Cupcakes for my Wingman

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.