Pumpkin-carrot walnut cupcakes

Both my parents' birthdays are within a couple days of each other so we always celebrate together. Mom likes pumpkin bread and Pop likes carrots so I combined the 2 ingredients to make birthday cupcakes for them. Decorated with Johnny-Jump-Up flowers cultivated in my garden specifically for eating.

Making it more healthy...
Yes, of course I altered the recipe which is based on Spiced Pumpkin Bread from Epicurious.com. It came out moist and delicious so I'll do it again...
- instead of 3 cups white flour, I used 2.5 cups whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup white flour
- instead of 1 cup of oil, I used 1/2 cup of oil and 1 cup of unsweetened applesauce (more liquid to balance the dryness of whole wheat flour)
- decreased the sugar to 1.5 cups (instead of 3 cups) and also added 1/2 cup honey (which helped to also increase the moisture)

- also added 2 shredded cups of carrots - this is optional since the recipe doesn't call it for it

Don't overbake...
If you bake them in a cupcake tin, then between 15-20 minutes seemed to be the right baking time, depending on your oven. And because it's based on a "bread" recipe, they're really more like dense muffins than a light cake. And because they're not too sweet, they worked well as breakfast muffins and tasted better the next morning. :-)

The frosting...
Just a basic cream cheese frosting - found a generic recipe and just decreased the sugar. You know... cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar and vanilla.

All in all in turned out well and everyone enjoyed looking at them as well as eating them.

April 30, 2009 UPDATE...
In yesterday's San Jose Mercury News article in the Food section, Katherine Greenwald writes a great story titled "What's this flower doing in my food?" If you want to learn more about which flowers are edible, this is a must-read. More on this topic in a future blog entry!