I’m constantly looking for reasons to bake, and friends’ birthdays are the best excuse to do it. Yesterday was my good friend Smriti’s special day, and she put in a request for carrot cake cupcakes. I love carrot cake and have a great recipe for it, so I was more than happy to oblige.
Note to self: when grating carrots for carrot cake, don’t use baby carrots — it takes forever to grate 2 cups’ worth, and when you’re in a time crunch like I was, it’s easy to get scraped fingers/knuckles.
These cupcakes are great because they’re dense and chewy, but the tops have a slight crustiness that, combined with the silky/sticky frosting, adds interesting (and delicious) texture to the whole experience. Even the most anti-putting-vegetables-in-cake of my friends had to admit that these cupcakes are pretty fantastic.
Carrot Cake Cupcakes
Ingredients:
– 2 cups sugar
– 1 cup vegetable oil
– 4 large eggs
– 2 cups flour
– 1/2 tsp salt
– 1 tsp baking soda
– 1 tsp baking powder
– 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
– 1/2 tsp cardamom
– 1/2 tsp ginger
– 1/2 tsp nutmeg
– 2 cups grated carrots
Steps:
(1) Preheat oven to 350.
(2) Mix sugar, oil and eggs in a large bowl. Set aside.
(3) Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and spices in a medium bowl. Add to wet mixture and combine.
(4) Add carrots and mix well.
(5) Spoon batter into lined cupcake tins. (The cake rises a lot, so I would suggest filling cups a little over 1/2 full to avoid cupcakes that overflow their paper liners.)
(6) Bake for 25, or until toothpick inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.
Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients:
– 8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
– 1 stick of butter (I actually prefer margarine because it’s easier to mash)
– 1 1/3 cups powdered sugar (Rough estimate — I usually add by taste)
– 1 tsp vanilla
– 2 tsp ground cinnamon
Steps:
(1) Cream together butter and cream cheese in a medium sized bowl.
(2) Gradually mix in powdered sugar.
(3) Add vanilla and ground cinnamon. Mix until smooth.
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