Carrot Cake Cupcakes

- festive yummies

I love carrots. And I love dessert. But a few years ago, if someone had had told me to create an actual dessert out of carrots, I would have looked at them quite weirdly.

All this changed when a wonderful person entered my family, and guess what his favourite dessert is? Carrot cake!

I once prepared a whole cake, but it's unfair to always wait for a celebration to have a delicious dessert like this.

So I got this idea: who says that carrot cake must be.. a cake?

This is how these colorful little cupcakes came to life. I believe it's needless to say how successful they were. After all, the photos talk for themselves.

Here's what you have to do if my story got you curious:

Ingredients for the cupcakes:

• 100 g walnuts, roasted and chopped

• 4 eggs

• 2 tsp baking soda

• 350 g carrots, peeled, cleaned, grated and strained

• 300 g white flour

• 1,5 dl oil

• 250 g sugar

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 tsp cinnamon

• a pinch of salt

Ingredients for the cream:

• 50 g soft butter

• 250 g mascarpone

• 1 tk vanilla extract

• zest of a lemon

• 150 g icing sugar

Instructions for the cupcakes:

1. Peheat your oven to 180C.

2. In a large bowl, mix with a spoon the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer, then add the yolks, the sugar and the vanilla extract. Then comes the oil, the carrots and the walnuts. Set the electric mixer aside.

4. Combine the two mixtures by carefully adding one tbsp after another of the floury mixture to the other one. Slowly mix in each tbsp with a spoon before adding the other one.

5. Transfer the mixture equally into your muffin liners and bake for about 35 minutes (toothpick check).

6. Set them aside to cool completely.

Instructions for the cream:

1. In the meantime, take a small bowl and the cleaned electric mixer, and mix together all the ingedients for the cream. Be careful not to overmix! Let the cream cool down in the fridge.

2. When everything is nice and cold, take a muffin, cut it in half, add some cream with the help of a piping bag in the middle, and decorate with some more cream on the top.

3. You can also use roasted walnuts and carrot slices to make them prettier. Keep them below or at room temperature because the butter in the cream can melt easily.

Enjoy! :)