre of the mix.

In another bowl, beat the eggs until they are frothy; add in the oil, and mix together well.  Add in the carrots and pineapple. Mix together, then dump into the well in the dry ingredients.  Mix all this together, just until blended (the batter is lumpy, just make sure it's all blended together).  Fill prepared muffin tins about 3/4 full; I fill mine to rim, but that's just because I like the tops.  

Bake at 400* for 22 to 25 minutes. Let stand in the muffin tins for about 5 minutes, then remove and set on a rack or plate to finish cooling.

Notes: This amount of oil seems like a lot of oil to me.  I tend to use a little less, and add more pineapple, but there is a fine line between just enough and not enough.  Muffins generally need some sort of fat in them, so I haven't tried taking out the oil completely.

Whole Wheat Flour: I've upped the amount of WW flour to as much as 1 cup, but the muffins do get a little more dense at that level.  I haven't tried the muffins with all whole wheat flour.