Carrot cupcakes

My best friend is having a champagne and cupcakes 21st and I volunteered to make the cupcakes. These were a weekend experiment to try and prevent any disasters on the day. I had never made carrot cake before, which is odd when I think about it. Or maybe not so odd, seeing as when little sister discovered these were carrot she put her cupcake down and said ‘I just cleaned my teeth’. Subtle.

Since these cupcakes have to be finger food I thought a small size would be better. These were made in mini muffin pans and can be eaten in 1-2 mouthfuls. I kept the icing minimal because I don’t really like those cakes that have a tower of icing about the same height as the actual cake. They are also a bit small for a really strong cream cheese flavour so I used 50-50 Philadelphia/butter. I topped them off with a small piece of grated carrot that I had soaked in hot water for 10 minutes.

Carrot cupcakes (adapted from Womens Weekly ‘cupcakes by colour’)

• 1 cup peanut oil (the recipe says vegetable but I ran out)
• 1 1/3 cups firmly packed brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 3 cups firmly packed coarsely grated carrot
• 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
• 2 1/4 cups self raising flour (sifted)
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate soda
• 2 tsp mixed spice

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line mini muffin pans with little patty pans. I did some big as well because otherwise it makes a lot of mini cakes.
2. Beat oil, sugar and eggs together in small bowl with electric mixer until thick and foamy.
3. Transfer mixture to food processor, add carrot and walnut and blend until they are the desired size.
4. Transfer mixture to larger bowl and mix in sifted ingredients.
5. Fill the cases about 1/2 to 2/3 full. The cakes rise so take care not to overfill the patty pans.
6. Bake about 15 minutes.

It might seem annoying to keep transferring bowls but I found the carrot and walnut was too chunky for a little cake if it didn’t get blended in. I guess for a larger cake it wouldn’t matter so much. The cakes keep quite well, they were still nice the next day and the day after.

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