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These are the moistest, most delicious Carrot Cake Cupcakes that I have ever had! They have a little crunch from toasted walnuts and the perfect hint of cinnamon! Topped with an impossibly creamy cream cheese frosting they are irresistible!
This is the most tender, moist carrot cake you’ve ever had with a little crunch from the toasted walnuts and a prominent carrot cinnamon flavor.
The cake is the same as The Best Carrot Cake Recipe but transformed into cupcakes! I topped them with a traditional cream cheese frosting but you could also use this bourbon cream cheese buttercream from the best red velvet cake.
And adorned with a little marzipan carrot. As can be seen, they are adorable. Plus who doesn’t love marzipan?
So truth be told, this isn’t my first time around the carrot cake block…
This carrot cake recipe is actually shockingly similar in texture and taste to one I made last year from one of my vintage cookbooks. It tasted divine and the frosting was to.die.for. Why didn’t I post it?
Because as I cut into my magnificent 3-tiered cake, I realized my carrots had turned green.
GREEN!!!!
Apparently if carrots come in contact with baking soda, they will transform like a Teenage Mutant Nina Turtle into a horrible, sickening shade of green.
In essence, think shamrock.
If you’re really nice to me, I may just post a picture of the green cake in all its glory. Maybe.
In culinary school we weigh all our ingredients, because it is 1000x more accurate and at least 234x easier. I converted this recipe to volumetric measurements because I love you, but I suggest you dust off that scale in the back of your cupboard and weigh your ingredients.
When someone gives you weighted measurements it’s like a gift from the Goddess of Precision herself, and you don’t turn down gifts. Or at least I don’t! 😉
If you aren’t into kneading gel coloring into marzipan and meticulously shaping carrots (even though it is so easy!), you can do like my friend David and pipe adorable little carrots on top with frosting.
If you tried this recipe and loved it please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it goes in the comments below. I love hearing from you; your comments make my day!
Carrot Cake Cupcakes
Ingredients
For the Carrot Cake:
- 1½ cups all purpose flour
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 ¼ cup vegetable oil
- 1 ⅔ cups granulated sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup carrots shredded and squeezed
- ½ cup walnuts toasted and chopped
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
For the Cream Cheese Frosting:
- 20 oz cream cheese not light, not whipped, room temperature
- ½ cup unsalted butter 2 sticks, room temperature
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- toasted walnuts chopped, for garnish, optional
For the Marzipan Carrots (optional):
- 3 ½ tablespoons marzipan
- food coloring orange and green
Instructions
For the Carrot Cake:
- Preheat the oven to 350˚F and line 24 muffin tins with cupcake liners.
- Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
- Add the lemon juice to the vegetable oil and set aside.
- Squeeze out the excess juice from your carrot; discard or drink it! So healthy!
- In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip together the eggs and sugar to the ribbon stage. This is when the batter will hold a ribbon on its surface before slowly disappearing.
- With the mixer running on high, slowly pour in the vegetable oil mixture and whisk until completely emulsified (i.e. you can’t see any oil).
- Remove the bowl from the stand mixer and fold in the dry ingredients all at once just until streaky.
- Fold in the walnuts and carrots until there are no more lumps of flour and the batter is just combined. Please don’t over mix. If you think it’s done, it is.
- Scoop into prepared tins no higher than ¾ full. You will have just enough batter to fill 24 cups.
- Bake 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes back clean.
- Cool 5 minutes in pan then turn out onto wire rack and cool upside-down. Yes, upside-down! Let cool completely before frosting.
For the Cream Cheese Frosting:
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment cream together the cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar on medium low speed until soft and smooth, 10-12 minutes. It is very important your ingredients are at room temperature or you will have lumps of butter and you will have to soften over a water bath and your frosting will be runnier (Like mine. Don’t let impatience happen to you.)
- Add the lemon juice and vanilla and stir to combine.
- Pipe frosting onto cupcakes using your favorite tip. I used a Wilton 1A.
- Gently scoop some toasted, chopped walnuts into the palm of one hand and pat them around the edges of each cupcake.
For the Marzipan Carrots:
- Color ¾ of the marzipan orange and ¼ green, by kneading in gel coloring into the marzipan.
- Shape little carrots from the orange marzipan and mark them with the back of a knife to resemble the lines on real carrots. Make a divot in the top of each carrot.
- Roll out the green marzipan into long, thin ropes and cut into small pieces. Group several pieces together and press into the divot in each carrot.
- Top each cupcake with a small carrot. Adorable.
Beautiful carrot cupcakes! I would love to get the recipe by weight. Do you think you can email it to me? Also, where do you get your marzipan? Thank you!
Hi Rosemary, The recipe is already converted into weight in parenthesis. I buy it at a grocery store in NYC. I’ve also made it. It’s also generally found in cake decorating supply stores. Happy baking!
Hi! I’m looking at making these for Easter and I noticed that the cup/gram measurements for flour don’t quite match. I MUCH prefer to measure by weight (so much more accurate!), but thought that 190 grams looked low for two cups of flour. I’d be using pastry flour, if that makes a difference. Thanks so much!
Hi Joanna! My original recipe is by weight so I know the gram measurements are correct. I use pastry flour as well for this recipe and the 190g is for pastry. I basically scaled out the flour and the scooped it into cup measurements. I would have to do it again to double check. You will love these cupcakes! Try to find “horse carrots” if you can…they are bigger and they taste way better than the ones you buy in the bag at the average grocery store. Happy Baking!
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These sound amazing! But I noticed that you are including baking soda in this recipe and now I”m worried that my carrots are going to turn green!!!!!
Hi Angela! Well I have been there…the beautiful cake that you cut open only to find has turned green. Unless you want a flat cake or you use an egg-foam, you need to use baking soda or baking powder, which contains baking soda. As long as you whisk the soda into the flour to disperse it, you will not have a problem. I’ve made this recipe half a dozen times and have never had a problem. Also we made it in culinary school and no one, in my class of 20, had green carrots! 🙂 Happy baking!
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Hi
For the cream cheese frosting 1/2 cup butter(2 sticks). 1/2 cup butter is (1 stick). Also, you have salt listed in the instructions but don’t have salt listed in the ingredient’s list.
Hi Jackie! Thank you so much for catching that! It should be 1 cup of butter! I will fix both right now. Great catch!
I used your recipe for my husband’s birthday cake. It made a beautiful 2 layer square cake. I followed your recipe exactly except for baking about 7 minutes longer. It was delicious. The entire family loved it. My first carrot cake. Next time I’ll do the cupcakes. It was pretty easy. I really dislike box mixes and store bought cakes. Thanks for the deliciousness.
You are so welcome! I am so glad you liked it, Glenna!!! I don’t like box mixes either. All the additives that make it “foolproof” and from scratch always tastes better anyways! I am very impressed that you made a square layer cake – I find those much more challenging to frost than round ones. Happy baking!
These look fantastic. I’m going to try them with gluten free flour, as my mum has recently had to give up gluten and lactose. Seeing as these are made with oil and there our favourite cake in the whole world, I thought I’d see how they turn out!! Obviously no frosting (well for mum!!). Thanks for a fab recipe Sammie x https://www.feastingisfun.com
Good luck!