Carrot Cupcakes

Carrot Cupcakes with salted caramel frosting topped with fudge sprinkles.

Ok first your thinking WHITE salted caramel frosting? YES courtesy of some convenient flavoured icing sugar.

Everyone thinks I always cook from scratch and whilst I always prefer cooking from scratch, my homeschooling lifestyle and simply because I don’t always feel like cooking means 20% (don’t know where I plucked that % from but let’s go with it) of my meals are not from scratch. I have no shame in admitting that one of our most favourite not from scratch meals is this rogan josh curry kit. Ok so I do add in a few extra slices of onion, green pepper and a couple of pierced green chillies but still, I didn’t do all the hard work of making my own curry paste, sorting out the various spices etc.

I used to bake A LOT like everyday before my third child and whilst I wouldn’t swap baking for having such a blessing I do miss it, like A LOT. Thus I’m not totally against food products that make our life easier and whilst I could have made my own salted caramel or even bought a jar and added it to regular buttercream, sugar and crumbs were recently having a 2 for 1 deal and well I just couldn’t resist buying baking goods, I even picked up those fudge sprinkles and  yellow cupcake cases that I almost used here but as much as I love yellow, they didn’t really go with the carrot theme.

You only see 1 full cupcake throughout these set of photos because well I only have 1 orange silicone cupcake case plus you don’t want need to see how unevenly I distributed the frosting among my cupcakes.

The intense salted caramel frosting matches up to the spiced carrot cupcakes. My recipe is adapted from Maryam’s beautiful 3-layered carrot cake obviously you can go for the more conventional cream cheese frosting if you prefer, just half the recipe found here and a little tip when making cream cheese frosting make sure your butter is room temp before whipping together with the chilled cream cheese.

The recipe makes 15 cupcakes or 12 cupcakes with enough batter left over to make a few pancakes which I so did.

Ingredients

• 2 cups coarsely grated carrot
• 1 1/2 cups plain all-purpose flour (you can use half wholemeal if you like)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• pinch of sea salt and black pepper
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 1/8 tsp ground allspice
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoon sunflower oil (could use coconut oil or even olive oil)
• 3 free-range eggs
• 1 cups packed brown sugar or 1 cup granulated sugar plus 1 tablespoon molasses/date syrup
• for frosting *see notes
• 125 grams unsalted butter
• 1 x 250 grams bag of salted caramel flavoured icing sugar
• 2 tablespoon whole milk
• to decorate
• fudge sprinkles

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 360F/ 180C/160C Fan / Gas Mark 4 and prepare your pan(s) by lining with cupcake cases.
2. In a large bowl place your eggs, sugar, and oil. Whisk together until smooth and well combined, stir in your grated carrots, set aside.
3. In a separate large bowl, sift together (using a whisk or a sieve) the remaining ingredients which is the flour, baking soda, baking powder and spices. Pour in the carrot mixture and gently stir together until there are no pockets of flour left. Don’t over mix! Fill each case 2/3 full. Bake in the center of oven until the tops are springy and when you insert a skewer or knife into the centre, it comes out clean, 15-20 minutes.
4. Remove from oven and leave to cool 5 minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.
5. Meanwhile, in a large bowl beat butter for a few minutes before lowering speed, adding icing sugar and milk, once it has come together turn up the speed to high and allow to beat for 5 minutes.
6. Once cupcakes are cool spread or pipe the frosting onto each and decorate with fudge sprinkles.

Notes

Summary

Article Name

Carrot Cupcakes