Spiced Carrot Muffins

I haven't got much of a sweet tooth - but baking is one of my passions. In fact I bake quite often, usually for friends and family. To be honest, I find it to be quite relaxing and therapeutic. I used to wish to become a pastry chef and attended a few courses in cake decoration too. However, I decided that I would much rather stick to baking as a hobby rather than an occupation as I was concerned that I would begin to hate it if I had to do it for a living. 

So, as a part-time thing, I bake cakes from home. By word of mouth and the magic of Facebook, I have received quite a few orders for cakes, some for birthdays, others for hen's nights, etc. (If you wish to see some of my work you can visit: https://www.facebook.com/MiksCakesAndBakes). Admittedly I have been giving most of my attention to gluten free cooking these days and have not been updating my cakes page as often as I should be. 

Although most of the time, these orders are for ordinary cakes using ordinary flour, I regularly spare some time to experiment with gluten free flours and substitutes, just out of curiosity. Ordinary or gluten-free, cakes will never go to waste in my house as both my dad and my partner are huge sweet-addicts and will eat anything they find on the kitchen top so I can experiment as much as I want to really, they'd still eat the final product even if it's not to their liking.

One of my favourite cakes is Carrot Cake and I have quite a good recipe for the gluten-free version of this (to follow soon). I make this quite often as I always seem to have a ridiculous amount of carrots in the fridge. I recently came across the below recipe for spiced carrot muffins and thought of giving it a try as an alternative to the usual carrot cake. The result, insanely delicious!

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Ingredients: 

- 300g Gluten Free Self-Raising Flour
- ½ tsp xanthan gum 
- 1 tsp ground mixed spice 
- 140g light brown sugar 
- 40g sunflower seeds
- 175g grated carrots 
- finely grated rind and juice of 1 small orange
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 150ml milk 
- 100ml sunflower oil 
- 1 tsp vanilla extract 




Method: 

Preheat the oven too 200 degrees. Place 12 large paper cases in a deep muffin tin. 

Sift the flour, xanthan gum and mixed spice into a large bowl, Stir in the sugar with 25g of the sunflower seeds, carrots and orange rind. 

In a separate bowl, lightly beat together the orange juice, eggs, milk, oil and vanilla with a fork and stir in to the dry ingredients, mixing to make a rough batter. 

Spoon the batter into the muffin cases and sprinkle with the remaining sunflower seeds, Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or until well risen and golden brown. Serve warm.