Carrot Cupcakes - by Summer

I originally wanted to make these Mother's Day weekend, but I ended up not feeling too great on that Sunday, so I held off.  One of the things that I like about this recipe is that it didn't make a lot of cupcakes.  It can be a challenge to eat everything up that we make and currently I don't have the time or effort to try and figure out how to half a recipe right now (and in some cases, I wouldn't have the right pans). 

I have made carrot cake from scratch a few times.  It's one of my mom's favorites, although usually the recipes I have used, don't call for crushed pineapple or orange marmalade.  I ended up using about  4 small-med carrots for this recipe.  I also realized that I while I was pulling the ingredients together that I was out of ground ginger.  Since the recipe also called for ground nutmeg and ground cloves, I ended up using some pumpkin pie spice.  I don't really think it change the taste of the cupcakes too much if at all.

This recipe says that it yields 12 cupcakes.  I know from previous experience that my muffin/cupcake pans tend to be a little bit smaller, so I ended up with 14.  I have also learned from experience that overfilling the pans to get the correct amount isn't really the way to go for "pretty" looking cupcakes.

I decided that this recipe would be good to be paired with the cream cheese frosting recipe as suggested in the cookbook.  In hindsight, I would have definitely only made half of the frosting recipe.  I have a bunch left over and am trying to figure out what to do with the leftovers.

I really like the taste of this cupcake, especially with the cream cheese frosting.  They were moist and I liked the added taste of the pineapple.  I can definitely see making these again.