Mini Carrot Muffins/Cupcakes

I have been finally get back into the swing of baking again, but I have terribly neglected my poor little blog!

I have never been a fan of carrot cake, it always seemed like a "grownup's" cake because I never found it very sweet, it never had pink or chocolate icing and the grownup's would alway have it with coffee. That was all terrible to me, and now if I was offered a slice of carrot cake I would still turn it down as I hate walnuts, which always seem to make an appearance. 

I stumbled across this cupcake, or really mini muffin, recipe a while back and I've been tweaking it to my tastes. 
So here are my carrot cake muffins, I  hope you enjoy them (:

Mini Carrot Cake Muffins

Makes 12 mini muffins/cupcakes

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup raw/white sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 225g grated carrots
• Zest of 1 orange
• Subsitute for 2 eggs 
• 1 1/2 cups self raising flour, white/wholemeal or a mix
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 55g sultanas
• 1/2 cup milk of choice, you may need more or less so start slow. I use soy or oat milk.
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon 
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Method: 

Basically I just chuck everything, except the milk, in my mixer and go for it. I then just add the milk whilst it is mixing through until it looks right. But I'll give you the proper version as well ;)

1. Preheat oven to 200oC/400oF
2. Sift flour into a bowl/food processor bowl or bowl of mixer
3. Add all other ingredients except for the milk. Gently mix until almost all combined.
4. With the mixer/beaters/food processor on low speed, slowly add milk until the mix has just come together and looking smooth. If you are doing it by hand just keep going until done. Remember; try not to over work the batter or the "muffincake" will go tough. 
5. Bake for about 15-20 minutes (give or take).
6. Cool completely on a wire rack.
7. Frost with cream cheese frosting.

Can be stored in a air tight container unfrosted for a week or for about 3 days frosted in the fridge.

Another long time between posts!

OK so yet again I have been busy as all hell! I started 2 new jobs in as many days and LOVE them both! I am SOO much happier than I was when I was working at the shelter. I have now returned to veterinary nursing and also started teaching animal studies at TAFE. Both of these jobs keep me really, really busy and I have been putting in A LOT of long hours at nights and on my days off to keep up with my workloads. Seriously not at all complaining, I never thought you could really be truly happy at work, but now I know you can! (:
AND a week ago my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew moved down to Tassie as well, they join my folks in muscling in my mine and hubby's "territory", at least the live like 40 minutes away!!!

So with all of this wonderful craziness going on I have really not had time to cook, let alone blog! Thankfully though hubby has kept my belly full as until last week he has been unemployed since Christmas, just one of may casualties from the Tasmanian state government not being able to budget properly. Luckily he now has a part-time job at one of the local collages, which is awesome because it it super close to our house and he's only entering his 3rd teaching year and and we expected about another 7-17 years before he got such a position. So, yay for us, we both have income, something really handy when you have a mortgage! And him only being part-time (at this stage) means I still get a house-hubby for half the week, SCORE!! :-p

We were, however, able to take a mid-week weekend recently to Melbourne. It was awesome, I had never been before and really I had never before had any desire to go to Melbourne, why would I when I had previously lived 1-3 hours south of Sydney? Plus Canberra, believe it or not, had plenty of advantages, and after they got a DFO there was even less reason for me to care about Melbourne!
So what was the reason for this life-changing (stay tuned) trip?

SYSTEM OF A MOTHER EFFING DOWN!!!!!!
At Rod Laver Arena

Oh man I loved this gig, I was head banging like I was a good 10-12 years younger than I am, and even though I'm only 28, I found out the next day that I was WAY out of practice for such activities! I didn't care though, I also didn't care that I screamed and threw my right arm around so much that I was barely audible and my shoulder was competing with my neck for sympathy! 

Now it wasn't just  SOAD that had me all excited, since going vegan I have wanted to visit Melbourne, and in the end I was actually getting more excited about food than I was the band! This was actually the 2nd time I saw SOAD, but only the first time that I had gone to Melbourne, and as a vegan at that!
A couple of days before I left I asked "the Facebook vegans" where I should go for meals and to stock up on vegan junk food to bring back.

I was directed to some great places, THANK YOU to everyone who made suggestions for me, including one of my fave places in Melbs: 

The Radical Grocery Store

I spent $100 here on junk such as Dandies, various Bonbarr chocolate bars, jelly, toffee, coconut ice, tofutti cuties, AND:

Mister Nice Guy Cupcakes
This was a Peanut Butter Cup and it was SOOO moist and chocolatey
and peanut buttery!!

I also ate at Enlightened Cuisine where we had:

Crispy Duck with Plum Sauce.

And

Kung Po Lamb.

AND on my way back to my plane I made my way to Chan House where I had:

"Honey" "Chicken" with Steamed Rice and Veggies.

We also visited the Australian Centre for the Moving Image which was really great AND FREE! Well worth a look if your hanging out around Federation Square.

But I think the place that got me more excited than ANYTHING else was visiting Lord of the Fries my new favourite place on earth, SERIOUSLY, I'm even spearheading a campaign to bring them down to Tasmania, not just for me, but we NEED more veggie choice down here!
LOTFs was my first stop on my whirlwind trip and then I had breakfast there the next day for breakfast as well. 

This was my breakfast meal, a big original burger and fries with vegan cheese and gravy
I have recreated these fries a few times over the past few weeks with
Redwood's cheezly and Redwood's vegetarian gravy, YUM!!!

Nuggets, onion rings and fries munch box with BBQ sauce .

Mini original burger

The best OJ I have ever had!

Now I can't wait until the next time I get to go to Melbourne, and I plan on spending more than 36 hours there!

Stay well,
Love SJ (:

Piecing Everything Together.

Now that Vegan SJ is on Facebook as well I am trying to finally get around to old photos and blog posts. I'm going to cheat with this one though and send you to a link instead. VeganYumYum. Here is where you will find the tastiest little vegan doughnuts I have come across. They are so cakey and donughty and healthier than the real thing because they are baked.
Hubby and I were so naughty the night I made these that they became our dinner, non-vegan hubby likes silly dinners sometimes. They were just too damn good to resist, all hot and covered in cinnamon sugar.
Due to not having a doughnut pan as I haven't gotten around to getting one off Ebay yet, I used a mini muffin/cupcake pan and called the dough-nots!

You can't have just 1, trust me!

 

NEW COOKBOOK!!

A couple of months back I pre-ordered a copy of Vegan Pie in the Sky which was co-written by Isa chandra from the amazing Post Punk Kitchen and Terry Hope Romeo.
It's the first time I ever bought a book without having read a review, seen a preview of recipes or before it had even been released for sale! I knew, however, it would be gold, especially considering her other books I own (pictured below) sure as heck are!

I can't wait to bake my first pie, though it will be tough choosing which one to start with, but I will post a report and pics when I do :)

Oreo Cupcakes.

Recently I got 4 new cookbooks, one of which was Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World which is such a cute little book that is available from Amazon.

The first tasty morsels I whipped up were the Cookies and Cream cupcakes, and even though I haven't tried any others yet I do feel they are going to be a favourite!