It's April...Easter time is creeping ever closer! It also means that I want to start creating Easter treat recipes which is pretty tricky due to the candida diet :-(

But I can still drool over pretty Easter pictures on Foodgawker and Pinterest, right?

Often when I create recipes, I like to browse through the 'regular' recipe sections and baking websites to inspire me to create my own 'healthanized' spin-offs. Last weekend I was having exactly one of those days and was browsing through Baking Mad, Easter must have been on my mind as I ended up finding inspiration for some carrot cake themed cupcakes from their Easter recipe section. A few tweaks were needed to make the recipe my own and also to create a gluten free option. Im really pleased with how the recipe turned out, especially since I couldn't taste test as I went along. I enjoyed making them.... my mum enjoyed eating them!

This is one of the simplest gluten free recipes I have yet to create, the ground almonds work superbly to maintain a lovely moist crumb and the pre-blended flour just speeds up the process (I often grind my own). The toppings are inspired by this magical cream topping (also noted below) and the 'eggs' are a few left over Squares I remoulded plus some chilled nut butter since I have so much of that on hand at the moment.

Have you made any Easter creations yet or are you planning to? I'd love to know what your favourite easter recipes are!

Recipe: Carrot cake cupcake- gluten free!

Makes approx 8-10 small cupcakes

Ingredients:

½ cup ground almonds
½ cup GF flour blend of choice (I used Doves pre-mixed plain flour blend)
½ cup orange juice
½ tsp baking powder
¼ cup grated carrot
3 tbs agave (or other syrup of choice)
¼ tsp cinnamon

Method:

Mix the flour, ground almonds and baking powder. Add the remaining ingredients and stir through to mix evenly.

Spoon the mixture into mini muffin cups or small cupcake trays. Bake for 15 mins at 180C or until golden and a toothpick poked in comes out clean

For the topping I used this frosting method. Basically I blended vegan yoghurt with fine coconut flour at a 3:1 ratio until thick and 'spreadable'.

The eggs a mixture of chilled vanilla almond butter (home made) and my Wholeplus squares moulded into egg shapes. You could use any topping you like.