Cookaholics Bulletin Board

A friend of mine is having a Christmas party this Saturday and she took me up on my offer to bring some decorated sugar cookies, which I really enjoy making. But she also asked me to make something involving carrot cake, which although I make and like to eat, it's not something I usually do as a finger food.

I know I can do mini carrot cupcakes, but even mini cupcakes are sometimes hard to eat without a fork (at least without wondering if you've got cream cheese frosting all over your face when it's gone:). I have some mini cheesecake pans (my bakeware addiction in action), and I was thinking that perhaps I could use them to make them. That way, the cakes wouldn't dome and be wide at the top like cupcakes; rather, they'd be straight and I could just pipe one big star or flower of frosting on the top. They still might be challenging to take the first bite of, though.

So I'd love to hear any comments, if you think it would work that way, or suggestions, if you can think of another way to do them. I tried to steer her in the direction of peanut butter or pumpkin, which work great in many applications, but she had carrot on the brain!

Thanks,

Emilie

My mother was 80 this year and we had a really nice cocktail party for her at the Yacht Club. I made mini Carrot cupcakes and it worked out really well. I piped just a little swirl of cream cheese frosting in the middle of each and everybody was able to eat them without any problems. My pans are the 1.75 oz and not the 3.5 oz size, so they are small. Two bites at the most.

or you could do carrot cake cookies. I've seen a couple of versions online for these, including this one:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/ ... ies-109346

or this one

http://www.marthastewart.com/259010/car ... ch-cookies

Your little pans should work just fine. You can get fancy papers for them so they look festive. As Todd said, a modest swirl or star of icing is enough.

Bite your tongue! Cupcakes should just be a vehicle for the icing!

That said, I've done mini cupcakes for parties doing a considerable DQ-esque swirl of icing on top, and so long as the icing is relatively firm, no one has seemed to struggle. I find that the minis don't tend to dome much, which makes things easier. My personal technique is to break off the bottom and eat it, and then eat the top in 2 bites. I don't use paper cups either to keep it easier to eat. But an elegant star would work too.

Thanks for all the ideas/suggestions. I'm definitely going to make that Epicurious cookie recipe soon--it sounds delicious. Although I think in this instance my friend has traditional carrot cake on the brain. I think the answer for these lies in me just not filling my mini muffin tins as high as I usually do. They are pretty hefty wells for mini's, and so that's probably why they come out bigger than a couple of bites. So I'm going to keep the cake part relatively small and then pipe on a nice swirl of icing. Like Carey, I think it's the best part!

(In fact, a woman I work with will only eat a bite of cupcake if it has icing on it. So she breaks it in half, like Carey, but then she pops the bottom on top of the icing, so it ends up like a cupcake sandwich. That means icing in every bite!:)

Emilie

There are recipes out there for carrot whoopie pies with cream cheese icing filling. Probably similar to carrot cake cookies. I can't remember where I saw a recipe for these. I think I made them and they were good (unless it was pumpkin whoopie pies). Cookstr has the Baked guys' recipe for these (pumpkin ones).