Health Muffins that Don't Taste like Cardboard

In an effort to consume more vegetables in my diet (why can't chocolate be a vegetable, anyways?), I have discovered and adapted a recipe for delicious, fruit and veggie muffins. They're not too bad for fat or sugar, and each one has a whole serving of fruit and veggies in them.

For anyone who might be interested in trying it for themselves, here it is:

Ingredients:
1.5 cups flour (unbleached, or even whole grain if possible)
heaping teaspoon of baking soda
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of salt

2 eggs
1 teaspoon each of vanilla extract and almond extract
1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup melted butter
1.5 cups chopped apple (peel can be left on)
3/4 cups each of shredded (coarsely grated) carrot and zucchini
heaping tablespoon of orange zest (for the non-culinary among us, this means grating the peel of an orange with the fine side of your cheese-grater)

Also, feel free to add nuts or raisins to your liking.

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Combine the first four (dry) ingredients into a large bowl. Combine the next three (wet) into a different bowl, and beat together until the sugared egg mix is fluffy. Next, add the third set of ingredients (butter and fruit, veg) to the egg mixture, and stir. Lastly, put the fruity, eggy mixture into the flour mixture and stir until mostly even. Pour mixture into pre-greased muffin tin, and bake for about 20 minutes. The tops should be brown, and a knife should come out clean from the muffin centre. This should make about 8 regular-sized muffins.

If you want an extra treat, try sprinkling a hearty amount of cinnamon and brown sugar over the tops BEFORE putting the muffins in the oven. This will slightly caramelize the tops, which is very yummy.

Let me know if you try this!