Gluten free carrot cupcakes for a gluten free picnic

Friday night was a gluten free potluck picnic (Steph has blogged here) which was originally cheese themed so I decided to make my food gluten free & cheesy.  For my savoury food I changed my mind heaps of times when trying to decide what to make but right from the start I thought that for my sweet food I wanted to make gluten free carrot cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting.

The first batch of cupcakes I made were these from A Gluten Free Day.  I made them earlier in the week before the picnic planning to freeze them since I like to be organised.  When they were freshly baked they were beautifully light & fluffy but because they don't actually have grated carrot in them (which I didn't realise until I started making them) they were not what I wanted.  So I left them for us to eat but they were incredibly stale by the next day.

 

So it was the night before the picnic & I started worrying about how I was going to have time to prepare anything, especially given that Thursday nights are a struggle for me because I go to prenatal pilates in the evening.  But for some reason I managed to have an amazingly productive thursday the day before the picnic - worked a completely hectic 10 hour day, did 2 days worth of dishes, got dinner ready & made a new batch of cupcakes all before I went to pilates. I was hoping that these cupcakes would work because I really did not want to be making a second batch later that evening & luckily they did!  These were really nice - full of chunky bits due to the walnuts & raisins & really tasty.  Unfortunately they had started to go a bit stale by the next night but apparently that is just the way it seems to be with gluten free baking.  I based these cakes on a recipe from recipezaar which is apparetly from Gluten Free Goddess but I did change quite a few things so my recipe is below.

Ingredients

Carrot Cupcakes

• Orgran egg replacer equivalent to 3 eggs)
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/3 cup apple sauce
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 cups orgran self raising gluten free flour
• 3/4 cup dessicated coconut
• 1 1/2 cups carrots, shredded (about 4)
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup walnuts

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees
2. Prepare cupcake liners or grease a muffin tray
3. In a mixing bowl, beat the egg replacer & oil and beat; add the brown sugar and beat until smooth.
4. Beat in the apple sauce, vanilla, cinnamon and spice.
5. Add in the flour and beat until combined. (The batter should be a bit thicker than wheat flour batter.).
6. Add in the coconut, carrots, raisins, and nuts; stir with a wooden spoon to combine.
7. Put the batter evenly in the cupcake liners or muffin tray and place the pan in the center of a pre-heated oven.
8. Bake until the cakes are firm, and a wooden pick inserted into the center emerges clean, about 15-20 minutes (or longer if necessary).
9. Cool on a wire rack and frost with cream cheese icing.
10. For cream cheese icing, beat tofutti cream cheese with icing sugar