These Carrot Cupcakes have made a lot of people smile over the past couple of weeks, including me! I’ve made three batches, inspired by our carrot harvest. It makes me smile to make cupcakes from carrots that we grew. It also makes me smile to make other people smile, by feeding them tasty treats, like these Carrot Cupcakes.
Margie was the first person who smiled – I made a batch of mini-cupcakes for her birthday and took them to our book club meeting at her place, a couple of days before the actual day. She didn’t indulge me by lighting a candle, but I’m hoping a candle was lit at some point. I know Margie shared a cupcake with Griffin, her bartender at the distillery, because we ran into him at Asian Bistro, and he sang the praises of my Carrot Cupcakes, smiling of course. He’s nice that way.
The following week, we met Lisa and John for a picnic at the Connecticut College Arboretum. It was quite a spread, and we finished off with mini Carrot Cupcakes, my second batch. Lisa loved them, and we laughed as she snapped a quick pic. I had offered the leftovers to Lisa to take home, but then we ended up sharing the rest of the cupcakes with an entourage of college students who were exploring the Arboretum for an art and botany project. Those kids were smiling from ear to ear.
The cupcakes are dairy-free, but the Cream Cheese Frosting is not! Carrot Cupcakes are delicious without it, but the frosting does make it especially indulgent. Ron can’t eat nuts, and he avoids saturated fats, so he scraped the decadent layer off the top of his cupcake and fed it to me! What a picnic.
Don’t despair if you have leftover Cream Cheese Frosting. If you opt NOT to finish it off with a spoon, it freezes well and defrosts quickly when you’re ready to bake another batch of Carrot Cupcakes.
Carrot Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1 pound carrots
- ½ cup raisins
- 1 small thumb fresh ginger
- 2 eggs (room temperature)
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ⅓ cup oil
- ⅓ cup unsweetened applesauce
- 2 t vanilla extract
- 1½ t cinnamon
- 1-2 pinches ground cloves
- 1⅓ cup gluten-free AP flour
- ½ t salt
- ½ t baking powder
- ½ t baking soda
Instructions
- Prep carrots and ginger – Peel and shred the carrots. Set aside. If the raisins are dry, pour a bit of hot water over them and set them aside to plump up. Grate the ginger, using a rasp, into a large bowl.
- Preheat the oven and line the cupcake pan – Preheat the oven to 350℉, convection bake setting. Line the cupcake pan with paper liners.
- Mix the batter – Add the eggs, sugars, oil, applesauce, and vanilla to the bowl with the grated ginger, and whisk to combine. In a separate bowl, whisk together the cinnamon, ground cloves, flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, and then fold in the carrots and the raisins.
- Fill the cupcake liners and bake – Distribute the batter evenly among the lined cupcake cups. Bake for approximately 15-20 minutes for mini cupcakes or 20-25 minutes for standard size cupcakes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Let cool for a few minutes, then move the cupcakes to a wire rack.
- Frost – When the cupcakes are completely cool, ice with cream cheese frosting.
I had baked only one tray of twenty-four mini-cupcakes for our picnic, so I had enough batter and frosting left over to bake some standard sized Carrot Cupcakes. This was my third batch – six lovely cupcakes. One for me with frosting, and five for Ron, as we sat by the chiminea. That was supper. You don’t need to ask if Ron was smiling – he was, We both were!
If you’d like to be notified when new posts are added to this site, please subscribe below, and be sure to click through on the email you receive to confirm your subscription. If you don’t receive a confirmation email, please check your spam folder.
Leave a Reply