Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

There are two things that I love about the recipe for carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  #1, you can do it in one bowl (granted you need to rinse out the bowl for the frosting), and #2, it only makes 12 cupcakes

The recipe calls for an 8 oz can of crushed pineapple.  Sadly, I do not have this in my pantry.  I have a 20 oz can of chunks, and 6 oz of leftover from a fresh pineapple.  I decided to whiz the leftover in the blender and call it good.  Waste not want not!

I had one carrot.  One BIG carrot.  It weighed 6 oz, and came out to just what I needed.  Future reference:  a carrot that is as big as a turkey baster yields 1 cup of shredded carrot!

The batter came together before the oven finished pre-heating.

There are two reasons I’m sharing these cupcakes today – #1, they are fabulous and a friend’s favorite, and #2 I’m submitting them to The Lunch Box Project for a poster. 

Taking time to carefully divide the batter between each cup makes sure that you don’t have to go back and even them out later. Someday I’ll take my own advice…  The batter has no baking powder, the acidity of the pineapple juice reacts with the baking soda and makes the carbon dioxide bubbles.  You can see that it’s already started.  You can also see that I did not use liners.  This was…not the best choice, as they did not all remove as nicely as I would have hoped.  You know what cake pops are, right???

I poked a cupcake with a skewer after 21 minutes of baking, and it wasn’t clean, and there was no “spring back” when I pushed it, so I set the time for 5 more minutes.  It was an arbitrary number – please don’t rely on me for baking expertise!  I think that there are a lot of variables to this recipe – the moisture in the pineapple and carrot, and the power of the baking soda (mine isn’t old by any means, but it sits unsealed in the cupboard).

These are not high-rising cupcakes.  They’re going to frost very nicely!  Although, I ate this one…why bother with frosting?

Ok fine you want the frosting.  Beat room temperature cream cheese with powdered sugar and vanilla until smooth.  It’s really that easy - why bother with a can of chemicals?   

Add carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting to your meal plan for an easy weeknight dessert or to serve on a lazy Sunday morning.