Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

For Kristin's and our friend Katie's birthday last month, we had a little potluck in the backyard.  Both of them love carrot cake, and I love anything with cream cheese frosting on top, so I decided to try making carrot cupcakes for the first time.  I'm not super comfortable with baking cakes because I tend to improvise way too much, but I found this simple and flavorful recipe online:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/carrot-cupcakes-with-white-chocolate-cream-cheese-icing/detail.aspx

These little guys were not nearly as hard to make as I thought they'd be, and they were delicious!  The cupcakes were moist thanks to the pineapple, and didn't have that greasy texture that some carrot cakes have.  The combination of nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon complemented the carrots well, and the spices weren't overpowered by sugar.  They tasted so good, I had to make another batch a few days later when my sister came to visit.

I did make two alterations: I used pecans instead of walnuts, and made a traditional cream cheese frosting instead of a white chocolate cream cheese frosting (why mess with a good thing?)

Frosting Ingredients

4 oz cream cheese, softened

4 oz room temperature butter

1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar

1 tbsp pure vanilla extract

Blend in a food processor until smooth.