Carrot Cake Cupcakes

These cupcakes are moist and delicious, just what we needed.  I’ve been playing around with my carrot cake recipes and wanted to create a carrot cake cupcake option that I could bring to our Easter potluck.  Having cupcakes was much easier option than having to slice a cake – cleaner and less work on my end while we are all hanging out and enjoying each others company (and maybe even having an adult Easter egg hunt.)  These cupcakes were a huge hit!

This recipe is great for any get together or birthday bash.  I doubled the recipe as we had more than 12 mouths to feed…plus extras are always a delight!

Ingredients

Cake:

• 1/2 cup salted butter, room temperature (or coconut oil or ghee)
• 1/4 cup coconut sugar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
• 1 cup blanched almond flour
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 cups carrots, shredded
• Optional: 1 cup walnuts, chopped

Icing:

• 1/4 cup salted butter, room temperature
• 4 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 Tablespoon honey
• Optional: 3 tablespoons walnuts, chopped (for topping)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Whisk butter (coconut oil or ghee), coconut sugar, honey, vanilla, and eggs together.
3. Add almond flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder.
4. Mix thoroughly until everything is combined.
5. Lightly stir or fold in the shredded carrots and walnuts.
6. Line your muffin tin(s) with cupcake liners.
7. Using 2 spoons – one to scoop and one to push off the scooping spoon – scoop the batter into each muffin tin until they’re almost full. Keep in mind, these cupcakes don’t expand or rise much, so make them pretty full.
8. Bake for 30 minutes, until the top is a light golden brown.
9. Remove from oven and allow the cupcakes to cool.  You can cool them in the cupcake pan or place them on a cooling rack to allow them to cool faster to room temperature.
10. In a medium bowl, use either an electric mixer, or whip the with a whisk by hand (it will be a good arm workout!), to cream together the icing ingredients.
11. Whip them until fluffy (if using mixer, on high for about 1 minute).
12. Transfer the icing to a plastic sandwich sized bag and cut off a small piece of one corner.
13. Squeeze the bag to ice each cupcake. Optional, sprinkle additional walnuts on top.
14. Chill in the fridge for an hour for the icing and cupcakes to set.
15. You can make these cupcakes the day before or morning of to have fresh delicious cupcakes.  They are still tasty after a couple of days, or you can freeze to defrost individually at a later date.