Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Delicious moist carrot cupcakes with pecans and raisins, topped with cream cheese frosting

Course Dessert

Cuisine European

Keyword Cupcake

Prep Time 40

Cook Time 25

Total Time 1 5

Servings

Calories 349kcal

Author thebakingexplorer

Pre-heat your oven to 160C Fan/180C/350F/Gas Mark 4, and line a cupcake tin with cupcake cases
Put the raisins into a bowl and pour the orange juice over them. Leave them to soak while you prepare the rest of the ingredients
In a mixing bowl, whisk together the vegetable oil, eggs and light brown sugar
Add the grated carrot and the raisins, including the orange juice, and mix in
Add the self raising flour, wholemeal flour, baking powder, mixed spice, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda. Mix them in
Add the chopped pecans and stir them in
Divide the mixture between the 12 cupcake cases. As carrot cake batter is quite 'wet' I find it easier to either pour the mixture into the cases with a jug or put it into a piping bag and pipe it into the cases
Bake them for 20-25 minutes or until they are golden brown and a skewer inserted in the centre of the cupcakes comes out clean. Leave to cool completely
To make the cream cheese frosting, use an electric mixer to beat the butter until smooth. Then mix in the icing sugar until the mixture is smooth
Next, add the cream cheese and the vanilla extract and mix in until the frosting is thick and smooth
Pipe the cream cheese frosting onto each cupcake using a piping bag fitted with your chosen nozzle. Or spread on with a spoon
Decorate with the fondant carrots, or decorations of your choice
Store in an airtight container in the fridge, eat leftovers within 3 days

Make sure all your ingredients (particularly the eggs) are at room temperature before you start baking.
The pecans are optional, you could omit them entirely, or use another nut like walnuts.
The raisins are optional too, you can leave them out or replace them with dried cramberries, sultanas or even chopped up dried apricots.
Mixed spice is a British spice blend usually containing cinnamon, coriander seed, nutmeg, clove, pimento and ginger. If you can't get hold of it, you can use a Pumpkin Spice mix instead. Or try 1 + ¼ tsp cinnamon, ¼ tsp ground ginger, ¼ tsp ground nutmeg, ¼ tsp ground cloves.
I prefer to use Philadelphia full fat cream cheese for the buttercream as it gives me the best results.
Although I provide cup measurements, I highly recommend weighing your ingredients out using digital kitchen scales*. It is the most accurate way to measure ingredients and will ensure the best results. Digital scales are very low cost and can be purchased for around £12 ($16.50) .
For teaspoon (tsp) and tablespoon (tbsp) measurements, please use measuring spoons* and not the type of spoons you eat with. Again this will ensure accuracy and provide the best results.