Spiced Carrot Cake Fondue {Recipe Redux}

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I make a lot of mistakes in the kitchen. For example, see this post, this post, this post and this album on THIH’s Facebook page, which has not been updated in a while and should contain many more disasters. These mistakes have never yielded the deliciousness of accidental and fortuitous invention. They are disasters, after all.

Until now.

A few weeks ago, I had an abundance of carrots and fresh pineapple that was 10 seconds away from fertilizer. I sought a better fate for these comestibles and found it in mini cupcakes that tasted of pineapple and coconut (adapted from this recipe).

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Then, I recalled this month’s Recipe Redux theme:

The Cupcake Conundrum – Cupcakes: Yes or no? Can you not get enough cupcakes…or are you so over the cupcake trend? If you think cupcakes never go out of style, show us your most delicious ‘ReDux-ed’ mini-cake creation. Or if you’re in the camp that cupcakes have been a bit overdone, share your favorite hand-held dessert destined to be the next big trend.

I love a good cupcake as much as the next cupcake-loving person (the cupcake strongly-disliker? Well, this post is not for you.).  I can still shake it up, however.

Spiced cupcake fondue, anyone?

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I intended for these cupcakes to be bite-sized nibbles of FROSTED deliciousness. The natural pairing with spiced carrot cake is a cream cheese frosting. And here is where the disaster came out. Without cream cheese, I used the leftover regular Greek yogurt from my Bircher Muesli experiments. Yogurt, cream cheese – what’s the difference, right?

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It was around the time I was dribbling “frosting” over my third cupcake that I decided to just go with it. Mini cupcake fondue it is!

Spiced Carrot Cake Fondue

  Prep Time: 15 minutes

  Cook Time: 20 minutes

  Keywords: bake dessert vegetarian coconut yogurt

Ingredients (24 mini cupcakes)

  • 2 cups white whole wheat or all purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar
  • 3/4 cup canola oil
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cups shredded carrots
  • 1/2 cup coconut flakes
  • 1 cup crushed pineapple (optional)

Frosting Dip

  • 1 cup regular Greek yogurt
  • 2 cups powdered (confectioners) sugar

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare a 24-cup mini muffin tin.

Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Add sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla, and stir or beat in stand mixer until combined. Stir in carrots, coconut and pineapple (if using).

Spoon into mini muffin cups, filling about halfway. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until centers are set and toothpick inserted in center of muffin comes out clean. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then turn onto cooking rack.

Stir together yogurt and powdered sugar until creamy. Use regular or fondue fork to dip mini cupcakes in frosting dip.

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What do you think? Is this the next dessert trend? 😉

All I know is, I see another Greek yogurt in my grocery shopping future – just to make this.

Enjoy your week, dear reader!

Q: Cupcakes: yay or nay? What do you think is the next dessert trend?

10 Comments

  1. Cupcake fondue sounds AWESOME to me! Especially if cream cheese-esque frosting is involved. Always a good thing.

  2. Oooh, inventive! I recently made some vanilla + chocolate ganache cupcakes as I am definitely on the pro side of the cupcakes debate. Cooking disaster wise, last weekend I learned that cake flour and all purpose flour are significantly different…but nonetheless enjoyed eating my doughy cake 😉

  3. Sweet merciful dessert, this combines two of my all-time favorites – carrot cake (our wedding cake) & fondue. And FWIW, almost every time I try to cavalierly swap in Greek yogurt for some other dairy ingredient, it’s a disaster. There’s some trick to that substitution that eludes all but the experts, I guess.

    1. Good to know! 🙂

  4. I love carrot cake cupcakes, and have been trying to think of a “healthy” way to justify my craving for cream cheese icing! This sounds perfect! Can’t wait to try it 😉

  5. The cupcakes look and sound so delicious. I generally substitute Greek yogurt for mayo in dressings and nobody knows until they compliment on how good the dressing is.

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