Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Reduced Sugar Carrot Cake Cupcake
I had a craving for carrot cake the other day and found a delicious recipe that I thought would still taste good after I took out most of the refined sugar. Surprisingly it worked. I made these in both regular size cupcakes and minis. I indulged in a mini cupcake and it was worth it. These are very good. Even Alan, who is a sweet treat addict, liked these. By the way, he’s my true test if a sweet treat is really good or not, he considers himself a bit of a dessert connoisseur

Carrot Cake Cupcake

I found the recipe over here, but fine tuned it a bit to suit our family.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

The original recipe called for 1 1/3 cups of sugar for the cake. I read many of the comments that said they reduced the sugar to 3/4 cup with good results. I took it down to a 1/2 cup and it still tasted really good. The pineapple is sweet which helps. If you remove the pineapple from the recipe you may want to increase the sugar back to 3/4 cup.

I reduced the powdered sugar in the frosting as well and added milk to make it more or less a glaze. The original recipe calls for 3 cups of powdered sugar. I only made a half of batch so should have used 1 1/2 cups. I ended up only using 3/4 cup and we liked it. in all honesty it could have probably been reduced a little more. However, since I’ve cut most sugar out of my life I’m finding that I don’t like things as sweet. This is definitely something you will want to adjust for your own taste buds.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Serves: 12

Ingredients

Cake:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup sweetened or unsweetened flaked coconut
⅓ cup chopped pecans
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 large eggs
2 cups grated carrot
1½ cups canned crushed pineapple, drained
Cooking spray
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Glaze/Frosting
1 tablespoon butter, softened
4-ounce cream cheese, softened
3 /4 cup powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
⅓ cup milk

Instructions

Combine flour, sugar, coconut, pecans, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together. In a separate bowl mix oil & eggs until well mixed. Add egg, carrot, and pineapple to flour mixture and combine well.
Fill cupcake tins about ¾ full.
Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack.
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For glaze/frosting:
Mix all ingredients together. You can adjust the thickness of the glaze by adding or reducing the amount of milk you use. Frost cupcakes.

Enjoy!