Mike van de Elzen: Keep the kids busy with carrot cupcakes

Carrot cupcakes 

Ingredients 

1 tsp baking powder

¾ cup plain flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

½ cup raw sugar

2 free range eggs

½ cup vegetable oil

2 cups grated carrots

½ cup chopped nuts (can be walnuts or hazelnuts).

2 tbsp raisins

2 tbsp of decoration

Icing

Juice of 1 lemon 

1 tbsp butter, softened

100g cream cheese, softened

½ cup icing sugar, sifted 

Method 

Preheat oven to 190*C.  

Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl.  

Add eggs and oil and mix until just combined.  

Fold in carrots, nuts and raisins.  

Divide mix evenly between lightly greased cupcake moulds or muffin tins.  

Bake for 20-25 minutes. Allow to cool in tin for 5 minutes then turn out onto wire racks.  

Ice when completely cool, and decorate with anything - light silverballs, sunflower seeds, coconut or shaved chocolate.

For the icing  

Beat together lemon juice, cream cheese and butter. Add sugar and continue to beat until smooth.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
EDB resident chef Mike Vander Ellison is with us.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Now, good morning, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
So we've got school holidays, we've got terrible, crappy weather.
The best thing to do with the kids put them
in the kitchen.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Right. It always happens, doesn't it. Holidays come, and the
weather too, the custom. Yeah, if you're down in South
ay Go skiing, it's it's not a lot of snow
in Auckland, it's not.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
It's very tedious the gray days and the rain and things.
But look we're not flooded, so I am grateful for that.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Mike absolutely, absolutely yes, get them in the kitchen cooking
is what I say.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, No, I completely agree, although I my daughter did
some maids and pastries on Friday night and the bomb
site that was my kitchen on Saturday morning did make
me just kind of pause a little bit there. I Mean,
she gets around to cleaning it up in the end,
but my goodness, it's got to be part of the process, right,
You've got to teach them well to clean up.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah, And that's it. And like as I feel as
you get older, as you cook more. And I certainly
feel that myself, Like if I'm cooking at the house,
I'm clean there as I'm going. And it's just becoming
like when you first start to go into the kitchen,
you make sure that the kitchen is clean. Where some
people will go into the kitchen the kitchen is already

(01:32):
bomb site before they starts. I don't know, it's teaching
it a few things clean as you go, kind of
fill the dish washer as you go, and so when
you get to the end, it's done. You're not having
this big pile of dishes to go to. So I
was thinking to what recipes I could do for the
little munchkins and keeping them busy and something that they
would want to have themselves, and so I thought, I

(01:53):
thought of cupcakes, because cupcakes are great. They can decorate
them in different ways. And which kid you know, or
which kid doesn't like a cupcake? And then I was
like changing out, I need to put something in there.
So I thought it would just make a carrot cupcakes.
This is a great.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Little recipe almost sounds healthy.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Almost you could go carrots, you could also go I've
made this recipe before with pumpkin instead of carrots. So
you've got a pumpkin pumpkin lurking around. Treat it in
the same way. So this makes This will probably make
about eight to probably a dozen cupcakes, depending on the size.
So to start them off, you give them this recipe.

(02:32):
You can stand by them, you can stand back, you
can sit on the kitchen bench and watch them do it.
There's nothing too dangerous around this recipe. So turn the
oven one one hundred and ninety degrees and then into
a bowl. Get them to combine three quarters of a
cup of three quarters a cup of playing power, a
teaspoon of baking powder, teaspoon of cinnamon, teaspoon of baking soda,

(02:55):
and half a cup of raw sugar. Get them to
mix that in one bowl. And then what you want
to do is add in the egg. So I've just
got two eggs, so they can crack in two eggs
and half a cup of vegetable oil. And what the
vegetable oil does is keeps the end result nice and moist.
Get them to mix that through. They can just use
a wooden spoil for wooden spoon for that. And then

(03:15):
you want to add two cups of the grated carrots,
half a cup. I've got chopped nuts, you know. This
could be walnuts, could be hazel nuts, could be almonds,
and two tablespoons or probably about a quarter of a
cup of raisins. You can increase those if you want
a half cup, and they could also be cranberries or sultanas.
Give that a good mix through, and what you end
up with is quite a loose sort of a mix.

(03:37):
A cake mix. Take some muffin tins or cupcake molds,
put your little cupcake trays in there. Just grease them
really well first, and then add in your cupcake mix
into those molds. Divide them out to how many you've got,
and you want them to be about three quarters three
quarters to fire them into an abon it's a resonbue

(03:58):
hot oven one hundred and ninety degrees there and take
about twenty to twenty five minutes. Pull them out when
you can, put a nice little skill through them and
they come out nice and cleanly. Take them out after that,
fold them like put them out onto a wire rat
just to cool them down a little bit. They're going
to be hot little munchkins, those guys, and just let
them cool down before you go to ice them. The
icing is easy peasy. Into a bowl one hundred grads

(04:19):
of cream cheese. Just soften that with the back of
a spoon. Add in a tablespoon of soften butter, the
juice of a lemon, and half a cup of icing sugar.
Give that a good little mix. You could add food
colorings into that. You can go red, go green, yellow,
got purple, go black, whatever you want to do. Add
in your food coloring at this stage, and then you
can either pipe that on to the top of your

(04:39):
cupcakes or you can just spoin it on, spread it
out with like a little wet spatchelor, and then they
can garnishit themselves and go hard. They can go those
you know those little silver balls that kind of break
your teeth. H you could go those. Those are great.
Some flower seeds, coconut shaved chocolate, anything, really anything, hundreds
of thousands.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
And don't blame me when you end up at the
emergency dentist. I love it, Mike, thanks so much, really
appreciate your time this morning. You can grab that recipe
from Good from Scratch dot co, dot inz or you'll
be able to hit to newstalk ZIB dot co, dot
in z forward slash Sunday. We will get that recipe
up for you throughout the morning.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio