Carrot, Orange, & Walnut Muffins

These not so tiny morsels of deliciousness are inspired by the recent Carrot & Orange Cake I baked.  Whilst the cake was absolutely superb, it was quite awkward to store (my storage boxes are the wrong size for the dimensions pre-slicing).  So, my answer to the storage issue is not to buy yet another storage box (you can have too many!), but make the recipe into muffins which will store perfectly in all my boxes!  They are simply more convenient to store and to transport too.

The carrot is not detectable in taste (for those of you who still have yet to be convinced that carrot cake is actually a sweet thing and not a savoury thing!), but does add to the moistness of the cake.  The cake is super fluffy, slightly spicy with ground cinnamon, and the combination of orange zest and walnuts adds a lot more depth of flavour than muffins/cakes without  these tasty ingredients.  The topping combination of cream cheese (low fat is fine, and is what I use), with orange zest, sweetened with icing sugar (but not overly sweet) perfectly compliments the flavours in the actual cake.  Top off with chopped walnuts to decorate! Perfect.

The recipe is exactly the same as the Carrot & Orange cake except obviously it is baked in 12 muffin cases, on 160 C Fan, for approx 20 mins (but do test with a wooden skewer to see if sufficiently baked through).

There is still the orange glaze on top immediately after they emerge from the oven; and there is still the cream cheese topping when they have totally cooled.

One word really sums up these beauties: Delicious!!