Pepper Design Blog

Liv attends a cute little preschool in our neighborhood on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. It’s a small school that we walk to (which is amazing) with a very active parent community, and one of the requests of students is that families take turn providing a snack for the entire class.

Recently they have been learning about what grows in the ground and where their veggies come from, so I thought that it would be fun to put together a snack that might spur more learning conversation. And maybe a few giggles for extra credit.

How much better are carrots or radishes when they’re growing out of a muffin?

The process was very simple. I found whole carrots with stems still attached, peeled them down to just 1-2″ lengths and threw together a boxed muffin mix the day before preschool.

I wish I could say that I made the muffins from scratch, but alas they were actually a banana bread mix with a cup of chocolate cake mix for color (brown dirt, that is). Bran muffins would have been perfect. I added raisins and my carrot peelings to make them a bit healthier. Walnuts or pecans would have made a great addition but the preschool is a no nut school.

Once the muffins cooled I simply pressed my carrots and radishes into place.

So simple and so fun. Liv was so excited to help bake these, though she asked me if she could bring ‘just carrot muffins’ for her friends and I obliged. For some reason she didn’t think the radishes would go over so well…

A last-minute addition the morning of included adding popsicle sticks as veggie markers. Just as if we planted the little carrot seedlings ourselves.

Speaking of planting, Liv and I started tomato and beets from seeds almost two months ago and I’m excited to get them into the ground soon. Maybe even this week! It’s been fun to organize activities that coincide with what she’s learning in school and I’m looking forward to doing more of that at home. For ‘bug week’ we made something similar to the above but with gummy earthworms crawling out of pumpkin muffins :).