Carrot Cupcakes.

Carrot Cake is probably my favourite cake, I love it and I found this really lovely recipe for the perfect carrot cake on the Joy of Baking website a couple of years ago. I deffinately reccommend looking on the website as it's absoloutely incredible with every recipe you could ever think of. It is also american so there are lots of lovely american treats including lots of chocolate and peanut butter recipes which, are always good in my books.

 

 

This carrot cake recipe is gorgeous though. The sponge is so light, soft and moist and it has a really lovely sweet flavour with a nice warm spice coming from the cinnamon too. The cream cheese icing is also delicious, sugary and rich and goes perfectly with the carrot sponge.

Recipe - makes 24 cupcakes

 

100g walnuts

340g raw carrots, finely grated

260g self-raising flour

1 tsp. bicarbonate of soda

1 1/2 tsps. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

4 large eggs

300g caster sugar

240ml vegetable oil

2 tsp. vanilla essence

Cream Cheese Frosting -

57g butter

227g cream cheese

230g icing sugar

1 tsp. vanilla essence

1 tsp. finely grated lemon zest

 

Method

 

Pre-heat the oven to 200C and place 24 cupcake cases in two 12 hole bun tins.

 

Peel and finely grate the carrots.

 

Grind the walnuts in a food processor and in a large bowl mix together the ground walnuts, sieved self-raising flour, cinnamon, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt.

 

In another bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the eggs until frothy (about 1 minute). Gradually add the sugar and whisk until the batter is thick and pale in colour (about 3-4 minutes). Add the oil in a steady stream and then beat in the vanilla extract. Pour the liquid into the flour mixture and beat until incorporated.

 

Fold in the grated carrot and evenly divide the batter between the cupcake cases.

 

Bake for 15-17 minutes or until the cupcakes are just firm to touch and a skewer inserted comes out clean.

 

Finally, make the cream cheese frosting by beating the cream cheese and butter together with an electric whisk, blending until there are no lumps. Gradually add the sifted icing sugar and beat, on low speed, until fully incorporated and smooth. Lastly, beat in the vanilla extract and lemon zest and top each cupcake with about 1 tsp. of cream cheese icing and a walnut piece.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

Thankyou for reading!

Love Courts x