Carrot cupcakes

I love carrot cakes. Unfortunately we don't have them in France. Not at all, except in some few British/American pastry shops in Paris. One of my great pleasure back in France was to go to London for a week end and eat as much carrot cakes as possible... They are just so good. And for some reason I never had a bad one. I don't know if it's because it's easy to make or if I just got lucky but having the ooportunity to taste some in London, New-York, Paris and Los Angeles, I always enjoyed them.

Yesterday was the birthday of a dear friend. A great opportunity to bake some carrot cupcakes! I don't put raisins or orange peel but feel free to add some for an extra flavor.

Ingredients for 24 cupcakes :

- 1 cup of chopped walnuts
- 500g of carrots (grated)
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 cup of buttermilk
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 2 cups of sugar
- 1 cup of vegetable oil
- 3 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda
- 2 teaspoons of baking powder
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

Ingredients for the frosting :

- 250g cream cheese
- 1/2 lemon juice
- 1 cup of powdered sugar

 Preheat the oven to 180C

Place the carrots, buttermilk, oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract together in a bowl and whisk thoroughly.

In another bowl whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.

Mix the flour mixture with the carrot mixture. Fold in the walnuts until evenly incorporated.

Scoop into cupcake papers about 1/2 to 3/4 full and bake for 20 minutes at 180C, being sure to rotate the pan after the first 15 minutes of baking. Afterwards allow to cool for 5 minutes before taking the cupcakes out of the cupcake tin and allowing them to fully cool on a wire rack.

Mix all the frosting ingredients together.

Frost cooled cupcakes.