A taste of things to come

Since doing a cupcake class with the wonderful Cathie from melbourne epicure a couple of weeks back I've been a little obsessed. Not only with making cupcakes but with playing around with recipes.

 I've had no complaints about my red velvet but I think they still need a little tweaking. 

I'm attempting to keep my cakes low fat and healthy for little munchkins but still tasty.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that would reach for a chocolate cupcake over carrot, but I promise you, these are REALLY good. Thumbs up all round. I suppose you could even have two!! If I was being totally honest I would admit that I just wanted a healthy cake option so I could load up the cream cheese icing.

Carrot cupcakes

Ingredients

• 225g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 75g sultanas
• 50g brown sugar
• 115g grated carrot
• 1 TBsp olive oil ( I would have replaced this with apple sauce, but was all out)
• 2 eggs, lightly whisked
• 250g yoghurt
• 
  

  Cream-cheese frosting

  
  
  I have to be honest, I didn't measure my ingredients for this.
  I just beat the cream cheese I had and added icing sugar until I got the right consistency, with a drop of vanilla essence. In hind sight I would probably just squeeze in some lemon juice.

Crushed walnuts

Method

1. 
   
   Preheat oven to 160°C (fan forced). 
2. 
   
   Line twelve 80ml muffin pans with paper cases. ( My mix made 12 "normal" size plus 10 minis. 
3. 
   
   Sift the flour, mixed spice and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl. Stir in sultanas, sugar and carrot. Make a well in the centre.
4. Whisk together the yoghurt, egg and oil in a jug. Pour into the flour mixture and stir to combine. Spoon mixture among cases. Bake in oven for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into centres comes out clean. Transfer to a rack to cool.
5. To make frosting beat cheese and icing sugar until smooth and stir through vanilla essence
6. Spread cakes with cream-cheese frosting and dress with crushed walnuts.
7. Eat and enjoy
8. Try to stop at just 1

   

Bonus : They get Sadie's seal of approval!!!

For every success there is a failure. I had my very first attempt at making Macarons. BIG FAIL!!!