I made these cupcakes on impulse!  Only one day after I made the s’mores cupcakes!  The first reason I made these cupcakes was because I wanted to use the rest of the cream cheese leftover from my mint Oreo truffles.  The second reason I made these cupcakes was because we had a bag of fresh carrots in the refrigerator.

This is the first recipe I’ve made from smittenkitchen.com, although I want to try all of Deb’s recipes.  The recipe for these carrot cake cupcakes are posted here on her website.

I had to do one substitution, and that was because we have no regular granulated sugar.  Luckily, brown sugar can be substituted, in equal amounts, for granulated sugar.  I had seen carrot cakes use all brown sugar instead of white sugar, so this is what I decided to do.  I used light brown sugar.

When Deb said in her post that this was a killer recipe, she was totally right!  This carrot cake is so moist and flavorful, it’s just unbelievable.  I don’t think I will ever make any other carrot cake recipe again – this one is a keeper.

The frosting is really full of maple flavor, and I’d recommend not going overboard with this frosting.  By that I mean, don’t pile on this frosting; just a little swirl or thin layer will do, else it might be a little overpowering and drown out the taste of that wonderful carrot cake.

I think these make a great breakfast cupcake as well.  I had one this morning, after a quick round in the microwave (about 9 seconds) to warm it up, with coffee, and it was very nice.  :)