I prefer to finely shred carrots for carrot cake, since this will give you visible but not chunky pieces of carrot in your cake. Never use pre-shredded carrots for baking, since they lack the moisture and flavor needed for truly delicious cake. Use freshly grated carrots for the best flavor and texture. Grated Carrot - Grated carrots are of course key to carrot cake. If you don't have vegetable oil on hand your can substitute another neutral oil, like canola oil. Oil helps to create cake with a delicate crumb, and does not lead to dense batter the way butter can. Vegetable Oil - Vegetable oil adds moisture and fat to these cupcakes. You can adjust the amount of cinnamon to suit your tastes or even add a bit of other ground spices, like nutmeg, if you wish. For optimal flavor, be sure to use ground cinnamon that's been open for no more than a year and is not expired, as ground spices lose their flavor over time. Trust me, you'll be fighting over who gets to eat that 'bonus' cupcake! Ingredient Notes & SubstitutionsĬinnamon - Cinnamon perfectly complements the other flavors in these cupcakes. If a bakers' dozen includes 13 baked goods instead of 12, then this is a bakers' half dozen. With just the right ratio of ingredients for perfectly moist cupcakes and being careful to fill the liners just ⅔ of the way, that's where we netted out. This small batch recipe makes seven cupcakes.

This recipe is a must-have for Easter, but I gladly eat these cupcakes all year round! Of course you could stick to basic cream cheese frosting if you prefer, but the nutty flavor that the browned butter adds to this frosting is truly delightful. The brown butter cream cheese frosting takes these cupcakes from classic to showstopper. These cupcakes are adapted from my all-time favorite carrot cake recipe, so they're delightfully moist, packed with fresh carrots and a hint of cinnamon, and have just a bit of crunchy pecans.

the best Easter dessert - carrot cake - turned into the most delicious cupcakes! Why You'll Love This Recipe They are, after all, just perfectly-portioned mini cakes.

Remember in the 2000's when we were all obsessed with cupcakes before the trendy dessert seemed to run its course? With the rise in popularity of small batch baking over the past year, it seems like the right time for cupcakes to make a comeback.

Halfbaked harvest carrot cake