My littlest guy turned two today. He’s come such a long way from his almost-three-month-early birth and 3 ½ pound weight to the happy, healthy and hungry toddler he is today. To celebrate I made carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese icing. The icing (Martha Stewart’s recipe) is luscious and rich, made with cream cheese and butter. The cake, on the other hand, is a much lighter version of the traditional cake and is moist and flavorful with spices. The recipe comes from Sunset’s Vegetarian Cooking, contains no eggs and uses a unique method of cooking the carrots and raisins in a sugar syrup before adding the dry ingredients. Here’s the recipe:
Carrot Cake
- 2 cups lightly packed, shredded raw carrots
- 1 cup raisins
- 1 ½ cups each sugar and water
- 1/3 cup butter
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
- ½ teaspoon each salt, ground cloves, and ground allspice
- 1 teaspoon each ground nutmeg and ground cinnamon
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup chopped walnuts
Place carrots, raisins, sugar, water, and butter in a 3-quart pan and bring to a simmer over medium heat; continue to simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.
In a bowl, sift together all-purpose flour, baking soda, salt, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon; stir in whole wheat flour. Stir dry ingredients into cooled carrot mixture until flour is moist. Stir in vanilla and walnuts. Spoon intoa greased 9-inch square baking pan.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 35 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 12 servings.
Note: I added ½ teaspoon of ground cardamom. Omitted the nuts for little children.
The cupcake wrappers and picks are a Wilton product that I purchased at Michael’s.
