Maple Carrot Cupcakes

For the cupcakes:
Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease or put paper liners into cupcake pans (recipe makes roughly 32 cupcakes).

Place sugars, flours, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a stand mixer bowl. Mix on low till well blended. Add beaten eggs, oil, maple syrup, and vanilla. Mix on low for 2 minutes. Then stop and scrape down sides of the bowl. Continue mixing on low until mixture is well blended.

Add carrots, raisins, and pecans. Mix until all are incorporated. Pour mixture into greased or lined muffin tins.

Bake on 350ºF for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (My top oven took 20 minutes; the bottom one baked in 15 minutes.) Then take them out of the oven and place on a cooling rack.

For the frosting:
In the clean bowl of your stand mixer on medium speed (with whisk attachment), whisk heavy cream until stiff peaks form (be careful not to over beat, or cream will be grainy).

In another larger bowl, stir together mascarpone, cinnamon, and confectioners’ sugar until smooth. Gently fold whipped cream into the mascarpone mixture until completely incorporated.

Immediately spread or pipe onto cooled cupcakes. (If you are not doing any fancy piping and are just using a spatula, you may want to half the frosting recipe. Or you can save the extra to use as a fruit dip.) After frosting the muffins, keep them refrigerated.

Frosting recipe adapted from Martha Stewart.