Gluten-Free Mini Carrot Cakes

Preheat the oven to 180C/fan 170C/gas 4. Lightly grease a 12-hole bun tin with vegetable oil, or you could use paper cake cases instead. Dry fry the pine nuts in a small frying pan until lightly golden all over. Not too dark - as they will become slightly more browned in the oven later on.

Tip the golden, toasted pine nuts onto a small plate and put aside. Using the same small frying pan, add the raisins along with the 30ml of dark rum and bring to the boil. When it has reached boiling point, turn down the heat to a very gentle simmer until the sultanas have absorbed most of the rum (about 1 to 2 minutes). Don't worry if they haven't absorbed all of it, but the sultanas should be juicy and full of the dark rum flavour. Take the frying pan off the heat and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, beat together the vegetable oil, dark brown sugar, eggs and vanilla extract until thoroughly mixed.

Finely grate the carrots, then tip the grated carrots on to a piece of kitchen towelling. Wrap the carrot into a parcel, and over the sink - squeeze the liquid out of it. Too much carrot juice in the grated carrots will make your cakes much too wet and they may not rise properly. After squeezing, carefully peel the kitchen towel away from the carrot taking care not to leave any pieces of kitchen towel in there that may find its way into your cake mixture. Add the carrot to the mixing bowl with the ground almonds, flour, mixed spice and rum-soaked sultanas. Mix well.

Spoon dessert spoon sized blobs into the bun tin or paper cake cases until about 3/4 full. (These cakes do not rise as much as cupcakes.)

Top each carrot cake with the toasted pine nuts that you put aside earlier, before baking in the oven for 18/20 minutes, or until golden in colour and springy to the touch.

Optional: when cool, mix up a slightly loose icing sugar and water mix and drizzle over the carrot cakes.