Recipe: Carrot Cake Muffins

Ingredients:

For the muffins

175g light brown muscovado sugar

200g self-raising flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

200g carrots (roughly 3 medium carrots - you don't need to be too precise!)

2 eggs

150ml sunflower oil (or vegetable oil)

3tsp mixed spice

a lemon

For the frosting:

300g icing sugar

125g cream cheese

50g butter

You can buy jars of mixed spice, but if  you don't have any then it's easy enough to make yourself by just combining a teaspoon of each of the following spices;

Allspice

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

Coriander

Ginger

Cloves - just a couple

And just grind it all together.

Now, on to the muffins! To start, preheat your oven to 180C.

Measure out your sugar and flour into a mixing bowl.

Add the zest of one lemon.

In a separate jug measure out your oil, add both eggs, and whisk together.

Grate the carrots and add them to the mixing bowl and, while gradually pouring in your oil/egg mix, start beating everything together.

Spoon your mixture into muffin cases - you want them to be roughly 3/4 full. 

We found our mixture made about 20 muffins, but it may vary depending on how big your cases are!

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

While the muffins are cooling you can make the cream cheese frosting.
To do this simply beat the icing sugar, butter, and cream cheese together until smooth.
If you sift the icing sugar first then it makes it much easier to get the desired consistency.

Once your muffins are cool then go ahead and frost. We had fun using piping bags to decorate, however you can always swirl on the frosting with a knife to get the "Hummingbird Bakery" look. Remember not to add the frosting until the muffins are completely cool or else it will melt!

Viola!

Once your cupcakes are frosted feel free to add any extra decorations, and enjoy!

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