Carrot, Orange and Walnut cupcakes!

I had the day off work so I decided to bake a few cupcakes! I absolutely adore carrot cake but I have never actually ventured to make it myself, so I thought I's take the plunge and make some carrot, orange and walnut cupcakes... (I also bought ingredients to make strawberries and cream layered cupcakes, but that's for another day and another blog!)

Ingredients

2 large eggs

175g golden caster sugar

150g sunflower oil

200g sifted self-raising flour

3 tsp mixed spice

2 carrots, coarsely grated

1 tsp vanilla extract

finely grated zest of 2 oranges

2 handfuls of walnuts

100g soft cheese

icing sugar

Method

1. preheat the oven to 180 degrees, or gas mark 4. Get your cake cases all ready to go: the recipe makes 12 large muffins or 24 small cupcakes.

2. Beat together the eggs, sugar and oil until they are light and fluffy. It's best to use an electric whisk, but to beef up your biceps then beat by hand.

3. Gently fold in the flour, carrot, spices, vanilla extract, walnuts and half the orange zest until it is all thoroughly combined.

4. distribute the cake mix into the cake cases, place in the oven for 20-25 mins until well-risen and golden. Put the cakes on a cooling rack for 10-15 mins before icing...

Icing

1. Place the 100g of soft cheese into a bowl and add icing sugar until it is the desired thickness and sweetness.

2. Use the remaining orange zest to garnish your cupcakes

And finally.... ENJOY! If you make them let me know how they go, you can also change the recipe adding raisins, sultanas, or chopped nuts.