Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

Carrot Cake is my brother B's favorite and Wegmans makes a great one. This Easter, I decided to try to make my own, instead. I used this Everyday Food recipe. I like the baking recipes from Everyday Food because they are straight forward and don't require too much precision. My other brother M and I had fun making these and taking photos every step of the way.

I lost the bag of coconut somehow, but we went ahead and baked these without it. I think they came out okay. They seemed a bit eggy, where they might have been more cake-like. Also, since the only spice in them is allspice, their flavor is a bit one note. Some pineapple chunks or cinnamon or ginger might make these more exciting.

While we were baking M said he never knows how much batter to put in the cupcake papers to make the cupcakes look pretty. I agreed. I think I underfilled the cups this time. I should have baked one test cupcake first and then filled the rest of the cups according to my findings, but instead I just filled up the rest of the cups with extra cream cheese icing.

The icing -- just cream cheese mixed with powdered sugar with some vanilla -- was delicious.