Carrot Cake Cupcakes

This week's recipe was inspired by a request I had from my wonderful friend Fay. I combined her wish for carrot cake and cupcakes to make, well, carrot cake cupcakes! My recipe is inspired by this one from BBC Good Food. They are light and sweet, with tangy cream cheese frosting. Delicious!

Ingredients:
For the cakes
175g dark brown sugar
200g self raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp cinnamon
zest of 1 orange
150ml oil (sunflower or vegetable)
2 eggs
200g carrots, grated
a handful of pecans, to decorate (any nuts will do!)

For the icing:
100g butter, softened
300g soft cheese
100g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180 (160 fan.) Line a 12 hole muffin/cupcake tray with paper cases. (I ended up having enough mixture to make 17 cakes in total so maybe have a few extra cases handy just in case!)
2. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, flour, bicarbonate of soda, mixed spice, cinnamon and orange zest. Add the oil and eggs and mix until combined. Add the grated carrots and mix again.
3. Divide the mixture between the cake cases so they are roughly 3/4 full. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool on a wire rack before icing.
4. While the cakes are cooling, make the icing. Cream the butter until it is soft. Add the cream cheese and whisk to combine. Add the vanilla extract and the icing sugar, bit by bit, until you have your desired consistency.
5. Put the frosting in a piping bag and, once cooled, pipe a swirl on top of each cake. Finely chop a handful of pecans and sprinkle on top to decorate.

And there you have it. Really easy and totally delicious! As always, a video of this bake can be found on my Instagram. Please let me know if you give these a go yourself. I absolutely love seeing the photos of your creations!