Carrot Patch Cupcakes  

 Ingredients

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour  

1 cup chopped pecans (leave these out when cooking with tiny tots, they will most likely turn up their tiny noses to them.)  

1 tablespoon Baking Powder (whatever you do, do NOT use soda, powder people, POWDER!)

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

                                         3  eggs (please remove the belly buttons, it's just gross to leave them in! Proper name for all of you who are freaking out because you have never heard my term is "Chalazae". The white membrane like substance that attaches the yolk and the whites and the start of the baby chicken or umbilical cord (not really, just trying to gross you out so you never leave them in.) I had a bad experience as a child with a chalazae, which I will write about at the end of this post. Whatever you call them, just take em' out folks!) Here is a nasty picture of one, really do you want to eat it? Didn't think so. 

3/4 cup vegetable oil 

3/4 cup  sugar 

3/4 cup  brown sugar 

1/2 cup  applesauce or sour cream  

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups finely shredded carrots

(use the fine side of the grater) No one wants to feel the carrot in their cupcake, not even my Mom who eats them raw for breakfast! I so did not get her eating habits. I believe in SUGAR, and hiding the veggies under it

Love the way the little people eat them- Frosting first!

Directions: Mix all the wet stuff and the sugars, then mix all the dry stuff in a separate bowl. Dump the wet stuff into the dry stuff and stir like crazy until the only chunks left are those from the carrots. Put into muffin liners (green or green checked are so cute for these happy little cupcakes) fill about 3/4 full and bake @ 350 for about 20 minutes. Mmmn I can smell the cinnamon and the nutmeg, it fills my entire house and almost covers up the dirty laundry stench that is drifting in from under the nearby laundry room door, almost, but it's still there dang it!

For the frosting

1 pkg (8 0z)  cream cheese, softened

                                     1 cup butter, (softened at room temp or microwaved oh so carefully for 30 sec intervals)

                                 1 pound  (4 cups) confectioners' sugar (the powdered white stuff for all you sillies that had to think about this, it's frosting, we're making frosting!)

4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 

dash of salt 

                                3 Tbs heavy whipping cream                                       

                             Directions: Put the powdered sugar in a mixing bowl, then add the other ingredients and whip the heck out of it. (For like 4 min and 33 seconds until it is all fluffy and yummy!) Put it in a pastry bag (or ziplock for you novice bakers) 
and pipe it on the tops of your cute little cuppercakers. Sprinkle their heads with cinnamon and devour them! My serving size suggestion is like 6 mini's or 3 large, topped off with a big tall glass of milk of course! And because they have veggies, you can totally count them as a meal!

I brought a large pot that had carrots in it, and we let the kids pick them. I had simply dug them up with a large shovel from my garden. I planted them just for this reason, you could also plant them directly in the pot. Plan on about 3 months to plant and have them large enough to pick. I had my kids plant them and the seeds were simply sprinkled, and we did not thin them. This made it very interesting, because they were growing around each other and lots of crazy shapes too!

Because they were all so different, after we picked and washed them we told the children to pick a "tiny one" a Big one, a crazy one, a curly one, a straight one etc. then we put them in piles and categories. They loved this! They all got to take a bag of carrots home with them.

The children also got to take home small pots of carrots, they were instructed to keep watering them for 7 days and mark a carrot on the pot for each day they took care of their carrots. The poem read:  C is for this Carrot patch that grew from tiny seeds,
Soil, sun and water, is all it really needs.
So water it for one more week, that's just 7 days more,
And you'll grow carrots that taste better than from the store!

These are their cute carrot patches all ready to go to their new homes!

Then we grated carrots and measured sugar and flour and made delicious carrot cupcakes, each child ate two of them they were so good! 
What are you waiting for? Hurry and steal my cute ideas and recipe and go make some carrot cupcakes!