I stumbled upon this recipe for carrot cake cupcakes when I was procrastinating writing my essay. To make the carrot cakes a bit more aesthetically pleasing I decided to use my mini loaf tins. The great thing about these are that they are easy to make, small(ish), and a perfect kick for anyone with a sweet tooth.

Ingredients:

• 150 grams self raising flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 125 grams brown sugar
• 125 grams softened butter
• 75 grams grated carrot
• 3 eggs
• 2 tablespoons of icing sugar
• 100 grams cream cheese

1/4 cinnamon and 1/4 nutmeg were also suggested in the ingredients list, but I decided to leave these out.

Method:

• Preheat your oven to 180.
• Line your mini loaf tins with butter then baking parchment. If you want to opt for cupcakes instead, this recipe makes 12.
• Sieve the flour and baking powder into a large bowl. I don’t have a sieve, so I used a potato masher to get all the big bits out. If you’ve decided to use nutmeg you can add that in with the flower and baking powder, and mash that too.
• Add in the butter (I always find it’s easier to break this up into bits before you start mixing), brown sugar, carrot and eggs. I cheated and used a pack of pre-shredded carrots, which I probably should have cut a little bit finer before adding to the mix. I combine it all I used my stand mixer, but a wooden spoon will work just as well.
• Pop the mixture into your mini loaf tins (or cupcake cases) and bake for 20-25 minutes. The amount of mixture worked out almost perfectly, there was only a bit left after I filled my tins.

• Make sure to put your loaf tins on a flat surface, which I forgot to do.

• I baked mine for 25 minutes and they looked slightly burned, but I covered the majority of that up with the cream cheese frosting. Leave the cakes to cool before you remove them from the casing- if you don’t they could crumble.
• Mix the cream cheese with the icing sugar in a bowl. I would use 2 1/2 tablespoons of icing sugar instead of the two suggested, just so the taste of the Philadelphia is not so overwhelming.
• Put the mini loafs in the fridge for around 30 minutes so the icing can set.

Decorate your mini loafs with whatever you want! I chose pecans, and they added a nice crunch to this sweet treat.