Basic Bakes - Nut-Free Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Hey beaut's!

Today I'm back with not only a scrumptious recipe but a new little series I'm going to be adding to my blog called basic bakes! This series will include simple bakes and cakes as well as well known family favourites, so I'm kicking things off with yummy carrot cake cupcakes! Usually carrot cake comes as a full cake, but I wanted to keep things faff free so theres no greasing cake tins or lining with grease-proof paper, as long as you have some cupcake cases your good to go. These are also nut-free carrot cake cupcakes because personally I hate nuts, also so many people have nut allergy's so I think it's essential to have a super tasty nut-free carrot cake recipe to hand. 

What You Will Need For The Carrot Cake Cupcakes - Makes 12

150ml Sunflower Oil

2 Eggs

135g Dark Brown Sugar

165g Self-Raising Flour

1 tsp Cinnamon 

1/4 tsp Mixed Spice 

1/2 tsp Bicarbonate Of Soda

125g Grated Carrot (Around 2 Small Carrots)

What You Will Need For The Vanilla Buttercream

150g Unsalted Butter

350g Icing Sugar

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Splash of Milk

How To - Carrot Cake Cupcakes

1. Firstly pre-heat your oven to gas mark 4 /180 and line a muffin tin with your cupcake cases.

2. Peel and grate your carrot and set aside, also when weighing your 125 grams of carrot make sure you weigh it once it's been grated, if you weigh the carrots whole before they've been grated the measurements will be wrong. 

3. In a large mixing bowl, whack in your sunflower oil and dark brown sugar and give them a mix, then add in the 2 eggs and mix again until incorporated.

4. Add in all of the dry ingredients and mix well, the mixture will become a bit sticky at this point but that's perfect, then fold through your grated carrots.

5. Spoon the cupcake batter into your paper cases until their about half full and bake for around 18-20 minutes or until the top of the cupcakes are springy to the touch, then transfer onto a wire rack to cool.

How To - Vanilla Buttercream

1. Once the cupcakes are completely cool your going to want top them with some super yummy buttercream, now I know it's traditional to have cream cheese buttercream on a carrot cake but as I said I wanted to keep this as basic as I could, and not everyone has cream cheese sat in the fridge, but most of us do have butter sooooo, in a large bowl or standing mixer beat the butter until it becomes smooth and whippy, then start adding the icing sugar slowly to avoid the dreaded icing sugar cloud and mix until combined. 

2. Pop in the vanilla extract in and then start adding some milk slowly if you feel like the buttercream is quite thick, I used 1 tablespoon in mine this time around.

3. Pipe or spoon the vanilla buttercream on top of the cupcakes and then decorate how you like, I used some cute carrot sprinkles I had but you do you, and voila!

And there you have it beauts, easy yet super delicious carrot cake cupcakes, honestly these are so light and fluffy yet moist at the same time! And I love the fact their nut-free but still have that yummy carrot cake flavour!