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Claire Saffitz’s Ultimate Carrot Cupcake with Cream Cheese Buttercream | Dessert Person
In today’s episode, Claire Saffitz tackles classic Carrot Cake Cupcakes with a unique twist. She introduces a new frosting called Cream Cheese Buttercream. She may have created this new Frosting. It’s delicious and it’s a fantastic way to elevate your baked goods, especially these timeless cupcakes. Follow along for the recipe!
#clairesaffitz #carrotcake #cupcake
Easy Carrot Cupcakes
Makes 12
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon allspice
½ cup granulated sugar
⅓ cup light brown sugar
⅔ cup neutral oil
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1½ cups grated raw carrots, chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup walnuts or pecans, choppped
Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Makes about 4 cups (enough for frosting a 3-layer, 8-inch cake)
Special Equipment: Stand mixer
8 oz (226g) full-fat, stabilizer-free cream cheese, such as Nancy’s brand, at room temperature
8 oz (226g / 2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon-sized pieces, at room temperature
120g (about ½ cup / 120g) egg whites
1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
½ teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt or ½ teaspoon Morton kosher salt
Pinch of cream of tartar
2 teaspoons vanilla paste
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Video Series:
Producer/Director: Vincent Cross
Camera Operator: Calvin Robertson
Editor/Motion Graphics: Hal McFall
Animation Credits:
Character Designer/Animator/Backgrounds: Jack Sherry
Character Rigger: Johara Dutton
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Many thanks to our sponsor, Gestura! They're launching the stunning Esa Offset Spatula today. Check out their line of products at gesturautensils.com and use code CLAIRE for free shipping (US only).
I see you changed the intro to match your current kitchen, but I wish you had kept the croquembouche as one of the things your cat takes an interest in. The attempted swipe at it has always made me laugh.
Hmmm, my wedding cake lady made cream cheese butter cream for our carrot cake short wedding cake on site with air conditioning. She not only assembled on site, she made the cream cheese butter cream there, too. She brought the chilled cakes with her. It was delicious. That was 1984. St Louis.
Damn Claire looks like she gained 80 pounds since the last time i saw her.
looooooool of course claire got an offset spatula sponsor
love that for you girl
It’s a frosting sandwich!? This whole time.. cupcakes are frosting sandwiches??.. I.. I.. I can totally live with that.
Carrot cake has always been the cake i ask for my birthday.
OK Claire, You need to trademark, patent or what ever for the frosting. The frosting was spectacular.
Hi Claire, is there a reason why you didn’t use the whisk attachment to incorporate all of the butter mixture and chose to switch half way through?
Cool recipe, and cool innovation on the frosting, but I'm mostly just mindblown over the cupcake sandwich at the very end. How did I never think of that?!
Looks delicious! Blessings!
Carrot cake is insane to me. You wouldn’t think carrot flavor cake would be so amazing. It’s so good. Only the real stuff. With carrot bits.
What if you used brown butter?
Just tried to make this and it curdled after I added the butter/cream cheese 😭 Help!
I've noticed than when cream cheese is frozen, it tends to "curdle" when it's defrosted. I wonder if that's possibly a way to get around the stabilizers? To the naked eye it looks like solids and liquids have separated, so I think it'd be possible to press it to remove part of the moisture at that point.
This looks so tasty; I'll def try this recipe at some point! However, I wonder if using pressed cream cheese is really the only way to make this frosting — perhaps the cream cheese could be replaced with mascarpone for a similar and much speedier frosting? If I understood her explanation correctly, Claire said that the cream cheese has to be pressed because in its "natural" state its fat content is too low, making it hard to mix with the butter and create an emulsion. Therefore, I wonder if mascarpone cheese might be a good substitute, as it by default has a fat content of about 80%. Using mascarpone instead of normal cream cheese in the frosting might be a way to achieve a similar result in a much faster way 🤔 I may have to give that a try at some point.
My husband’s birthday favorite is carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Don’t get me wrong – I worship at the alter of Claire! It took a LONG time for the merengue to form peaks, but what resulted when mixed with the butter/ cream cheese definitely tastes more like buttercream than cream cheese. I let hubby taste before frosting the cake and he said it was good, but he couldn’t taste cream cheese. So, I ended up whipping this buttercream with 8 oz. of Philadelphia cream cheese for more of a traditional cream cheese frosting. Again, a great buttercream, but…
Just made these. They are so awesome. I felt like Claire was directing my icing techniques…never has my bowl been SOOO clean. Thanks for the tofu pressing tip, I pressed 3 ounces of water out, lovely , rich, not too sweet icing. And the carrot cake was excellent also, probably due to that increased surface area after shredding AND chopping carrots. Fun baking day.
This frosting looks almost broken and def looks homemade
I always thought it was just a hoax that some people say pehcahns instead of peecanns 😂
The carrot cake from dessert person is my go to birthday cake recipe. Everyone in my family requests it!
oh, it definitely will be world famous Saffitz cream cheese buttercream
Well done! I’ve been making a Swiss meringue buttercream using cream cheese for years, but your advice about getting the moisture out is genius!
Why was I expecting her to do the sandwich method when she was about to eat the cupcake 😅 great frosting recipe, will definitely give it a try!
EDIT: Ok apparently I'm impatient, she DID do the sandwich method 😅
Love carrot cake! Look forward to trying!
I may never make these cupcakes but the next time I eat a cupcake from the bakery I'm totally gonna do the Saffitz sandwich with it.
Do you think halfing the carrot cake recipe from dessert person would work ?! I love the addition of ginger in that one ❤
Sorry Claire. Cream cheese buttercream was already invented in Melbourne, Australia.
Claire,
You need multiple bowls…
Hello KitchenAid?
Cheers!
I’m not being funny but @0:54 is that not just a cream cheese meringue buttercream
Need help finding the type of cream cheese to use in the recipe. Anyone have suggestions? I can't find the Nancy's type @CSaffitz mentioned in the description 🙁
How do you press the cream cheese?
Wow this looks so good!!
Request for ingredients to also be in metric for us international bakers (and people who just like using weight measurements)
this needs to be a product: baking cream cheese. would be useful in danish + pastry work too.
I’ve been wanting to make a meringue-based cream cheese frosting for months now!! Of course Claire comes to the rescue🤍🤍🤍
If you use pre pasteurized egg whites (like from a carton) do you still need to do the heating process or is that necessary for dissolving the sugar?
I love the carrot cake recipe from dessert person, I'll have to try this new frosting. But wonder if it can be brown buttered like the dessert person variations?
i LOVE this recipe! the thing with cream cheese growing up in europe and now living in the states is: i find european style cream cheese is usually very natural, little to no stabilizers whereas american brands like philadelphia (love!) are much thicker in texture and just different in what it means to be cream cheese. i guess it might be comparable to how european butter (higher butter fat content) differs from american style butter.
Would mascarpone cheese work? Having a very hard time locating cream cheese without stabilizers.