Cake sale blues? Try these "BEST EVER" apple and carrot muffins (recipe included)

You can tell when it is cake sale day at school -- there is a rugby scrum of mums fighting around a table of homemade goodies.  There are some darned good bakers at our school, and every mum has their speciality.

I’ve just found mine: THE BEST EVER apple and carrot muffins. My five-year-old,  who scrunches up her nose at anything that originated in a garden, LOVES these muffins. In her words: they are “the best ever!"

They are economical too, Scottish grandma is visiting and after downing a plateful of muffins, she pointed out all the money I saved by not offering her a box of Waitrose cupcakes.

THE BEST EVER apple and carrot muffins
3 cups/380 grams peeled and grated apple and carrot (I used 3 large apples and 1 large carrot)
3 and ½ cups/540 grams flour
1 cup/200 grams granulated sugar
1 cup/200 grams brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon
heavy dash of nutmeg
heavy dash of cloves
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup/210 ml vegetable oil (NOT olive oil)
½ cup/110 ml milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Preheat oven to 350F (180C)
• Put the grated apples, carrots, flour, white sugar, brown sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl and mix.
• Add eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, oil, milk and vanilla and mix well.
• Fill individual greased fairy cake tins (or lined) 2/3 full with batter.
• Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown and tops spring back when lightly touched.
• Makes 48 fairy cake sized muffins, or 24 American industrial strength sized muffins.

These are great on their own. They are even better with cream cheese frosting (recipe below).

Cream cheese frosting

125 grams cream cheese
275 grams icing sugar
90 grams unsalted butter
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
1 tablespoon orange juice

• Place all ingredients in a food processor and mix.

Comments

[Debbie from Henley]

Wow - that's a lot of work.Here's my latest quick/panic struck creation (Thursday night 7.30 children in bath remind me it's cake sale tomorrow when I'm working)
Go to food cupboard. Panic - no eggs, no sugar or flour. Make mental note to go to Tesco's. Find sweets, old biscuits and chocolate left over from recent party. Melt chocolate. Crush biscuits (taking out the week's angst). Mix the two - throw in some spare smarties. Tip into a cake tin. Squash some spare jelly tots on top. Cool. Receive huge praise from children (who then don't want you to sell them!). Relax!