Paleo Pumpkin Carrot Walnut Muffins

I'm not going to lie to you. These are good. Really good. You can ask Chris - we ate them while we had a wonderful heart-to-heart around the kitchen island drinking tea yesterday. It doesn't get much better than that on a Sunday afternoon. I have to give credit to a new paleo meetup friend Anna for posting a picture of gorgeous pumpkin muffins on her facebook page Sunday morning. I tried to get her recipe, but clearly I am very impatient, so I created my own and added shredded carrots into the mix since I looove carrot muffins/bread/cake. I now love carrots even more after the nice man at the SOWA market got so amused from the way Chris and I were picking the "perfect" carrots. In other SOWA news, my favorite woman at the Westminster Meat table remembered me from last week and asked how my 5lb. chicken turned out! I was so excited to tell her that I was able to use the whole frozen chicken to make delicious soup, and it is great to see that I am becoming a regular at my neighborhood market. 

In breaking paleo news, I am hosting my first official paleo meetup in a couple of weeks. It is going to be a halloween potluck, and I have been brainstorming a few costume ideas (think grass-fed cow, hunter/gatherer, etc...). I already have a great group of people signed up, and I can't wait. It will be a wonderful thing to look forward to after I trek back up to Boston after the big Avon walk this upcoming weekend! There will be a ton of special treats at the potluck, and I'm sure my new paleo friends won't be disappointed. Stay tuned!

Ingredients:

- 1.5 cups almond flour

- 1/2 cup pumpkin (I used canned organic pumpkin from Trader Joes)

- 1 cup shredded carrots

- 3 eggs

- 1 tsp. baking soda

- 1 tsp. baking powder

- 2 tsp. cinnamon

- 1/4 tsp. salt

- 1 Tbsp. - 1/4 cup raw honey (optional - I used 1 Tbsp.)

- 2 Tbsp. coconut oil

- Splash of vanilla

- 1/2 chopped walnuts + 12 big pieces 

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Mix all ingredients other than walnuts in a mixing bowl

3. Fold in chopped walnuts (reserve the 12 pieces for later)

4. Grease muffin tin (12-muffin size) with coconut oil or use silicon baking cups

5. Spoon batter evenly into muffin tin and top each muffin with a whole walnut

6. Bake for 25 minutes (fork or toothpick should come out clean)

7. Let sit for 5 minutes, and then remove to a wire rack

8. Eat with a friend, a cup of tea, or both ;)