Carrot cake is one of those cakes that I never really choose over things like chocolate or vanilla, and then wonder why after having a piece of it. It’s such a “cosy” cake, you know? Rich flavours without being sickly, but light enough that you don’t get overwhelmed either.
A few weeks ago I randomly decided that I was going to make a carrot cake after realizing that a) the weather was getting ridiculously cold and was calling for a fall-themed dessert, and b) I had a lot of carrots in the fridge that needed to be used.
So off I went making a cake – and it turned out to be MASSIVE. We had carrot cake in our fridge for days. With thanksgiving a couple of weeks ago, I decided to make it again, except this time, in cupcake form. This recipe made so many cupcakes we had them coming out of our asses.
Alright… recipe time, because I refuse to be one of those bloggers that rambles on for 8 paragraphs before getting to the actual point of the blog post – the damn recipe.
This recipe yields 1 massive cake, ~40 regular cupcakes, and like… 100 mini muffins. For the cake, you’ll need two round 9 inch baking dishes, for the muffins and mini muffins you’ll need the appropriate trays and cupcake holders. Duh.
Ingredients:
For the muffins:
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1.25 cups canola oil
- 2.5 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
- 0.5 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 large eggs
- 3 cups peeled, grated carrots
- 1 cup chopped pecans
- 0.5 cup raisins
For the cream cheese icing:
- 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
- 0.5 cup margarine
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups icing sugar
- a lot of muscle
Directions:
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees
- In a large bowl, mix flour, salt, baking soda, and pumpkin pie spice until well combined.
- In a separate, medium bowl, mix your sugars, canola oil, and vanilla extract together. Then, whisk your eggs in one at a time.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients in 3-4 parts and keep mixing until batter is smooth.
- Stir in your carrots, pecans, and raisins.
- If making a cake, grease your 2 baking dishes and divide the batter evenly between the two dishes, if making the cupcakes, keep in mind that the mixture will rise upon baking, so don’t fill your cups too much – especially the mini muffins!! I’d say go to about 2/3 of the way up the cup.
- Bake the cake for 40ish minutes, the regular cupcakes for 18-20minutes, and the mini muffins for 12 minutes – insert a toothpick to check that they’re finished (it should come out clean)
- Cool cakes COMPLETELY before attempting to ice them otherwise you’re going to have a runny mess of icing all over your cakes.
The icing:
- While the cakes are cooling, combine your cream cheese, margarine, and vanilla extract in a large bowl. It helps if you leave the cream cheese out of the fridge for a bit first so it’s warmer and easier to mix!
- Add in 0.5 cup of icing sugar at a time and whisk until fully combined before adding the next 0.5 cups.
- Stir and stir until you feel like your arm is going to fall off – stir until all the cream cheese lumps are gone and the mixture is smooth.
- Throw it into a piping bag and go nuts! Or if you’re not feeling so fancy, just use a knife to spread the frosting on instead. I also topped mine with a pecan for aesthetic reasons.
Enjoy!
Let me know if you give them a try, or have any other recipes you would like me to try!
Until next time
xx