Low Fat Carrot and Nut Cupcakes

Another recipe from 500 Cupcakes & Muffins, this one is certainly a keeper! Moist with the addition of banana... which gave wonderful aroma and flavour to a normal carrot cake.

Low Fat Carrot and Nut Cupcakes

Cupcakes:
225g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
150g brown sugar (I've reduced this to about 100g)
100g grated carrots
100g roughly chopped walnuts
200g mashed bananas
2 lightly beaten eggs
175ml vegetable oil

Icing:
200g fat-free cream cheese, softened (if can't find fat-free cream cheese, use fat-free plain yoghurt)
115g icing sugar, sieved
1 tsp vanilla essence
4 tbsp chopped walnut
12 walnut halves

Preheat oven to 175C. Place 12 baking cases in a muffin tray. In a large bowl, combine all the cupcakes ingredients. Use an electric whisk and beat on low speed until all ingredients are combined.

Now this is the part I loved most for the recipes in this book haha... easy peasy just mix in everything at the same time. For this recipe, I didn't even need to use electric mixer, I just used my balloon whisk to incorporate them.

Spoon mixture into cases till 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove tray and cool for 5 mins before removing the cupcakes to cool on a rack.

To make icing, combine cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla essence with electric mixer until smooth. Fold in chopped nuts. Smear on cupcakes and garnish with walnut halves.

Store without icing in air tight container for up to 3 days, or freeze up till 3 months.

Ref: 500 Cupcakes & Muffins, By Fergal Connolly book (published by PageOne Publishing)

I'm off the whole of this week hence updates will be sporadic as access to the net is limited. Thousands of apologies if I reply your emails late.

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