These healthy carrot cake muffins are fluffy, moist, and flavorful with warm spices - they're perfect for breakfast, dessert, or snacks. And they're easy to make in 1 bowl and just 30 minutes!
Preheat oven to 375F; line a muffin tray with 8 paper liners.
Whisk together the buttermilk, oil, light brown sugar, egg, and vanilla in a large bowl. Add the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves, and stir just to combine (be careful not to over-mix; a few streaks of flour are fine). Fold in the shredded carrot.
Spoon the batter into the lined muffin tray. Bake until a toothpick inserted inside comes out clean or with just a couple crumbs, about 18 to 20 minutes.
Notes
Pumpkin Pie Spice: Instead of using ground cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves, you can simplify and use 1 ½ teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice.
Nuts: If you like nuts, feel free to add ½ cup of chopped walnuts, pecans, or whatever your favorite type of nut is.
Apple: To bump up the nutrition even more, you can add apple to these carrot muffins! About 1 heaping cup of peeled apple chopped small (from 1 medium sweet-tart apple) works well.
Raisins: If raisins are your thing, feel free to add up to ½ cup of them here.
Storage: Once they’re cool, you can wrap these muffins and store them for up to 3 days at room temperature. They keep the best if you give the moisture that seeps out somewhere to go, which you can do in one of two ways: 1) store them on a paper plate covered with plastic wrap, or 2) store them in an airtight container lined with paper towels. I don’t recommend putting muffins in the fridge because they tend to get soggy.