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This Morning Glory Muffin recipe makes the perfect healthy and easy breakfast. Filled with zucchini, carrots, coconut, nuts, and spices, you can feel good feeding these to your family every morning. Great for making ahead and freezing for busy days or snacks. You’ll love having these on hand! While you’re mixing up your breakfast routine you have to try my Cinnamon Muffins and Banana Bread Muffins.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
This is a healthy and nutritious recipe worth making and not just because this is a perfect way to get your kids to eat veggies willingly! Mwahaha! These healthy morning glory muffins are based on my mom’s carrot cake muffin recipe, but I added in a bunch of fun goodies like grated zucchini, chopped walnuts, shredded unsweetened coconut, unsweetened applesauce and replaced a lot of the processed sugar with real maple syrup. Lots of goodies shoved into a soft and sweet breakfast muffin. YUM.
Ingredients For Morning Glory Muffins
I know this is a long list of ingredients, but they are healthy ingredients that are so good for you!
- unsweetened coconut– adds a bit of chewiness and texture to the muffins.
- unsweetened applesauce– adds moisture to the muffins making them soft.
- granulated sugar– adds just a bit of sweetness.
- all purpose flour– fills out the muffin. See my note below about making these gluten free.
- zucchini + carrot– use a box grater to shred. Be sure to remove as much moisture as possible from the shredded zucchini. I use a tea towel to do this.
- maple syrup– use a pure maple syrup for best flavor.
- walnuts– chopped, and optional.
- pantry staples– eggs, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, vanilla extract, oil (coconut oil, avocado oil or vegetable oil).
Pro Tip: Yes, you can make these muffins gluten free! Simply substitute the all purpose flour for Pamela’s Gluten Free Flour Blend at a 1:1 ratio. It’s the only flour blend I consistently get great results with. Bob’s Red Mill also has a decent flour blend, but I much prefer Pamela’s.
How To Make Morning Glory Muffins
Believe it or not, the hardest part of this recipe is grating all the veggies, which is not hard at all, just mostly time consuming. Besides that, it’s a very straight forward recipe. For full recipe details, including ingredient measurements, see the printable recipe card down below. Here is step-by-step directions for how to make these muffins:
Preheat + Prep
Preheat oven to 350° F. Line a standard 12 cup-muffin pan with paper liners and set aside.
Make Muffin Batter
In a large bowl, whisk the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, coconut and walnuts together until combined. Add in the grated zucchini and carrot.
Pour in the wet ingredients (applesauce, maple syrup, eggs, oil and vanilla). Stir until just combined.
Fill Muffin Cups + Bake
Scoop into prepared muffin tin. Bake for 25-35 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean with just a few moist crumbs. Allow to cool on a wire rack and serve warm or wait until cooled completely.
Recipe Variations
There are several different versions of Morning Glory Muffins, all with different variations of the following ingredients. If you’d like to experiment and make this recipe your own, feel free to switch up the ingredients I used with any of these:
- finely chopped pineapple (drain thoroughly)
- grated apple (Granny Smith apple would be great here)
- raisins, golden raisins or Craisins
- other chopped nuts like almonds, pecans, or pistachios
- pepitas or sunflower seeds
- additional spices like nutmeg, allspice or pumpkin pie spice
- ground flax seed or hemp seed
Not only do you get a lovely spiced muffin, but you get extra boost of vitamins from the grated veggies, nuts and seeds!
Storing Muffins
Muffins can be wrapped individually in plastic wrap or stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days.
Make Ahead + Freeze
These also freeze really well! Allow to cool completely before placing in a freezer safe container or ziploc bag. Remove as much air as possible. Muffins will stay fresh for up to 2-3 months.
Love Muffins? Try These Other Delicious Muffin Recipes:
- Bakery Style Pumpkin Muffins
- Chocolate Chip Muffins
- Skinny Mini Banana Muffins
- Pumpkin Swirl Donut Bread
- Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
I hope you rotate these delicious breakfast muffins into your mornings! Enjoy with a glass of orange juice and have the best start to your morning! So tasty. The printable recipe card is below. Have a great day, friends. 🙂
If you make this recipe, I would really appreciate it if you would give it a star rating and leave your review in the comments! If you have a picture of your finished dish, post it on Instagram using the hashtag #laurenslatest and tagging me @laurens_latest.
Morning Glory Muffins
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut shredded
- 1/2 cup walnuts chopped
- 1 cup zucchini grated and wrung out
- 2 cups carrot grated
- 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1/2 cup maple syrup
- 3 large eggs
- 1/2 cup avocado oil
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F. Line muffin tins with paper liners and set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk sugar, flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, coconut and walnuts until combined. Add in zucchini and carrot and stir.
- Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add in the wet ingredients. Whisk the wet ingredients together and then start to incorporate the dry into the wet using a rubber spatula until just combined.
- Scoop into prepared tins and bake 25-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs.
- Cool 7 minutes in the pan and then transfer to a cooling rack.
- Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 2 months.
Healthy, but lacking in flavor. I made these for a church event, and I do not have time to remake them. Unfortunately they somehow with all these ingredients did not taste flavorful. (Yes, I tasted other muffins that I made and they tasted fine) I went back and check the ingredients to make sure I had them all and had added them all. I just don’t know what the problem is. Do they need more salt?maybe some other flavoring, or more cinnamon. I love the idea of having all these veggies!
I make these with Swerve brown sugar and 1/4 C honey – no maple syrup. Just a little less sweet but we love them!
Could you substitute something for the applesauce?
What is an spt of vanilla? Please don’t say spit 😂😂😂
These are the best muffins I’ve ever made. So moist & flavourful!!! Phenomenal recipe.
I always come back to this recipe even though there is so many “morning glory” recipes out there. Easy to be interchangable as well. like adding different nuts or seeds, or ill use pumkpkin instead of apple sauce. turns out great everytime and i make it as a loaf as well. thank you so much!!
p.s i love your purple heart that appears on the tab when on your website.
xoxo sarah
I was a bit concerned about the batter being so runny but these turned out great.
You should add molasses as an alternative to the maple syrup . Molasses adds more flavor
My family absolutely LOVED these muffins. I was so excited that the batch yielded more than 24 and thought they would be great for me and my husband to grab as a quick breakfast or snack. HA! They were so good, you had to eat them two at a time! On day two there were less than a dozen left. Thank you for this great recipe. I have already passed it to my daughter because her picky children loves them too!
This is my favorite morning glory muffin recipe! I make a GF version using 1:1 GF flour and add 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/4 C. orange juice (gluten free flours hold moisture differently than wheat flour). These come out perfect every time.
So moist and yummy!
The best!
I just made these muffins they are delicious!!
I made these and they were far too salty. I am trying again with baking powder instead of baking soda, and I will leave the salt out.
I am going to make this it looks so delicious
Made these today!!! They are amazing !! Gave some to my 80 yr old neighbour and she said keep this recipe it’s a keeper. My dad 89 yr old drove over to pick up his 5 muffins! He loves coconut! My husband had one then two 😂 Thanks 😊
How could you cut back on the sugar content as I’m a diabetic ?!
Can this be converted to a loaf bread? If so what changes should be made?
Yes it can but needs more bake time (I bake for about 45 minutes but I’m also using a 1:1 GF flour blend and add about 1/4 C orange juice, so check at 35mins and adjust as needed time as needed. The toothpick method is the best way to check for doneness.
I always start with half the sugar in all recipes. In my carrot cake I use almond flour. For this recipe I will substitute half the flour for almond flour.
I made these muffins today. I used dried cranberries instead of raisins. I had no pineapple so used a little more shredded apple and carrot. Also I used King Arthur whole wheat flour. They are moist and delicious.
My kids ask me to make over and over!
I am obsessed with these muffins, 1st tried them 2 weeks ago & as you suggested add ins, I added sunflower seeds & raisins. Making a double recipe this weekend. I need to do that as everyone I have offered 1 of these wants a 2nd one.