choir cupcakes

The choir's having its annual startofanewyear dinner tomorrow night and I've been asked to take cupcakes. There are still a whole lot of leftovers from last week in the freezer all wrapped up in separate foil packages but I was too lazy to unwrap them to see if there's enough. So I decided to start afresh and make 2 kinds - carrot and chocolate - rather than make 2 batches of the same flavour (boring). I've never made carrot cupcakes before - only carrot big cakes. I used a Martha Stewart recipe I copied from somewhere or other. I didn't bother to convert all the U.S. cup measurements to ours and they turned out fine:

Carrot Cupcakes (makes 24)

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

1 cup pecans

3 cups plain flour

2 t baking powder

1 t bicarb soda

2 t cinnamon

1 t nutmeg

1 t salt

500g carrots

3 large eggs

1/3 cup buttermilk

1t pure vanilla extract

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 175C. Spread pecans in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast for 10 mins, turning them once halfway through cooking time. Cool and chop finely.

In a medium bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients except the sugar. Peel and grate the carrots finely (the food processor is perfect for this.) Place grated carrots, eggs, buttermilk, vanilla, sugar and oil in a large bowl and whisk until combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold the flour mixture into the carrot mixture with the chopped pecans.

Spoon mixture into 2 paper lined muffin tins and bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from tins and cool completely before frosting.

There was a bit of leftover batter (I'll make the 24 a bit bigger next time) which was enough for another 3 when the first lot came out of the oven. The one on the right (below) is the one of the 2nd batch left to stand for 25 minutes. See how it's peaky and the other one flat? No doubt RLB knows why that happened - will check out her site/book later to try and find the answer.

I topped them with the same cream cheese frosting I used for the Red Velvet cupcakes - recipe here.

I'll do a bit of searching tonight to find a nice chocolate cupcake recipe using cocoa. The kitchen is now pretty hot so I'll make them first thing tomorrow.

And just between us ... I nipped down to the corner to buy a takeaway coffee while the cakes were cooling. I left the house in (floury) cut-off tracky pants and thongs and with my bra straps showing. I realised, sadly, that after just 12 days of being retired I'd completely let myself go.