I saw something the other day on instagram — it was a photo of a vegan carrot cake using real carrots and a bunch of other amazing ingredients. It planted a seed in my sugar-craving carrot cake loving brain 🥕 🍰 …. so today, once my work was done (and in light of the 25 degree temps and all-day snow we’ve had), I gave myself permission to play in the kitchen a bit. 👩‍🍳

I went looking for cupcakes, for easier freezing and sharing, and found THIS RECIPE.

I had all of the ingredients at home AND I’ve never made a frosting by blending nuts, so I thought- “ what the heck!” 😋 🥕

Whipped up the batter and mine was really dry/crumbly when all mixed together so I added more applesauce and a bit more olive oil. I am still using coconut flour in all of my baking experiments (and I think it does dry out the batter quite a bit). The only other modification I made was to reduce the sugar by about 1/2c., because — these things will also have frosting on them!

As has been the case with most items I’ve baked using coconut flour, out of the oven these muffins looked drier and crackier than a normal muffin would be BUT they tasted good! And mixing up the frosting was much easier than I expected. (I soaked the cashews for an hour as instructed and then added them + the other ingredients to my silver bullet mixer and gave it a whirl). It took a bit of coaxing, stirring, and starting again, but eventually I had frosting (ish -it still had some cashew chunks in it, but the bullet had had enough).

Once I popped them in the fridge for awhile and let them set up, I pulled one out for the final taste test. Honestly - as healthy as these are, they are REALLY good. Next time I’ll use a proper blender for the frosting.
And maybe grind up walnuts to sprinkle on the frosting. Overall though, highly recommend !