Carrot Cupcakes

The nerdlet loves carrot cake.  She loves it so much that she asked for it for the birthday cake for her 3rd and 4th birthday.  She also loves carrots so I hardly ever have enough carrots to make carrot cake even if I buy enough because she is demanding to eat them by the time we get home.  This week right after buying a big bag of carrots for her to eat, Greenling delivered me a huge amount in my local box, so I decided to make carrot cupcakes for her.

This is the bear cub after the first taste when I handed her the bowl with the whole one in it.

 

I took this picture and put my camera back and before I got back, the bear cub decided that her first one wasn't enough and had one of each of these in each hand and was devouring them as fast as she could.  In fact, I didn't bother to frost them at all because all three of my girls and Q, who normally will not even taste a piece of carrot cake, were happily enjoying them unfrosted.  That is pretty rare.  While I might get the seal of approval from two of my three girls on any particular thing, it isn't often that I get all three girls and Q to enjoy the same thing.  Even any particular flavor of ice cream won't get all four to agree. 

Here is the recipe I used:

5 cups of grated carrots

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup golden raisins

4 eggs

1/2 coconut oil

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 small can crushed pineapple

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 heaping teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup coconut

1. Combine grated carrots and brown sugar.  Set aside for about an hour.  Then stir in raisins.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour 3 round 9" cake pans (or whatever pans you are using - this time I used cupcake tins and mini loaf pans).

3. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice, and salt and set aside.

4. In large bowl, beat eggs until light.  Slowly beat in the white sugar, oil, and vanilla.  Stir in pineapple.  Stir in flour mixture until absorbed (stir as little as necessary).  Finally stir in carrot mixture, coconut, and walnuts.  Pour evenly into pans.

5. Bake 35-40 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean.  Cool 10 minutes in pan before removing to cool completely.  Frost with cream cheese frosting (my cupcakes took about 25 minutes and the mini loafs 30-35 minutes).

I've used this recipe a couple of times and using store bought organic carrots, I've never had an issue.  This time using the Greenling carrots,which are so much fresher, I had a lot of liquid accumulate in the grated carrot/brown sugar mixture.

 This is after 40 minutes of sitting.  I decided to add the raisins early to see how much liquid would be absorbed by the raisins.

 There was still a lot of liquid so I decided to drain it off.  I ended up draining about 1/2 cup of liquid off.  This is the dampness that I ended up with and there was still liquid in it, so I also drained about 1 Tbsp off the juice off the pineapple, too.

Just for reference, I thought I'd show what the final batter looks like moisture-wise.

While making these I was thinking that since this was really quite a bit more work than a regular cupcake that I wouldn't make them again if they weren't a big hit, but it looks like the muffins are more popular than the cake has been.