I made these carrot cake cupcakes with just 5 ingredients, and they are amazing little spicy morsels of health! They are great to take to a holiday party, and if you want them to look extra fancy, I would use coconut cream icing. I used pecan maple glaze, which was absolute perfection in a bite, and sprinkled a bit of pink Himalayan salt on top. Truly, these were one of the best carrot cake muffins ever! Cashews are one of the lower-fat content nuts, so without any icing or glaze, these muffins are super healthy and fit in even a weight loss high raw low fat vegan plan! ENJOY!
To make the carrot cake:
3 cups shredded carrots (you can also use carrot juice pulp!)
1 1/2 cups Medjool or Halawy dates
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp pure vanilla powder
3/4 cup cashews (can sub with walnuts or pecans)
I like to shred my carrots in the food processor, and then put it in a bowl lined with papertowel, so I can soak up a little of the water. If you are using carrot juice pulp, you don’t need to do that it will already be pretty dry. Put the shredded carrots back into the food processor with the remaining ingredients and pulse until fully combined. Be careful NOT to over-process or it will be mushy and pasty. You don’t want pasty!
There are so many variations that you can do from this point on! I did three things. I put some of the mix in cupcake papers, and dehydrated overnight at 105. When they came out they were warm, carroty, spicy, and like a truly delicious baked treat, still moist in the middle. Then I topped them with pecan maple glaze and a vanilla infused coconut crisp. The pecan maple glaze is so ridiculously easy. PECAN MAPLE GLAZE: I took 1/4 cup of pecan butter from Artisana which I always have on hand. Mixed it with a fork and about 2 tablespoons of maple syrup. That’s it. No, really, that was it. I spooned some on top of each cupcake, and topped with a vanilla coconut crisp. Those were from Costco. Yup, total cheater coconut crisps. They are organic, were $10 for a pretty large bag, and delicious. Not to mention convenient.
I also scooped up some of the batter with a melon baller, froze the balls, and dipped them in melted raw cacao butter that I had mixed with some coconut sugar. This made little white chocolate covered carrot-cake truffles. Sorry, we ate those before I remembered to take a photo. I’m not a food blogger or photog, so the pictures are often an afterthought!
Oh, I did say there were three things. The third (which was actually the first) was that I ate a bunch straight out of the food processor. It ended up as my lunch for the day, as I was getting into a peaceful meditative zone preparing to teach my Abundance and Prosperity Masterclass!
