Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Shhh. I’ve never liked carrot cake. I’ve always been sort of fundamentally opposed to a vegetable becoming so intimate with my dessert (although I suppose the Chocolate Beet Cake didn’t turn out so bad).

I also was always under the assumption that carrot cake was somehow healthier than other desserts, which I am pretty sure is not true when you look at the sugar, oil, butter, etc. that still go into these. Anyways, my favorite part of carrot cake was always the cream cheese frosting.

In the spirit of Easter, and therefore bunnies, I decided I would try my hand at some carrot cake cupcakes. And you know what? They turned out pretty darn tasty! As part of my Easter dessert spread (along with these and some other things yet to come), they were quite a hit and were just in the right spirit for a mid-afternoon Easter sunday snack.

The fun part of these was making the little chocolate carrots to go on top. I always love making things with melted chocolate because they are so easy to make and yet always look impressive and fancy… best of both worlds right? To make these, I just melted down some orange candy wafers, put them in a pastry bag, and drew little carrots all over the parchment paper. When that part dried, I added some green for the leafy parts! Easy peasy, peel them off, pop ’em on top of those cupcakes, and they look like they are from the bakery!

Any carrot cake lovers out there? These are for you! Happy Easter!

Carrot Cake Cupcakes
cake adapted from A Pinch Of Yum

makes 12 cupcakes

1 cups flour
1 cups sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1/2 c + 1 T vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups grated raw carrots
2 eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a muffin tin with paper liners (I would suggest doubling up since one layer does get a bit oily). Mix together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, and pinch of salt in a medium mixing bowl. Add in the oil and carrots and mix until combined. Mix in the eggs and stir until incorporated. At the point, the batter will look all wrong – like it has too much oil and too many carrots. Don’t worry. It’s right.

Fill the cups evenly, about 3/4 full. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting. Frost with cream cheese frosting (below) and serve chilled for best taste!

Cream Cheese Frosting
adapted from Joy The Baker

4 oz cream cheese (softened – leave out on counter for 2 hours before)
4 T unsalted butter (softened – leave out on counter for 2 hours before)
2-3 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

Beat the cream cheese in an electric mixer for 1-2 minutes, until fluffy. Add the butter and beat for another 1-2 minutes, until completely combined. Add the vanilla and salt and beat until incorporated. Add the powdered sugar in batches, beating well between each addition, until frosting reaches desired consistency, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl frequently.

 

Meet Awesome Person Guest Blogger Allison!

Drumroll please……! A Sprinkle in Time would like to present its very first guest blogger! I am pleased to introduce a really quite wonderful lady named Allison. I am placing your tummies squarely in her capable hands. Erm, you know what I mean. Drool away.

 

(And I swear… I didn’t ask her to say all those nice things about me… shes just THAT nice!)

Most people emulate celebrities, world leaders, TV characters, maybe even their mothers.  What thousands of young girls wouldn’t give to marry Justin Beiber.  Who wouldn’t want to be the next Donald Trump or receive an invitation to Hogwarts like the great Hermione Granger?  I myself was once married to Nick Carter, living the life of a rock star’s wife in the basement of my house.  I’ve since, however, moved on to bigger and better things.  I now aspire to be just like Katie Lane.  Not only is she one of the sweetest, friendliest people I’ve ever met, but she’s also, as you all know, a fabulous baker.  I follow her blog…I copy her recipes…I strive to be as creative as she is and as a result receive incredible compliments in her honor.  I may just be her biggest fan.  But enough gushing…I really do have something to post about.

            So I have a sister.  Her name happens to also be Katie.  She just graduated from high school.  She likes parties.  Every party needs cupcakes.  Now, usually I would turn to A Sprinkle In Time for inspiration, but alas, no such post could be found.  I kept my cool though.  With a little help from Google Images and the Sprinkle’s scrumptious yellow cupcake recipe I set to work.

            To be completely honest, these cupcakes were a bit of a disaster.  I was a tad overzealous in filling the cupcake tins.  My desire for huge crowned cakes resulted in misshapen mounds that sank in the middle and a very dirty oven that threatened to set off the fire alarm each time the door was opened.  The experts aren’t kidding when they suggest filling those cups only ¾ of the way full…

            Nevertheless, they were delicious. Just a little icing (perhaps a tad too dry) and of course the graduation caps made from Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, Hershey’s chocolate bars, blue raspberry Twizzlers, and York Peppermint Patty M&Ms and the cupcakes were ready to eat.

            They were pretty darn yummy and I’m proud of my accomplishments.  Perfect for any graduation, my friends and family will probably be seeing these again next May when I say goodbye to Skidmore.

            Congratulations, Katie Putnam and thank you, Katie Lane.  It’s an honor to have contributed to your blog.

-Allison

Thanks Allison!!! I love you more. No I love you more! No I love YOU more! Okay okay… we all get the love here 🙂 YUM!

Happy Birthday, U.S. of A.!

Happy 4^th of July!

It was a bit of a battle to post this before midnight… but here you are!

Yes, I used a mix. From Sprinkles cupcake shop. Yep, that one.

New Years Resolutions 2011:

Eat more of these.

 

 

 

 

Make them for my housemates.

 

 

 

Send them to my boyfriend.

 

 

Take lots of pictures.

 

 

Give you the recipe so you can do all these things too.

 

Peanut Butter Fudge Puddles
Adapted from Vanilla Sugar

Cookie Crust:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup  peanut butter (I used White Chocolate Peanut Butter from Saratoga Peanut Butter Company)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 ts vanilla extract
1-1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 ts baking soda
1/2 ts salt

In a large mixer bowl, combine butter, peanut butter, and both sugars. Beat in egg and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add the dry to the wet mixtures.
Chill in the fridge for at least one hour. Remove from fridge and form into 1″ balls. Grease a mini-muffin pan and add 1 ball to each muffin cup. Bake in a 325 degree oven for about 15 minutes or until very lightly browned. Remove from oven and use the end of a wooden spoon to make an indentation in the center of each ball, big enough to fill the middles with the fudge filling. Let them cool in the pan for at least 5 minutes and then move to a cooling rack.

Filling:
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup milk chocolate chips
1-14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
1 ts vanilla

In a microwave safe bowl combine all of the ingredients. Microwave for 1 minute, stir well. If there are still unmelted chips, continue to melt in microwave for 15 second increments until all smooth. I used a double boiler and just stirred the ingredients over heat until smooth.
Immediately start filling the cookie cups with the filling. It will start to harden just a bit as you do it, so make sure to give it a good stir once in awhile. Sprinkle with the nuts or just leave plain. Let set for an hour or so.

Christmas is over.

How do I know when Christmas is over?

All of these are gone.

My mom makes them every year. They are the best. Even though I really like to bake, I stay out of the way at Christmas. Because she makes all the best Christmas cookies. Sorry I didn’t take pictures of any of the others…. I was too busy eating them.

But here’s the important thing: my mom is awesome! It was her birthday a while ago. I made her these cupcakes!

We usually swear by Duncan Hines Yellow Cake box mix with Betty Crocker canned chocolate frosting, but I bit the bullet and made these guys from scratch. They were pretty good, and the frosting was awesome. Just like my mom.

 

Love you ma!

Yellow Cupcakes
adapted from AllRecipes.com

1 cup butter
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line cupcake tin.

Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to creamed mixture alternately with milk. Mix well. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until done. Cool before frosting.

Fudgey Chocolate Frosting
Adapted from Betty Crocker

2 oz unsweetened baking chocolate

2 tablespoons butter

2 cups powdered sugar

3 to 4 tablespoons hot water

In 2-quart saucepan, melt chocolate and butter over low heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Stir in powdered sugar and 3 tablespoons of the hot water until smooth. (If frosting is too thick, add additional water, 1 teaspoon at a time.) Spread frosting over cooled cupcakes!