Carrot Cake Comparison

Not all comparisons have a clear winner.  Some don't have any winner at all... they're all losers.  Needless to say, this comparison didn't go so well.





I tried 3 carrot cake recipes trying to get one that was light and fluffy in texture, had real carrot flavor and looked pretty (or at least appetizing) as a cupcake.  Personally, I don't think that's too much to ask but maybe I'm needy.

Recipe #1 was a pretty standard carrot cake recipe.  The fat in the recipe comes from vegetable oil and it has cinnamon in it for flavoring.

Recipe #2 has a relatively smaller amount of vegetable oil in it than the first and has cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger for flavoring.

Recipe #3 is different in that the fat comes from butter - no oil.  It is also flavored with cinnamon.

Let's cut straight to the point here - these cupcakes are hideous.  I hate them.  They actually look far better in the pictures than they do in real life.  In real life they look sunken and oily and just plain ugly.

I normally give food that tastes really awesome some leeway in the looks department but when it comes to cupcakes they really do have to be pretty and none of these taste great enough for me to get past their looks.

In the taste department, #1 just tastes like oil which doesn't taste like anything but leaves a slimy film in your mouth.  #2 is less oily but still too oily.  I was hoping that the nutmeg and ginger flavor would shine through in these cupcakes but it didn't.  I was too distracted by the oil.  #3 was the best tasting cupcake by far although the competition wasn't all that stiff.  The butter gave this the best flavor and there was no oily film but it still wasn't attractive.  Honestly, if #3 had been prettier, I probably wouldn't have hated it.

The whole reason I did this experiment was because I wanted to serve carrot cake cupcakes at an upcoming event I'm doing desserts for but that is clearly not happening.  I'm going to have to find a different flavor to serve until I can do some more work on these recipes.

In case I haven't scared you away, here are the recipes.  The only change I made was to leave the nuts out of all of them.

Recipe #1
Recipe #2
Recipe #3

I felt like I couldn't waste all these cupcakes so I went ahead frosted them with the maple cream cheese frosting I used in the carrot cake whoopie pies I made a few weeks ago.  I have to say, this made a world of difference and I hated them all a little less.  It just goes to show you that frosting can make anything better.

Julie