Baking at weekends is a real treat.  It satisfies MTs routine for a cake with afternoon tea and gives me a chance to keep practising my cake making skills.

I wasn’t in the mood for failure so thought about doing a carrot cupcake recipe that my mother-in-law had sent me.  When I looked at it I was reminded of a similar recipe in my new Jo Seagar Cookbook which I knew MT would love more.

Something to do with the peanut butter.

Here was a chance to combine my most successful cake making (carrot cake) with something MT would love.  Carrot Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting.   Although the recipe called for the usual 12 bun tin, I’ve started to use my jumbo muffin tin which gives you 6 mini cakes.

The beauty of this recipe is that you just bung everything into the mixer and give it a whirl.  Watch out though it’s packs a lot of punch.  Carrots, walnuts and sultanas.  Not to mention a good dollop of spices.

Apart from getting bigger cakes the thing I like about my jumbo cupcakes is that they are so much easier to fill the casings.  I find the small ones so fiddly and end up wrestling with the cases when I don’t drop the mixture dead centre.  No such problems when you’ve got a much bigger opening to target.

For two people, having 6 cakes seems much more manageable than 12.

Now before people start proclaiming that less is more.  I know.  But if you only eat one at a time you’ll be more than satisfied.  And, if you make the bassets walk and extra km you can work off that extra intake.

After 25-30 minutes you get some golden brown cakes to tantalise.

Time now to work off the calories before you contemplate worse to come.  Whilst you’re chasing a basset around Tunnel Gully, this is what you have to keep in mind that one of these is waiting for your return.

After a suitable amount of time to cool it’s time to add the real crown to this cupcake – the frosting which if you think too hard about what’s in it you’d never look yourself in the mirror again.

But I don’t think about it.  And just enjoy with a big mug of hot tea to offset the sugary, peanut buttery, moist carrot cakey tastes.

A note of caution.  Don’t try eating this cake without a spoon or fork.  It’s just too dangerous to your fingers – too messy and a much more polite thing to do in company.  If you’re on your own and feeling daring just dive in and enjoy.

Tantalised?  Go get the recipe and try them out.  I am really loving Jo Seagar – she knows how drive those sugar cravings wild!