Adventures in . . . Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Ina, you have failed me. Not the kind of failure where I, like, stop making your pesto pasta or coconut cupcakes or peach blueberry crumbles--don't worry, it's nothing like that. It's a very minor kind of failure, the kind where, maybe, next time, when a whole bunch of wackos on the Food Network website tell me that your carrot cake is too oily, that the cooking time for it is drastically wrong, well, maybe next time I'll believe them. And I'll add to my list of complaints: they sank! I hate when cupcakes sink, but then again, they're so easily salvageable--I just slapped a whole lot of cream cheese frosting on top of them, made a little "x" with some extra grated carrot, and these guys were good to go. And, well, I'll just admit it, oily and sunken and slathered with much too much cream cheese frosting, these were pretty delicious.

Ina Garten's Carrot Cake Cupcakes

2 cups sugar
1 1/3 cups vegetable oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 extra-large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 cups grated carrots (less than 1 pound)
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
Cream Cheese Frosting--see the Coconut Cupcakes post

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line muffin tins

• Grate 3 C carrots, chop 1 C walnuts, and measure out 1 C raisins. Set aside together.
• Sift in separate bowl:
2 C flour
2 t cinnamon
2 t baking soda
1 ½ t salt
• In separate, large bowl, beat together with electric mixer :
2 C sugar
1 1/3 C vegetable oil
1 t vanilla
• Add 3 eggs, 1 at a time.
• With the mixer on low speed, add ½ of the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Add carrot/raisin/walnut mixture to the remaining dry mix, mix well, and add to the batter. Mix until just combined.

Scoop batter into 22 muffin cups, about ¾ full. Bake at 375 for 10 min., then reduce oven temp. to 350, and cook for a further 15 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean (I actually kept them in a little bit longer, just to see whether they would get some more structurally integrity--alas, they did not.). Cool on a rack.