Week 14: Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

For my second cupcake attempt, I switched from fruit (lemon) to vegetables (carrot). And the time of year—Easter and spring—couldn’t have been more appropriate for cupcakes that contained bunnies’ favorite snack.

Bunnies love carrots; cupcake clubbers love Casey's carrot cupcakes.

All in all, things went really well. Although the recipe tells you to just mix all the ingredients together, I did mix the dry and moist ingredients separately, as I’ve seen other recipes call for. I was surprised at the addition of crushed pineapple, but since I’ve never made anything carrot-related before, I dumped it in.

I was also immensely grateful (no pun intended) that my sister gave me her nice oxo grater so that I could grate the carrots. Which, by the way, makes a huge mess.

After mixing everything together, I was concerned that the batter was too runny and would overflow, but the cupcakes proved me wrong and thankfully didn’t end up all over the bottom of my oven. I kept them in the oven about 10 minutes longer because they just didn’t seem done after 35 minutes. After I allowed the ingredients to come to room temperature, the cream cheese frosting was a breeze.



Grated carrots in the batter.



Pineapple, an unexpected ingredient.



Stay tuned for when I switch back to fruit and attempt the Coconut Sponge Cupcakes with Chocolate Espresso Buttercream Frosting—those sound pretty complicated!