I know it’s Saturday and I usually don’t post anything on the weekends, BUT, I wanted to quickly post this recipe I have for carrot cake/cupcakes and my ideas for decorating these little suckers with fake carrots!
It’s always good to garnish your food with what is found in it, but I’m not about to throw a bunch of baby carrots onto my cupcakes! SO, I found lots of orange and green edibles in my pantry and went to town!
So, here’s the 411 on these: carrot cupcakes {adapted from my chocolate cake recipe, believe it or not!} topped with cream cheese frosting and then decorated as follows: {follow along as I go left to right, top to bottom} M&M’s, dried mangoes {or apricots} and fresh thyme, sprinkles, clementine and pumpkin seeds, orange candy melts cut into triangles and fresh mint, orange peel cut into a triangle and parsley, marshmallow cut into a triangle and dipped in orange sugar topped with mint, cream cheese frosting dyed orange, topped with mint and surrounded in crushed oreos and the last one? Just the candy melts and mint again 🙂
So, if you’re celebrating Easter with a cake, it may as well be this one!
Recipe below:
Carrot Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 2 cups almond milk {or regular milk} + 2 teaspoons white vinegar
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon cloves
- 2/3 cup melted butter
- 4 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3 cups finely grated carrot
for the frosting:
- 8 oz. softened cream cheese
- 1/2 cup softened butter
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 lb. powdered sugar
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
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Line 24 muffin tins with paper liners and set aside.
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Measure out almond milk and vinegar. Stir and set aside.
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In large bowl, measure out all dry ingredients and whisk together to combine. Create well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in almond milk vinegar mixture, melted butter and vanilla. Stir until just incorporated. Add in carrot and stir again. Divide batter evenly between muffin tins.
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Bake 15-20 minutes or until set.
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Cool completely before frosting.
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To make frosting, mix cream cheese and butter together until well combined. {I use a hand mixer for this.} Stir in vanilla and powdered sugar until just combined and smooth. If you over mix the frosting, it won't hold it's shape as well and will slowly drip off the cupcakes.
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Spread about 3 tablespoons of frosting onto each cupcake and decorate as desired.
Recipe Notes
*This recipe will make 24 cupcakes as stated above, 2 8-inch round cakes {350 for 20-25 minutes} or 1-9x13 cake {350 for 25-30 minutes}.
**There are no eggs in this recipe! It's not a typo and yes, they will turn out just fine.
Gloria says
March 26, 2016 at 5:16 amJust wondering. No eggs in this recipe?
I cook for a couple and her husband is allergic to eggs. I’d love to make this for them for Easter!
Lauren says
March 28, 2016 at 7:52 amNopers! No eggs needed 🙂
Gloria says
March 26, 2016 at 5:18 amCan I use buttermilk since you add vinegar to milk which essentially is a substitute for buttermilk?
Lauren says
March 28, 2016 at 7:55 amI’ve never tried this recipe with buttermilk, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work!
brenda says
March 26, 2016 at 9:16 amI never knew I could make carrot cake or muffins without pineapple so I always had lots of left over carrots in my fridge now I thank you for this recipe I can use up my carrot and enjoy a great snack
Esther says
March 26, 2016 at 11:55 amYummy! Definitely making these today! Do I still add vinegar if I’m using regular milk? Thanks!
Virginia Jacobsen says
March 26, 2016 at 6:13 pmI made these today, very good..I have a question, the paper liner was very oily, should I have used a foil cup cake liner?
Lauren says
March 28, 2016 at 7:49 amThat seems a bit odd to me. I used paper liners and they weren’t greasy at all!
marge says
March 28, 2016 at 9:39 pmMy liners were quite oily as well. I made them very late at night and by the morning the oily residue was gone. The oil caused the pattern on the bottom of the paper liners to adhere to the bottom of my cupcake tin.
marge says
March 28, 2016 at 9:32 pmMade these for Easter! I would not change a single thing about this recipe. This is going in my recipe book!!
Julie says
April 6, 2016 at 11:40 amI made these over the weekend. And I *may* have eaten 5! immediately!!!! They are SO tasty and SO moist!!!!! 🙂
mia says
June 11, 2016 at 7:32 pmthese sounds so good and I almost have all the ingredients – making them that much better! When you have a family that loves carrot cake as much as mine, its pretty much a cake at every birthday so i’m excited to make this at the next one! thank you 😀
Courtney says
June 16, 2017 at 6:47 amExcited to see a carrot cake recipe without pineapple!
Mary says
June 19, 2018 at 3:29 amThese look awesome! LOVE carrot cake!