BOM: Cupcake Challenge 7/175

I decided upon making carrot cupcakes for Easter because for some reason, carrots are popular. I have a limited taste understanding of carrot cakes/cupcakes, only having one of both fairly recently. So, you can imagine that I was a bit daunted by this recipe from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook.
 

My ingredients were easy to measure out. Nothing too crazy. I bought pre-shredded carrots and ended up giving them a bit of a chop in the food processor. Not sure if that's a normal thing, but hey, this was my first try with this and I didn't want huge strings of carrots.

It was a bit odd to mix carrots with other ingredients. I suppose it is similar to working with pumpkin, but I still had a hard time with it. However, I was able to combine all of my cupcake ingredients by hand. Power to manual labor. These also were put into lined muffin pans which allows for easy cleanup.

Twenty-five minutes later, I pulled these good looking cupcakes out of the oven. They smelled delightful! I tried a plain cupcake because the cookbook said they make a good snack when eaten this way. It tasted good, but it seemed more like a muffin without frosting.

That realization was my cue to start on my cream cheese frosting. I had no idea that this popular frosting was so easy to make. Those four ingredients are all you need! I never would've guessed. My sister said that it was my best frosting yet. (WIN!) I'm sure that you notice our Kitchen-Aid mixer had to be used for this step.

And there you have the iced cupcakes. This is definitely a great cupcake to make. Not too sweet and very light and moist. Shouldn't be too much to clean either. I suggest giving it a try.