Baking: Carrot Cupcakes

Happy Saturday everyone! I’m rather happy as I have Monday-Wednesday off work (celebrating my birthday, if you haven’t guess from my previous posts!), it’s my first days off since I started way back in July, so I’m looking forward to quality time with friends and family, and a few good lie-ins. Now, to today’s recipe;I moaned in this post after my influx of carrots. ASDA somehow sent me 5kg of the things, despite me only ordering and paying for 1kg. Hence soup making and cake mixing. It probably wasn’t the greatest idea in the world for me to do those two things simultaneously. Whilst the soup came out unscathed, the first batch of these carrot cupcakes went in the oven lacking eggs and sugar. I thought the mix looked a little oily. Luckily I still had 2.5kg of carrots left at that point, so more grating happened, and these lovely little cakes were bought. Almost a traditional carrot cake in miniature, these are moist and slightly less sweet than the traditional version. The icing is a lot lighter than normal, and almost sharp, whilst the cakes are heavily spiced.

And it’s a simple recipe too! When I was researching, so many asked for expensive ingredients. Or ones I just didn’t have. Six eggs in a cake mix is also excessive if you ask me! Tinned pineapple is unnecessary. As is sorting out the spices from whole. This is a dream in comparison to some, yet it is still insanely delicious. I had one with every cup of tea until they were gone (I drink a lot of tea). Even one for breakfast, as I reckon they are healthy enough to justify morning eating.
The bad point about this recipe? Grating a load of carrot is really…grating on the nerves sometimes.

Ingredients

• 150g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 150g sugar
• 150-160ml vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 175g carrot, grated – I would take 250g carrots, peel them, top and tail, then that should be enough!
• Grated zest of 1 orange
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon mixed spice (double up on the cinnamon if you don’t have any)
• For the topping: 125ml mascarpone, juice of 1 orange, 1 tablespoon of sugar, pinch of cinnamon (I forgot this and it was still fine)

Now, this is a super easy recipe to mix up. Finely grate your carrots and orange zest into a large bowl. Add the flour, sugar and spices. Mix together.
Add the eggs and the oil. Mix until just combined. Spoon into cupcake cases (fill generously – this amount made 11 for me) and bake for 15 minutes.
Let cool completely before making the topping, which is also super simple. Simply beat together all of the ingredients, adding more sugar if necessary. Spoon onto the cupcakes and swirl as attractively as you can. These need refrigerating ideally – and the topping does crack a little unattractively. But they taste great, so I’m more than willing to forgive them.
These are great for this time of year. The spices add a festive touch, without being so Christmassy that you forget it’s November. I have a rule, and that’s no Christmas until after my birthday. So on Wednesday I’ll be decorating! When’s your tree going up?

Any more ideas about what I can do with carrots? Admittedly the 5kg is now down to two single carrots, and I’m turning orange…carrot cake was definitely the least virtuous option I went with!