Vegan and gluten-free carrot cupcakes. A moist and fluffy dessert with a colourful and appetising decoration. Without the icing and marzipan carrots, they're still delicious and healthy too!
Preheat the oven to 190°C (fan) then prepare flax eggs in a large bowl and leave aside for 5 minutes.
Prepare the muffin tin with liners.
Add olive oil, mashed banana and maple syrup to the flax eggs and whisk to combine.
Now add grated apple, sugar, cinnamon, baking soda and salt to the bowl and mix until combined.
Add almond milk and mix.
Add carrots and mix.
Blend rolled oats and almond meal in food processor until finely ground and add to the bowl. Stir everything together. Alternatively add oat flour and almond meal to the bowl and stir.
With a spoon fill up the 12 cupcake liners evenly with the mixture. Fill them up to the top.
Bake the cupcakes for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted to the centre comes out clean. Once baked, leave aside to cool down.
The icing
Whisk vegan margarine, icing sugar and vanilla bean paste in a big bowl until fluffy.
Put icing on top of the cooled cupcakes however you desire (with piping bag or spatula or knife...)
OPTIONAL: Add chopped almonds to the outside of your icing.
The carrots
With the yellow and red food colour gel, colour around 4/5 of the marzipan orange. Start with one drop of each colour and knead the marzipan. The gels are usually very strong, so it's better to repeat this step a couple of times until satisfied with the colour than having too much colour in the marzipan.
Divide orange marzipan into 12 pieces for the little carrots. Take one piece and roll it between your hands until the marzipan is carrot shaped. With a knife, make a couple of fine cuts into the top of the carrot to give it more structure.Repeat this step until all 12 carrots are done.
With the green colour gel, colour the last fifth of the marzipan green. Again, start with one drop of the gel, knead it into the marzipan and repeat until satisfied with the colour.
Divide green marzipan into 36 pieces. Take each piece and roll between your hands until it makes about a 1cm long worm. Attach these to each other in groups of three, so that they look like little carrot greens then carefully place them on top of the carrots.Repeat this step until all 12 carrot greens are done.
Add one carrot to each cupcake.
Notes
The cupcakes hold well for about 4 days in an airtight container in the fridge. They'll be finished in that time anyway, I promise.Thanks again to Dana from http://www.minimalistbaker.com for the inspiration!