We’re cooking our way through the alphabet this year, and today’s recipe is for the letter C. It’s not just any recipe this is my favourite cake recipe ever and one that I’m known for cooking. It makes a traditional cake or you can make it into muffins by just adjusting the cooking time. So here goes Carrot Cake Muffins with Cream Cheese Frosting.

So far, working our way through the alphabet, we’ve made Apple and Cinnamon Loaf Cake, Apple and Pork Sausage and bean caserole and Green Banana Fries “Patacones“, so we’re having a go at another sweet dish this week. You’ll notice that some recipes I use oz. and some recpies I use g. or cups. One of the reasons is because we’re working on reading numbers at home and depending on who I cook with out of J (eldest) or T (youngest) is which we use. T is learning to recognise numbers 1 to 20, and J is working on numbers 100+ and place value, so when T is involved we measure in oz, and with J we measure in grammes. When the two of them cook together with me, it’s either oz or cups to make it easy for both to read the numbers.

Check out these other muffin recipes some great to cook with kids others just perfect to share with kids

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Ingredients for Carrot Cake Muffins with Cream Cheese Frosting

10 oz plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
7oz soft dark brown sugar
3 1/2 oz caster sugar
4 large eggs
9fl oz sunflower oil
1 tbsp vanilla essence
4 large carrots or 6 medium carrots gratted about 1lb in weight
14oz of raisins

For the frosting
6oz cream cheese
2oz margarine
1 tsp vanilla essence
8oz icing sugar
1 – 2 tbsp of milk

Making Carrot Cake Muffins with Cream Cheese Frosting

As we are working through the different recipes the kids and I are practising new skills, today’s recipe calls for some new ones for them, peeling carrots, grating, sieving flour and beating eggs.

Start off by preheating your oven to 180C (350F) and fill up a muffin tin with muffin cases – the mix will make 16 – 18 reasonable sized muffins however, if you leave the filling of the cases to the kids you could end up with 12 GIANT muffins as we have.

Measure out the flour and sift into a mixing bowl.

Add in the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, ground cinnamon, and ground ginger.

Then the salt – we don’t have any table salt so the kids had fun grinding in the salt to the mix.

Weigh out the sugar and combine with the powdered ingredients.

Beat the eggs, oil and vanilla together – you will find it easier to measure out the oil then add the eggs and the vanilla to it all in the measuring jug.

Then add the egg mix to the flour and using an electric mix. Whisk it all together.

Peel the carrots and chop off the top and the tales.

Then grate them into a bowl – I wish we had a fancy grater that it would be safe for the kids to use however we’ve just got a standard box grater so to avoid fingers being cut they do half of the carrot and then I do the other half of the carrot.

Measure out the raisins and add the carrots and raisins to the cake mix and stir well.

Divide the carrot cake muffin mix between the cup cake cases – they will rise up so you need the cases around 2/3rds full unlike ours.

Put in the oven for around 35 – 40 minutes until a skewer comes out of the centre clean. If you are making a cake instead of muffins then it will take around 50 minutes for the skewer to come out clean.

Leave the carrot cake muffins to cool thoroughly before you frost them.

To make the frosting, into a mixing bowl put the cream cheese, margarine and vanilla essence. Make sure that these are smooth, and then add in the sifted icing sugar and mix to a creamy consistency.

You may need to add 1 to 2 tbsp of milk to the frosting to make it spreadable.

Spread on top of the muffins and then put in the fridge for around an hour to set the frosting and enjoy!