Carrot Cupcakes

Whenever someone had a milestone birthday or celebrations at my previous workplace they ordered carrot cakes from the canteen (the kitchen staff baked the cake in-house!). Lovely, moist and loaded with nuts, an absolute delight, the most delicious ones ever. I have liked carrot cakes ever since and I have tried them at many bakeries and patisseries but they never came close to the ones made by the canteen. Then I came across a recipe online-this one. I scaled the measurement to 2/3rd quantity and made my usual substitutions for nuts, type of sugar and also substituted the baking soda for baking powder and made cup cakes. Try either recipe -the one in the link above or my version and take your pick. I made 12 cup cakes and with the remaining batter a small cake 🙂

Ingredients:

For Cake:

• 2 cups grated Carrots (about 4 carrots)
• 130 gms All Purpose Flour
• 1 1/3 tsp Baking Powder
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 1 tsp Cinnamon Powder
• 190 mls of Vegetable Oil
• 270 gms of Demerara Sugar
• 1 tsp Vanilla Essence
• 3 Eggs
• 1/2 cup Walnuts (crushed)
• Handful of Raisins

For frosting:

• Whipped Cream
• Icing Sugar
• Walnuts (crushed)

Method:

Heat oven to 160°C (mine is a fan oven, if you are using a conventional oven heat it to 180°C).

Mix the dry ingredients (flour, cinnamon, salt, baking powder) till well combined and keep aside.

Place the sugar in a bowl and add the wet ingredients -oil, vanilla essence and add the eggs one at a time and mix well.

Add the dry ingredients in three batches to make a smooth batter.

Add the carrots, raisins and crushed walnuts and mix well.

Line the muffin tin with paper cups and put a heaped table spoon of the batter in each cup.

Bake in the oven for about 18-20 mins and then test with a toothpick, if it comes clean, the cup cakes are ready.

Take them out of the oven and let them cool completely. The cupcakes are utterly gorgeous at this point and can be served or to make then more decadent top with frosting.

Beat the whipped cream and icing sugar with a hand held mixie.

Spoon the whipped cream frosting on the cup cakes and sprinkle with crushed walnuts.

Note: I had left over batter so I baked a small round cake. Cut it length-wise in two so you now have two round pieces. Sandwich the two pieces with whipped cream frosting. Add frosting on top of the cake and then cut in two. Place one piece on top of the other and smooth frosting over it and around the sides. Sprinkle crushed walnuts over the cake and cut into 4 slices. Serve.