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This weekend has definitely been a weekend of food. Had a blast doing an all day cook-off for a friend's birthday. We had the lunch meal and needless to say, it was amazing. The secret ingredient was pistachios and the highlight of our meal probably was our Mango-Pistachio Milkshake... that we turned into a beer float. Yes... beer float. BBC Bourbon Barrel Stout beer float I might add. Yum!
But we're not here to talk about that, we're here to talk about Cumin and Pecans. At first I was a little hesitant on what to do. I thought maybe a cumin pecan breading on some sort of protein would work out, but then I thought about it, and the past couple of challenges I used a protein and it seemed like the protein had the highlight, and not the main ingredients. So I did a little bit of research on the cumin because I thought that was the hardest ingredient to really incorporate. After looking a little bit, I saw that cumin actually brings out the sweetness in things, despite it's somewhat smoky flavor. So I wanted to play on that and do a sort of savory dessert. Then I thought of carrot cake. And carrot cake turned into cupcake. And voila, my final product... Cumin Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cumin Maple Cream Cheese Frosting & Candied Pecans. That's a mouthful, eh? In more ways than one, of course...
Ingredients for Cumin Carrot Cake Cupcakes:1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cumin
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup plus 1/4 cup canola oil
2 eggs
1 & 1/2 cup finely grated carrots
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a medium bowl, mix up first 6 ingredients.
In a separate large bowl, mix together the sugar and the canola oil. Whisk in your eggs, one at a time.
Add in the flour mixture until well blended. Then add in your carrots.
Divide batter among the cupcake molds, filling each about 1/2 way. Bake for about 20 minutes, when you can stick a toothpick in them and it comes out clean. Let cool on a baking rack before icing.
While you're waiting for the cupcakes to cool, you can whip up this amazing frosting...
Ingredients for Cumin-Maple Cream Cheese Frosting:1 package cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup maple sugar
1/2 teaspoon cumin
In a small bowl, beat all ingredients with a hand blender until mixture is smooth and fluffy. Chill for about 10 minutes so it is easier to ice cupcakes.
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Now you can candy your pecans...
Ingredients for Candied Pecans:1 package pecans
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon heavy cream
Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Add the brown sugar and mix well until smooth. Make sure the sugar "soaks" up the butter, it should be a sort of "creamy" consistency. Add the cream and it should lighten up the color a little bit. Then toss in your pecans and coat evenly. Take off heat and let cool.
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Now to put your cupcakes together...
I found that the cupcakes were really airy and almost sunk in a little bit at the top, so to fill that void, I placed some pecans on the center of each cupcake like so...
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Then top each cupcake with some frosting...
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The top with even more pecans...
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And then you can split in half to share or just gobble them all up yourself...
I thought this was really fun. I don't do many dessert posts and I was definitely scared to try this, but it turned out really well. I know this because Andy has been religiously eating them for breakfast in the morning ever since I made them the other night. And don't forget to vote for the best recipe (hopefully you think it's mine, but my competition is stiff!) at
FoodieFights on Tuesday and Wednesday!