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 :)

Cupcake Challenge Day 2- Carrot cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting

Day 2: carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. They turned out so well! The recipe called for golden raisins, which I usually don't add, but I did this time. Again, the recipe yielded exactly what it said it would: 24 cupcakes. And they baked for 19 minutes at 325 degrees convection, instead of 24-28 minutes at 325 conduction as instructed. These were not as heavy as most carrot cake recipes are, and they smelled divine. Although I'm not a fan of carrot cake, I do so love the smell.
Here they are after baking. A few got too big and collapsed, I may have overfilled the cups, even though I used the same scooper for all of them.

Here are a few all frosted and decorated. I love sprinkles! :) These were a cinch to make, didn't even need a mixer, except for the frosting. Also, no butter in carrot cake, just vegetable oil. But the frosting called for 2 sticks of butter and 12 ounces of cream cheese, which seemed like a lot. I did have a bit leftover, which I'll save for the red velvet cupcakes next week !

I brought them to another local fire department, and they were very excited to have them. I'm excited for tomorrow, yellow buttermilk cupcakes with fluffy vanilla frosting. A classic! So far, I'm really having a good time with this project, although I am going through a lot of butter :)

Easter Peeps!

My favorite Easter candy is marshmallow Peeps! In fact, I prefer to eat them a bit stale. So I made Easter Peeps cupcakes! They are carrot-ginger cupcakes, with lemon cream cheese frosting, tinted pale green. I topped them with chicks and bunny sprinkles, then with either Peeps or jellybeans. Can you believe not everyone likes Peeps? They were a big hit at the Easter BBQ. I just love how colorful they are!