Thursday, August 5, 2010

Martha Challenge #43- Maple- sweetened carrot cupcakes


This recipe is designed for children, or anyone who doesn't want to consume mass quantities of refined white sugar. The cupcakes are sweetened only with maple syrup and molasses. Yum!
Since I just got back from Canada, with some maple syrup, I wanted to use it right away, and these cupcakes were perfect for that.They're typical carrot cupcakes, with the exception of the sugar. I also added a bit of honey for added sweetness. The cakes came out great, nice and domed and golden. The recipe says it makes 12 regular and 24 minis, but I got 8 regular and 24 minis. I love baking cupcakes like this because the house smells amazing!

The frosting was a bit problematic. It also is only sweetened with maple syrup. 1 pound of cream cheese to 1/4 cup of maple syrup. It was awful. Tooooooo tangy. I'm not the biggest fan of cream cheese frosting, and this was like eating pure cream cheese. I had to doctor it up a bit, adding honey, and finally, about 1.5 cups of powdered sugar. I just couldn't get it sweet enough! And by the time I was finished beating it all together, it was too runny. I chilled it for about an hour to try and firm it up, but it was still a loose frosting.

Martha piped designs with her frosting, but mine was too runny for that, so it was just blobbed on the top. I added a sprinkling of maple sugar on top of each one, to enhance the maple flavor and sweeten it a bit more.
They turned out ok, but I won't use that frosting again. And this morning I found 3-4 mini wrappers in the trash, so apparently someone liked them :)

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