I was feeling particularly guilty at the weekend as I was about to tell my team at work that I had handed in my notice and was abandoning them. So i decided to do some guilt baking to soften them up - and these little beauties are just right for the job. I'm a big fan of carrot cake - in fact its right up there in my top - oooh 5 or so cakes (its a hard choice), but have found that its hard to get that depth taste and texture with the mini versions which have a tendency to dry out. Not so with these bad boys - they are very moist, with the soaked sultanas giving an extra pop of flavour with you bite into them - and the rich sticky icing is enough to make even the most saintly soul feel a little bit guilty!
The recipe is adapted from http://www.joyofbaking.com/CarrotCupcake.html - thanks for the inspiration! As usual i didn't have all the ingredients and have tweaked it out of preference and necessity.
My scales are broken at the moment, so everything was done the American way - by volume and I have to say I may be a convert. I also have very little in the way of kitchen equipment, so most things are done by hand in my method - if you have a lovely Kenwood mixer or something then by all means use it (especially for the icing which is a total ball ache by hand)! This should make about 20 little parcels of carrotty loveliness.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground Allspice
4 large eggs, beaten
1 cup (200g) soft brown sugar and caster sugar (use what you have in the cupboard - I used about 3/4 brown)
1 cup (240 ml) sunflower oil or other light flavourless oil (vegetable or a very light olive oil)
21/2 cups (260g) grated raw carrots
1 large apple grated
1 cup (100g) sultanas
2 tbsp orange based fruit juice
Some hot black tea
Optional : 1/2 cup (55g) pecans or walnuts, coarsely chopped and dusted in flour to help stop them sinking (I leave them out)
Vanilla Cream Cheese Icing
1/2 cup (113g) unsalted butter, room temperature
8 ounces (227g) cream cheese, room temperature
3 cups (330g) icing sugar, sifted
2 tsp Vanilla paste (if you have to use essence then only use 1 tsp)
Equipment:
Two large mixing bowls
one small bowl
Measuring jug
Wooden spoon
Sieve
Whisk
Metal spoon
Hand mixer
Paper Muffin Cases
Muffin or cup cake baking trays - a normal flat baking tray will do, but your cakes won't be very round!
For the cakes
- Pre heat the oven to 180C and line your muffin tins with paper cases.
- Place the sultanas and juice into the small bowl, boil the kettle and make yourself a cup of tea - before you add the milk, pour enough of the hot black tea on to the sultanas to nearly cover them in liquid. Give them a stir and zap in the microwave for about 15 seconds. Leave to soak - they should plump up considerably.
- In one of your big bowls whisk together the dry ingredients (Flour, salt, bicarb and spice). Whisking has a similar effect to sieving the flour by adding air, but with less kitchen coverage.
- In your other bowl whisk the oil and sugar together until slightly thickened (I used my little electric hand mixer for this) then whisk in the beaten eggs til throughly mixed
- Fold in the flour with a big metal spoon, don't beat out all the air. Then fold in the grated carrot, apple, plumped-up sultanas and nuts if you're using them.
- Now divide your mixture between the cases and bake for about 20 minutes. Test by sticking a skewer into the centre of one, if it comes out clean its done. Take them out and cool on a rack.
- In a big bowl, cream the butter with a wooden spoon - use an electric mixer if you have one. Then beat in the cream cheese until its all smooth and pale.
- Now beat in the sifted icing sugar - its may help to put a damp tea towel over the bowl as you start this to help reduce the blizzard-in-a-kitchen look.
- Finally stir in the vanilla paste and mix thoroughly. You should now have something resembling very thick cream shot through with little specks of vanilla - and it tastes GORGEOUS!!
My icing went a bit runny so I just dolloped a spoonful on each cooled cupcake and swirled it about a bit. If you want yours a bit firmer then beat it for longer or try adding some more icing sugar which should help thicken it up a bit - then if you're feeling fancy you can pipe it on to the cakes. Either way its all good!
Now get unloading that guilt - although i ate rather a lot of mine, so ended up feeling even more guilty. What a bitch.
