Carrot Cake Cup Cakes!

For anyone who knows me, they know that my most favorite thing in the whole world is carrot cake.  Okay, maybe not my most favorite thing in the whole world, but it is my favorite kind of cake.  I have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to turn my great friend Scott's carrot cake recipe into cupcakes.  Lucky for him, his birthday came up at the perfect time.  My other great friend (and fellow carrot cake lover) Don celebrates his birthday a day after Scott, so I was set to make a double batch.

When turning a cake recipe into cupcakes, you just never really know how many cupcakes it's going to make.  I needed about 24 cupcakes for Scott's birthday party and about 36 cupcakes for Don's birthday so I made a double batch.

First things first, shredding the carrots.  Scott had warned me that I could not use the food processor because then the cake wouldn't be juicy enough.  Seriously!  Ugh!  (I promise next time I make these I am going to use the food processor and just see how "dry" the cupcakes turn out.)

I knew I needed about 6 cups of shredded carrots, but I just wasn't sure how many carrots to buy.  This was too many.  :)

I used our handy-dandy Pampered Chef mandolin slicer, which only worked for like, 1/2 of the time (because carrots are too small) for shredding the carrots.  Never again my friend!

Shred crumbs all over the kitchen!

Luckily, carrot cake is vegetable-oil based so you can easily mix it with a wooden spoon in a large Tupperware thasta bowl.

Look at all of those eggs, holy cow!

My favorite thing about carrot cake is pineapple.

Or maybe the nuts.

Or maybe the cream cheese icing.

In the middle of this crazy huge batter, I accidentally doubled 1 1/2 cups of oil to 4 cups.  Oops!  (Don't worry, I was able to scoop out almost the whole extra cup.)

The ultimate secret to this carrot cake, which is revered by all who know it, is the use of pecans instead of walnuts.  I think the nuts are my favorite part of carrot cake.

What beautiful cupcakes these are going to be!  All 72 of them!  Yep - the doubled batter made 72 cupcakes.  Holy cow.

These petite little things needed some extra "oomph" so one quick search of the Wilton site helped me make some carrot toppings.

 And I also wanted to add some of the pecans and make a prettier swirl, because I love pecans!!!

These cupcakes were a huge hit with both birthday boys and their guests.  My super wonderful coworkers also enjoyed some throughout the week, and I have to admit - I ate more of these cupcakes than any of the other cupcakes I've ever made!  Not a nice thing to admit, but that is how YUMMY they were.