Vegan Carrot Cupcakes

I've always had a thing for carrot cake, so while everybody knows that even for non-vegans, cream cheese is pretty much disgusting in almost every other context, I missed me some cream cheese frosting when I went vegan. I know it's hard to believe, but nasty Tofutti, which usually manages to be even grosser than real cream cheese, makes an incredible cream cheese-ish frosting that my omnivorous friends said was the best they'd had.



These are from the immortal Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. This is from way back in the summer, but I wanted my first post to have pictures!!

Ingredients

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
2/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup soy yogurt (plain or vanilla)
1 teaspoon vanilla (I used vanilla paste)
1 cup finely grated carrots
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup raisins

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, mix together sugar, vegetable oil, yogurt, and vanilla. Sift in the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices), and mix until smooth. Fold in carrots, walnuts and raisins.
3. Spray the cupcake liners with non-stick baking spray. Fill the liners 2/3 full. Bake for 26-28 minutes, until a toothpick inserted through the center of one comes out clean.
4. Once fully cooled, top generously with cream cheese frosting.

Sorry I don't have the frosting recipe up... I'll post it as soon as I find it.

Here's the raisin exposure shot:


The texture was fantastic, really moist and full of great chewy stuff. If you're wondering about the "fancy" coiled frosting effect, that was achieved by a ziplock bag with the corner cut out. Just make sure the frosting is firm and properly chilled before you embark on a similar adventure.