Saturday, September 8, 2012

Carrot Cake!


This recipe of carrot cake is one of my favorites.  I created this recipe from looking at a few online (how I create most of my recipes).  If you want something to compare it with, I believe Bobby Flay had a similar recipe from one of his Showdown episodes back in the day.  I love these cupcakes!

Carrot Cake

1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 raw cane sugar (or just more brown sugar if you don't have this)
3 large eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 8 oz. can of crushed pineapple, pureed
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
4 large carrots, grated
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz. cream cheese
2 oz. butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups powdered sugar


Directions for Carrot Cake:

Before you begin, make sure your carrots are grated, your muffin tins are lined with cupcake liners, and your pineapple is pureed (with a blender, food processor, or immersion blender).  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1. Sift your dry ingredients, flour, salt, baking soda, and all your spices.
2. Cream, or at least mix the butter with the sugars until well blended
3. Add the eggs, one at a time and mix well after each addition.
4. In a separate bowl, mix your buttermilk, oil and vanilla.
5. Add your wet into the butter/egg mixture alternately with the dry flour mixture, in a 3 to 5 ratio.
6. Mix this, though be careful not to over mix.  Add in the pureed pineapple and mix that in as well.
7. Fold in by hand the walnuts and the carrots to ensure no over mixing.
8. Using an ice cream scoop, fill up your muffin tins about 3/4 of the way up, or about one full scoop.
9. Bake cupcakes for 18-22 minutes.  Test for doneness by inserting a chopstick or toothpick into the centers of a few.  Mine are usually well done by 18 minutes.
10. You can also use this same recipe to bake 2, 9-inch rounds.  If you do that, use a liner in the bottoms of the pans and bake at same temperature but for 35-40 minutes.

11. Once your cupcakes have cooled completely, ice them with your cream cheese frosting and garnish with walnuts if desired.

For the Cream Cheese Frosting:

1. Cream the cream cheese and butter with a paddle attachment in your stand mixer.  Mix for 2-3 minutes so that the mixture is nice and light.
2. Add in your vanilla extract and mix a little more.
3. Now add the powdered sugar, one cup at a time and adding it a little at a time.  Scrape down the sides as needed.
4. Once all the sugar is added, mix the icing for another 2-3 minutes so that the sugar devolves and the icing becomes light and creamy.

1 comment:

  1. Yum. I love carrot cake. The pineapple sounds interesting. Can't wait to try this!

    ReplyDelete