
The other day Steve bought about a kilo of organic carrots when I only needed a couple. So I was searching around for ways of using them up. I almost made Ivy’s carrot cupcakes, but I didn’t have any oranges, so I decided to try something different. I ended up with this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, but as so often with American cake recipes I ended up changing it so radically it was hardly the same recipe by the time I’d finished. The result was quite different from Ivy’s cakes, but equally delicious. I loved the spices, especially the ginger (I’d even add a bit more next time), and the cakes were both light and moist.
It was yet another cake recipe that specified 2 cups each of flour and sugar. Hey people, a cup of sugar weighs about twice as much as a cup of flour! I like my cakes to taste of something other than sugar, especially when they are topped with tooth-achingly sweet frosting. So I decided to go for pound-cake ratios — equal weights of sugar and flour — reducing the sugar content by half.
The recipe uses vegetable oil instead of butter. I thought this was a bit odd, but we’ve been eating an awful lot of saturated fat recently, one way or another, so I decided it was time for a change. Again, 260 ml of oil looked like a lot, so I reduced it to 220, and I think I could even have used a little bit less without ill effect. If you want, you can replace all or part of the oil with softened butter.
And finally, instead of the raisins and walnuts, I used some chopped candied orange peel. But I think they might have been even nicer with chopped candied ginger as well or instead (can you tell I really liked the ginger flavour?).
This recipe makes a large batch; I used muffin tins and got 16 cakes out of it, but they would have been better a bit smaller. I frosted them with Ivy’s mascarpone frosting, except that I added maple syrup to it instead of lemon zest.
Recipe for Carrot cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting »