August Challenge: Ina Garten's Carrot Cake Cupcakes

I'm playing a little bit of catch up since I've just joined and am starting with the August challenge, which is Carrot cake.

While looking at foodnetwork.com for recipes for another challenge that I am participating in, I found this recipe by Ina Garten, whom I generally trust for recipes. The recipe is for her Carrot Cake Cupcakes.

First I grated the carrots and chopped the walnuts:

Then in a bowl mix together sugar, oil and vanilla. I used half oil and half applesauce because a cup and a half of oil seemed excessively bad for me. Then mix in eggs, one at a time until you get this soup:

Then sift in flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Mix well to incorporate.

Then add in the carrots, walnuts and raisins:

Line muffin pan with liners then fill them about 3/4 full. I filled mine a little more because I like them to overflow a bit..I'm glad now that I did.

The directions say to bake these at 400 degrees for 10 minutes then to reduce heat to 350 and bake for 35 minutes. I did the first part, but they smelled done so I checked 10 minutes into the 35 minute bake and they were done! So I checked the comments to the recipe and they pretty much all warn that the timing is wrong. I baked the second batch at 375 for 20 minutes and they came out perfect.

For the frosting, beat 12 oz of cream cheese, 2 sticks of butter (1/2 lb) and 1 tsp of vanilla. Since my mixers sparked, smoked, then died I did this by hand. It's a great upper body toner!

Then mix in the confectioner's sugar:

Mix until light and fluffy. Keep tasting the whisk or beater to make sure it's good as you go because you just never know ;-)

Enjoy!

These were entirely TOO delicious and not effected at all by a switch from oil to applesauce.

Recipe is at: Ina Garten Carrot Cake Cupcakes. Next up this week: September Challenge: Sachertorte...