143: Stuffed Carrot Cupcakes

I love carrot cake, but this is my first time making it. I used a mix of two recipes. The cake batter is Cook's Illustrated (via another site) and the frosting stuffing idea is from King Arthur Flour. It was not the easiest mix of recipes- the batter is delicious but very thick/heavy. Not a bad thing...unless you're trying to not smush a soft filling into a flat layer. I'd say it worked for the most part, though next time I may try to fridge the frosting a bit to solidify.

Ingredients:

Cake:

8.75 oz AP flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1.5 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cloves
8.75 oz light brown sugar
1/4 cup walnut oil

1/2 cup canola oil
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
10 oz shredded carrots (almost 3 big)
2/3 cup dried currants

2/3 cup toasted shredded/dried coconut

Frosting:

8 oz package cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup sugar

Main additions to the recipe were switching out some of the oil for walnut oil (I was running out of canola and ideally think this cake should have nuts in it, too), and the addition of coconut. That I just bought, thinking "of course this cake has coconut in it"...when none of the recipes I was thinking about using had that in there. Whatever, it was a nice tasty addition.

Preheat your oven to 350. Mix the frosting up, set aside. Mix up your dry, set aside. 

Mix your wet ingredients, then add your mix ins (carrot, currants, coconut), once combined add the dry. It's a very dense batter but it will come together. This yielded 15 cupcakes, though 12 of them were a little overfilled, so if done well you'll probably get more. Put a spoon of batter down, add a small spoon of filling to the center of each, then cover (carefully) with the batter. You may have to finesse it a bit- adding your batter carefully around the filling before putting some on top- maybe even creating a little dimple in that initial spoonful for the filling to live.

I had a bit of an oven preheating mishap, so my cupcakes went in to a warm-ish oven and took about a half hour. Your mileage with vary, just take them out when the tops have a little cush to them. Or you can do the toothpick test along the side. It's one of those things I just know by feel.

I think my oven issues lead to my cupcakes being a little flat- though if they had not been over-filled I don't think it would be as obvious. Overall though I'm in love. Frosted cupcakes are one of the most annoying things to transport, leading to space-taker-uppers like this caddy here. NYC apartments are too small to own something like that for the handful of times a year I make cupcakes. Filling is super easy, leads to less frosting overall (a good thing, frosting is kind of gross), and most importantly: you get a good cross section. I'm a sucker for that.