Carrot Cupcakes (with Cream Cheese Icing)

This recipe hasn't remodeled for cup-caking purposes - so, if you wanted to make a  full sized cake, or muffins? all you need to do is a adjust the cooking times and you're good to go!

The recipe is adapted from the one Moll Katzen features in her Moosewood Cookbook I've played around with the quantity of sweetener, the kinds of spices and halved the recipe overall. Finally I topped these little babies off with my delicious cream cheese icing (which I'll feature in another post...) and little icing carrots (I'd meant to use the walnuts I'd omitted from the batter - but I got carried away!)

Aren't they the cutest?!

I took them with me on a picnic where they were very well received. Flavoursome, moist and not too sweet (a trick of that mysterious icing) because they contain both wholemeal flour AND carrots they've got to be good for you, right?

A delicious cross section...

If you've got the stuff with which you can bake in your flat anyway - there's nothing particularly prohibitive about this recipe... if you're not living in a baking friendly flat - try these when you get home!

If you have to give the cream cheese icing a miss (not always a flat friendly ingredient)  they're almost as good on their own - or a simple drizzle of lemon juice and icing sugar would be a suitable substitute.


You'll need:

To set your oven to 180 degrees C, and line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.

First, beat in a large bowl:

3/4 cut melted butter (approx 150g unmelted...)
3/4 cup honey
2 eggs
3 tsp vanilla
and
the grated rind of one lemon

Then, sift together:

1 cup of wholemeal flour
1 cup of white flour
(or 2 cups of wholemeal, if you're feeling virtuous)
1/2 tsp of salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg (Molly suggests all spice)
2 tsp ground ginger (Molly suggests cinnamon)

Also:
1 1/4 cups of grated carrot soaked in the juice of the one lemon. The number of carrots you'll need to get this quantity will vary according to the size of the carrots - so measure as you go!

Fold the flour mixture gently into the butter mixture alternating with the carrots (flour > carrots > flour > carrots > flour), careful not to overmix.

Spoon batter into prepared tines and bake until a skewer inserted into the centre of a cupcake comes out damp, but not wet. (Start at 12 minutes and check regularly from there)

Allow to cool before icing or drizzling or dusting with icing sugar and serving.