Petite N Pretty>> Mini Carrot Cup Cakes

My 4 year old hates veggies. She can go to any length to avoid eating her portion of vegetables – she is perfectly capable of  looking furtively around and if the coast is clear, walk as quietly as a cat and chuck her bit in the garbage bin. :D

I had to do something. I manage giving her spinach by pureeing it and adding it to chicken curry and lentils. But carrot had to be disguised beautifully. A simple orange looking cake won’t deceive her. She is far too intelligent to not see through the trick. So I had to bake these fancy looking ones. No rocket science this- just bought decorations and made chocolate frosting on these mini cups.

 

 

 

You’ll need:

1 and 3/4 to 2 cups self-raising flour

1 and1/2 cups of brown castor sugar 

1 and 1/2 cups grated carrot (you can add more- depending on you ‘carrot tolerance meter’)

1 teaspoon cinnamon powder

2 pinches of nutmeg

2 pinches of salt

3 large eggs

1 1/2 cups vegetable oil

Method:

Preheat oven to 300f.

Sift the flour with cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Mix with a hand blender/mixer sugar and vegetable oil for about 30 seconds , then add eggs to it. Mix a little more. Add the grated carrot and mix further. Add the flour slowly and mix until all ingredients blend completely.

Spoon batter to little cup cake moulds or pour into a lined cake tin and bake at 180 degrees for 15 minutes (for cupcakes), for 40 mins (if a full cake) or until browned (and do the fork/stick test!)

Cool on rack and decorate as you wish with M&Ms, marshmallows or cream cheese frosting. I had come chocolate pre-mix frosting in the pantry, so used that. But carrot cakes go best with cream cheese frosting.

Needless to say, she gobbled them all up!