Carrot Cupcakes with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

This time my husband chose the next recipe. I remember our wedding cake tasting, where we had red velvet and carrot cake to chose from. My hubby went crazy about the carrot cake. And now I decided to make him happy again!

And here they are! Nice, moist and delicious carrot cupcakes! I love that you also use ingredients like pineapple, coconut and walnuts. I think the combination between all of them is fantastic.

Another great thing that I like about this recipe it's that it has a lot of carrot inside and in the end the cupcakes have a nice, natural color.

Also the frosting is quite nice. If you aren't a big fan of coconut, you can make a simple vanilla cream cheese frosting.

To decorate my cupcakes, I bought some cute marzipan carrots. They look adorable on top of the cupcakes.

If you are having a little party and wanna make something special with these cupcakes, you can arrange them in a round shape, like I did in the pictures, and then put a orange ribbon around them and make a pretty bow. This would be just lovely!

And now the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

For cupcakes:

• 1 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup whole-wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 2 large egg whites, at room temperature
• 1 and 1/4 cups dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 3 cups shredded carrots
• 1 cup crushed pineapple, drained
• 2/3 cup buttermilk
• 3/4 cup walnuts roughly chopped
• 3/4 cup shredded sweetened coconut

For frosting:

• 2/3 cup (6 ounces) cream cheese, softened 
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature 
• 2 and 1/2 cups powdered sugar 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 1/8 teaspoon almond extract 
• 3/4 cup flaked coconut

Directions

For cupcakes:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 

Line muffin tin(s) with paper liners or lightly coat with cooking spray. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, stir together the all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.
In the bowl of a standing mixer or a large mixing bowl, beat together the egg, egg whites, brown sugar, and canola oil.

Add the carrots and beat for 1 minute.

Add the pineapple and 3/4 shredded coconut and beat until incorporated.

With a wooden spoon, stir in half of the flour mixture, just until incorporated. 

Stir in buttermilk.

Add the remaining flour mixture, continuing to stir in by hand, just until combined.

Gently fold in walnuts. 

Fill prepared tins 3/4 of the way with batter.

Bake 20-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Gently remove cupcakes from tin and let cool on a wire rack. 

My cooled cupcakes

For frosting:

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese and butter until smooth and creamy.

Beat in vanilla and almond extracts.

Reduce speed to low, then gradually add the powdered sugar, 1/4 cup at a time, beating just until combined.

Spread frosting on cooled cupcakes, then top shredded coconut. 

In the recipe was mentioned that you can store frosted cupcakes in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or freeze  cupcakes for up to 2 months, first wrapping each individual cupcake tightly with plastic wrap.

Photos by Emi Trasnitu