CARROT CAKE BITES

My Granny's 82nd birthday is just a few days away and since I will be out of the country I want to send a gift box with all sorts of goodies. Every girl needs a cake on her birthday, and so I decided to make cake bites and dress them as mini cupcakes for easy packaging and shipping.

I made one layer of carrot cake and one recipe of cream cheese icing, and chilled the combined mixture for several hours before molding them into little cupcakes. Thankfully they didn't dry out a bit, but stayed very moist.

My plain cupcakes look a little like mushrooms. I molded them by pinching the base, but I think a tool would help a lot. I experimented with white and dark chocolate and caramel to cover the cakes. For the carrot cake, the white chocolate was definitley the best. It also formed the nicest coating.

CARROT CAKE

1 cup plain flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 eggs

3/8 cups milk

3/8 cups oil

3/4 cups sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup of carrots, grated

4 ounces of pineapple with juice, blended

1/2 cup of coconut

1. Sift together flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
2. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, milk, oil, sugar and vanilla. Add dry ingredients.
3. Combine carrots, coconut, and pineapple. Add carrot mixture to batter and fold in.
4. Bake for 1 hour at 350^ F.

CREAM CHEESE ICING

1 8-ounce cream cheese

1/4 cup of butter

1 cup of 10X sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1. Mix all ingredients together until smooth.

After the cake is baked, cool completely. I put mine in the refrigerator. Then crumble the cake in a large bowl and add the frosting. Mix until well combined. Chill for at least one hour, or until ready to mold into balls or cupcakes. I made round balls and then pinched the bottoms to form bases. I dipped the bases in the white chocolate first and laid them bottoms up to dry. Then I dipped the other side in a different color. I wasn't too neat with the white chocolate and it got a little messy. But messy kitchens are fun kitchens and they still looked cute enough to eat.