Carrot cake bites - foolproof recipe

I don't bake often, but this weekend was a busy weekend for MOH, my resident baker extraordinaire.. and I was craving carrot cake. MOH has been swamped with graduate recruitment (first years normally host), and I felt like changing up the weekend routine by baking up some muffins. What resulted weren't muffins, but let's just call them carrot cake bites. They're really tasty, not too sweet, and have a great softness to them.

I did a modification from a recipe I found on a gluten-free website, but added some raisins and walnuts instead of macadamia nuts since I didn't have any macadamias.

I was multitasking while making these carrot cake bites, so I stumbled with getting the exact measurements for some ingredients - the good news though, is this is a recipe that is foolproof for all us non-bakers out there! Instead of 1/2 teaspoon of xantham gum, I ended up using 3/4 (I'm eyeballing because I accidentally did 1 teaspoon, realized my mistake, then tried to scoop out some xantham gum). The resulting carrot cake bites ended up having this jiggly appearance like Flubber (old Disney movie) when they initially came out, but since cooling, they have stiffened up, yet retained their moist texture.

Ingredients - enough for 12 cupcake sized bites:

Dry ingredients

1 cup Bob's Red Mill all purpose gluten free flour (or any gluten free all purpose you have on hand)

1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum 

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 

3/8 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

Carrot filling

1 1/2 cups peeled and grated carrots

3/4 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup of raisins

Wet ingredients

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup almond milk

Protocol:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

2. Add in dry ingredients (flour, gum, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar)

3. In a separate bowl, add in carrots, raisins, and walnuts - use some of the dry ingredients to coat with this mixture

4. Mix together oil, eggs, vinegar and milk - mix this wet mixture in with the dry ingredients 

5. Add in carrot, raisin, and walnut mixture (carrot filling) 

6. Grease or line cupcake tins - then carefully pour mixture into tins

7. Bake for 18 minutes, making sure to check if bites are fully cooked through (the 'ol toothpick trick - stick a toothpick into the bites and pull the toothpick out. If nothing is clinging onto the toothpick, it's cooked!)

8. Take out carrot cake bites and cool on a rack, or scarf down with milk

Happy eating all!