Carrot Cake Cupcakes Topped with Thick Cream Cheese Frosting

These Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting require exactly 20 minutes in the oven. As the shredded carrots bake, they soften to ensure a tender crumb while avoiding any strong vegetable taste or bright color. The batter also incorporates vegetable oil alongside thoroughly drained crushed pineapple to keep the final cake highly moist.

Preparing the carrots and pineapple

Hold the carrots perpendicular to the grater. Do not grate the carrots on an angle. That creates undesirable long strands in the finished cake. Pack the grated carrots firmly into your measuring cups. The carrots soften during baking to provide a tender crumb.

Purchase canned crushed pineapple packed in juice rather than syrup to prevent excessive sweetness. Drain the fruit thoroughly by pressing out the excess liquid. Save two tablespoons of the reserved juice for the batter.

The Liquid Base and Dry Base

Using vegetable oil gives the cake crumb more moisture than butter. You also need room temperature eggs for the Liquid Base, since cold eggs do not blend together as smoothly. Meanwhile, the brown sugar acts in two ways by adding extra moisture and lending a distinct caramel flavor to the baked crumb.

Heavy batters need significant lifting power, which is why the Dry Base uses baking soda. This ingredient packs roughly triple the lifting force of standard baking powder. Adding white vinegar or lemon juice creates a fast reaction with the baking soda to jump-start the rising process. If you need to swap out these leavening ingredients, a couple of options work well:

• Six teaspoons of baking powder will work in place of the baking soda, though the baked cupcakes will not lift quite as high.
• Lemon juice can substitute for the vinegar to activate the baking soda.

Mixing the batter

Pour the wet mixture into the dry bowl. Mix the wet and dry ingredients only until the flour is no longer visible. Fold in your Mix-ins. You have a few choices for these additions:

• Walnuts, pecans, and coconut can be interchanged or omitted.
• Raisins can be added to the batter as an optional mix-in.

Grab a levered ice cream scoop to evenly and easily portion the batter across the twelve empty cups. This dense mixture needs high heat to rise properly, so bake the batch at 350°F (180°C) whether you have a standard or fan oven. Avoid cooking this recipe as a whole cake in one round pan, because the heavy weight yields an overly dense crumb. Once they finish baking, take the hot cupcakes out of the pan and let them cool fully.

The Frosting

Block cream cheese is necessary for the Frosting because tub-style spreads hold excessive moisture and will cause the mixture to become too runny. If you only have the spreadable tub variety on hand, reduce the required 6 oz (180 g) portion by fifty percent and mix in half a teaspoon of lemon zest to improve the texture.

Bring the butter to 63°F (17°C) before mixing. It needs to yield to gentle pressure, but letting it become overly soft will leave a greasy residue. You also need to use soft icing sugar to achieve a fluffy texture, as pure icing sugar hardens far too much. When combining the sifted sugar with the cream cheese, run the mixer on its slowest setting to keep the fine dust from creating a powdery mess.

Serving and storage

Pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes and garnish with the optional Toppings of chopped walnuts or pecans. Refrigerate the cupcakes during hot or humid weather. The cold stops the crumb from becoming too wet and prevents the frosting from melting. Allow refrigerated cupcakes to sit at room temperature for ten minutes before serving.