Pecan Carrot Cupcakes

Today's my first time making a Carrot Cake and for the longest time, I never fancied making one. I tasted a Carrot Cake once and it was horrible, hence my dislike. However, over the past few days, a Carrot Cake recipe caught my attention and it's a very simple recipe called Classic Carrot Cake by Susan Purdy which I found in baking911 and had been since adapted by Sarah Phillips. I decided to give it a try after buying some carrots in the grocery for my chopseuy.

The batter was very easy to make. I had almost a cup full of grated carrots on the side before I started with everything else. The recipe also uses a few spices like cinnamon and ground nutmeg to, well...spice it up! After mixing everything, the resulting batter was a little thin but should hold good enough in the cupcake liners. While walnuts are regular garnish for Carrot Cakes (as I read it, it's not like I have eaten a fair share of Carrot Cakes!), I opted to use Pecans instead. The chopped Pecans were then added last to the batter.

I made a very small recipe (half of the original recipe) so that I would be making only a very few cuppies just in case I don't like it. The reduced recipe yielded batter for 7 liners. So I then poured (yes it's that thin, it can be poured!) the batter into the cupcake liners and baked for around 20mins. The cupcakes domed nicely after baking. I immediately took it out of the oven, took the cupcakes out of the tin and then let it cool in a wire rack for around 10 minutes. While the cupcakes were cooling, I started making the Cream Cheese Frosting for the cupcakes. I love Cream Cheese Frosting so I was telling the Carrot cupcakes to better be good or else I'd be wasting my cream cheese over them! LOL!
With everything ready, what is left is the assembly of the cupcakes. I swirled the frosting over the cupcakes and I also topped it with a homemade sugar roses. The colors of the roses are not my colors (Burgundy and Peach) but I tried it because those little color bottles are still unopened (plus my Pink and Yellow were almost done). I think the new colors worked beautifully with the Off-White frosting.

I was prepared to hate the taste of my beautiful little cupcakes. After staring at it for a few minutes and contemplating on whether to taste it or not, I decided to try it since no one else is here to try it. I took a bite and was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted. It was fluffy and moist, and the the carrots were not overpowering. Needless to say, I loved how it tasted like and I will definitely be baking more of this. The cream cheese frosting provided a nice tangy contrast to the cinnamon/nutmeg spices. Overall, it's just lovely. ;)