It’s been a rather exciting time recently. Since Baby B arrived we’ve noticed that we’re bursting around the seams, not because I’ve developed an unhealthy obsession with cakes (though being on maternity leave isn’t really helping my waistline!) but because small children seem to come with a huge amount of stuff!  We’ve been thinking about moving house for a while now, but our minds have been more concentrated on the matter!   We’ve been lucky and sold and bought fairly quickly so we’re now in the process of clearing out the house of things we’d rather not move.

Having moved plenty of times before, I’d rather not have lots of food to take with us so I’m in the process of running down all of my ‘dry’ food stores and tidying up all of the odds and ends in the baking cupboard.  These carrot cupcakes finished off bags of sugar and raisins; all good!

You will need:

175g butter, 225g demerara sugar, 2 medium eggs, 150g self raising flour, 1tsp baking powder, 1/2tsp mixed spice, 50g raisins, 175g grated carrot.

Preheat the oven to 190°C and line a deep muffin tray with 12 paper cases.  Cream together the butter and sugar.  Add the beaten eggs and mix well.  Add the flour, baking powder, mixed spice and raisins and combine.  This mixture may seem quite dry but it’s OK because as you add the carrots the mixture becomes more like a traditional cake batter.  Place the batter in the cake cases and bake for 25 minutes or until risen and a skewer inserted into the middle of each cake comes out clean.