Mini Carrot Ginger Chocolate Chip Cakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Carrot bread and carrot cupcakes are two of my favorite, easy go to recipes with carrots.  The recipe is the same for both, except that the cooking time is reduced by about half for the cupcakes, and  I have adapted  mine from classic carrot bread recipes, with the following variations:

Given that I am not a fan of  adding cinnamon to anything and everything, I do not  include it in many of my recipes, as I believe it masks the flavors that we want to highlight.  On the other hand, ginger confers a fresh element of spiciness, while the candied ginger provide  additional textural complexity. The orange zest is almost a must in this recipe, as it complements the carrots and ginger. Going full circle,  both ginger and orange pair well with chocolate, so I have included some mini chocolate chips. As a trade off, I add some oats and milled flax seeds, which provide whole grain and omega-3. These mini cakes are delicious and nutritious, but you can choose to omit or substitute some of the optional ingredients, as you prefer.

Ingredients:

• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• ½  cup canola oil
• ¼ cup of  butter (or vegan butter) at room temperature plus extra for the cupcake pans, unless silicone
• 1 ½  cup of peeled freshly grated carrots
• 2 tablespoons minced candied or crystallized ginger
• 2 teaspoons of freshly grated ginger
• zest of 1 organic orange
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp of milled flax seeds
• ¼ cup of rolled oats
• 1 cup organic sugar
• ¼ cup mini semi sweet chocolate chips
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tsp of vanilla essence
• 1 pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Grease an 8-cup muffin pan (or 12-cup for mini cakes) by brushing inside every slot with some melted butter. If using silicone cups, there is no need to grease them.In a medium bowl, combine the butter, oil,  sugar  and eggs, and with an electric mixer (either hand-held or standing mixer) cream the mixture until smooth. Mix the vanilla essence and grated fresh ginger into  the creamed batter.Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda into a separate bowl, and mix in the oats and milled flax seeds. Add the salt.With a spatula, mix the  flour mixture into the batter, in two additions, until well incorporated and smooth. Fold in the carrots, crystallized ginger, orange zest and chocolate chips, a bit at a time until evenly incorporated into the batter.Spoon batter into greased muffin cups, filling each 3/4 full.Bake cupcakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Turn cupcakes out onto racks and cool completely.

Even though these cakes carry enough flavor on their own, you can further jazz them up with cream cheese frosting, and drizzle with honey and sprinkle with chopped pistachios.

For the cream cheese frosting:

• 4 ounces unsalted butter, softened
• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp honey for the drizzle
• 2 tbsp chopped (roasted if preferred) pistachios

Directions:

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and cream cheese with an electric mixer. With the mixer on low speed, add the powdered sugar a cup at a time until smooth and creamy. Beat in the vanilla extract.

Note that I use ½ of the sugar of most frosting recipes because I drizzle with honey. Also, the saltiness of the pistachios balances the sweetness nicely.

Food Saving and Repurposing Ideas

I don’t fancy being wasteful, so I am always compelled to make use of what I have in my kitchen before it goes bad. Although I must admit, as my husband points out, to avoid pitching $2 worth of ingredients, I will end up spending a lot more in time,  and additional ingredients, just  to save the one item that is about to expire. But that is beside the point...although he makes a good point.  Well, this weekend I was in this food saving mood, as that carton of buttermilk that was still sitting unopened in my refrigerator was begging to get utilized. So I decided to make homemade buttermilk pancakes, which the kids enjoyed with Nutella and/or real maple syrup. I made enough that they also had some for breakfast on Monday.  Pancake breakfast on a school morning is always a special treat.  

And while I was on this baking kick, I thought, why not use the remaining buttermilk to make fresh biscuits? And so everyone enjoyed one (or two..) for brunch with smoked salmon, avocados, grape tomatoes, baby greens, eggs (boiled or poached).

 But I wasn’t done yet!  You may have seen me post various assortments of cereal treats on my Facebook page "Kitchening with Francesca", and the reason being is that there is always leftover cereal at my house that nobody wants to consume, and rather than wasting it, I always enjoy experimenting with it to make treats. And most of the times they turn out good enough to eat :o) In fact, on this last round of experimenting, the chocolate chip soft bake cookies were such a hit with the kids, that they were gone by the next day.  For these, I adapted a chocolate chip cookie recipe by substituting some of the flour with flour obtained from organic oat and marshmallow cereal (all I did I put the cereal in a food processor (or vitamix blender) and reduced it to powder.  Because I used cereal which was already sweet, I of course used less sugar than the recipe called for.   For the whole grain granola treats, I used a mixture of raisin bran and granola, but the recipe is a bit more involved, so I will save that for another time. But I can assure you that not much is left of those couple dozen whole grain treats.

In the meantime, go ahead and experiment, and feel free to share your results.  

Happy saving, happy baking, happy savoring.