A few years ago, my brother and I both happened to visit our parents on Valentine’s Day weekend. As a family that loves spending time together and typically avoids crowds, we decided to celebrate at the house with a low-key (yet nice!) homemade dinner instead of attempting to make restaurant reservations at one of the packed places in town.
Just like usual, Dad offered to cook for all of us, and he prepared perfectly seasoned grilled chicken, fresh salads with seasonal greens, and sides of roasted vegetables. To round out the meal, he also cut thick slices of our favorite sourdough bread. Simple yet incredibly delicious!
To finish our Valentine’s Day dinner, Mom bought two different desserts at the store: dark chocolate covered strawberries, especially for my brother (he’s allergic to eggs!), and a two-layer carrot cake covered in sweet cream cheese frosting. My mom knows me so well…
I’m really picky about chocolate cake, and most store-bought chocolate cakes taste much too sweet with an almost bland and watered-down chocolate flavor for me. Yet I always love carrot cakes, even ones prepared by grocery store bakeries, with their supremely moist, somewhat dense texture and extra cozy spices!
So at the end of the evening, once the pots and pans sat soaking in the sink and our dinner plates were tucked away in the dishwasher, we cut into the cake and served the sweet treats onto clean dessert plates. I eagerly slid my fork into my slice of cake…
But when I swallowed, surprise flashed across my face. This particular bakery prepared their carrot cake much differently than any other… It almost tasted as light and airy as angel food cake — with only a few visible specks of orange carrots. Definitely not the extremely moist, borderline dense, generously spiced, and completely vegetable-laden carrot cake I was expecting!
When I spotted chocolate covered strawberries in the grocery store’s refrigerated dessert section sitting right next to slices of chocolate, red velvet, and carrot cake just before Valentine’s Day this year, the memories from that particular holiday spent at my parents’ house cake floating back… Which definitely left me craving carrot cake. So back at home, I baked a batch of these Healthy Mini Carrot Cake Cupcakes to satisfy my sweet tooth!
Unlike that particular slightly disappointing carrot cake, these cupcakes are incredibly moist, completely packed with carrots, and positively bursting with rich spice flavor. They’re also topped with swirls of sweet cream cheese frosting (that’s secretly made from Greek yogurt!).
Although I may be slightly biased, I think these healthy mini carrot cake cupcakes taste a thousand times better than that store-bought cake, even with no refined flour or sugar… And each one is 43 calories!
Continue reading & see the rest! ›› Healthy Mini Carrot Cake Cupcakes
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