March 18, 2022
Carrot Patch Cupcakes!
*This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my disclosure for more details!*
Cute and delicious chocolate cupcakes topped with a chocolate buttercream, oreo dirt, and chocolate coated strawberries for carrot patch cupcakes! Perfect for Easter.
As always we are way into Easter bakes now, and I have no plans on stopping any time soon… it’s still a month away, so I have plenty of time for more delicious ideas that I am utterly in love with and obsessed over, such as these carrot patch cupcakes. JUST LOOK AT THEM!
I have always mentioned how much I love a carrot cake, and I should really start by saying these are not that at all – they are basically a chocolate cake, but that is totally okay with me. I also love a good chocolate cake – especially when they have a themed decoration.
I want to post more and more themed bakes, and after my chick cupcakes that I posted recently, I wanted to go again with another bake that is just really cute and fun, and after countless requests for more Easter themed cupcakes, I have created these beauties! I’ve seen them around before, and just love the vegetable patch bakes so, here we go – CARROT PATCH CUPCAKES!
Cupcakes
I used my normal chocolate cupcake recipe that you can see on some of my other recipes such as my bonfire cupcakes or in my Ferrero Rocher cupcakes – it’s simple, but it really does work. Sometimes people can complain that a chocolate cake is dry if it isn’t a fudge cake, but I genuinely just put that down to it being over-baked.
It can be harder to tell when a chocolate cake is done, but generally if you go by a skewer being clean, you should be fine! If not, wait until there is barely any crackling sounds when the cakes are fresh out of the oven, and you will know they are done then too. Also, top tip, don’t store your cakes like this in the fridge – that for sure drys them out.
Cupcake cases
I started these beauties off by safely assuming that the cases needed to be ‘chocolate’ and brown as well to resemble the ground and dirt, so standard brown muffin cases it was. You can of course use whatever you want, but I really did want the focus to be on the top of the cupcake, and a plain case is the best way to achieve this.
As I used the slightly larger brown muffin cases, I used slightly more ingredients than normal to make sure that the cases were full – but keep an eye on this. cases should only be 2/3 full, otherwise they may overflow ever so slightly.
Buttercream
For the buttercream, I wanted to to look like the ground… so that meant brown, obviously. I thought the easiest method was a simple chocolate buttercream, and my gosh it worked so well. You can choose either the buttercream on this recipe, or my chocolate fudge frosting – but that one is a bit softer so you may struggle to get the same smooth results.
I did a simple chocolate buttercream again with unsalted block butter, icing sugar and cocoa powder – I flavoured mine with a little vanilla extract but this is optional as always. I just find it adds a different level of sweetness when it comes to the frosting with cocoa powder, and I love it.
Piping
To pipe my buttercream onto my carrot patch cupcakes, I used a jumbo round nozzle as it really doesn’t have to be that pretty. You basically need to make sure that you pipe directly downwards to create a large blob of buttercream on each cupcake – and then you smush the buttercream anyway.
You can also use a large piping bag and simple snip the end off and point downwards, depending on your piping bag, and this works well as well – I just want to make sure my ‘dirt’ mounds were perfectly round so that’s why I used the piping tip.
Oreo dirt
Along with the chocolate buttercream frosting, I really did want the base to look like the ground, so I topped the ‘mud’ with some ‘dirt’ which were biscuit crumbs.
I used my food processor to really finely blitz the oreos to create my dirt, but you can use any brown biscuit. I always leave the filling inside the biscuit as I can never be bothered to scrape the insides out, but as long as you can blitz the biscuits to as fine as possible, this won’t matter.
I found it best to add the biscuits crumbs to a bowl slightly bigger than the cupcake. Them, you carefully press the cupcake into it, so the biscuit crumbs stick to the buttercream. You now have your patch! Don’t worry, the buttercream should condensed down slightly as you do this.
Carrot decorations
And finally for the carrots to create these carrot patch cupcakes… if it wasn’t obvious enough already, they are strawberries. It’s a classic alternative to create something sweet compared to using an actual carrot – chocolate coated strawberries! They’re fun, they are cute, and they work PERFECTLY for these cupcakes.
I started off with medium-large sized strawberries as I wanted a delicious chunk of strawberry anyway, and used a white chocolate and orange food colouring mix to create the coating. I used this orange food colouring as it mixes so well with white chocolate, but you really only need 1-2 drops, not much at all.
I dunked each strawberry into the chocolate and placed them onto a lined tray, and then drizzled the leftover chocolate onto the strawberries to create the ridges on the cupcakes. Set the strawberries in the fridge whilst you do the buttercream and then you can whack them straight onto the ‘dirt’ base and set them into the buttercream.
These carrot patch cupcakes are so easy to make, and just look so effective and fun – you can definitely have fun with it, and devour every single crumb when you eat one! Enjoy! x
Carrot Patch Cupcakes!
Ingredients
Cupcakes
- 200 g unsalted butter (room temperature)
- 200 g light brown soft sugar
- 4 medium eggs
- 150 g self raising flour
- 50 g cocoa powder
Buttercream
- 200 g unsalted butter (room temp)
- 350 g icing sugar
- 50 g cocoa powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Decoration
- 60 g oreos (finely crushed)
- 12 medium/large strawberries
- 200 g white chocolate
- orange food colouring
Instructions
Cupcakes
- Preheat the oven to 180ºc/160ºfan and prep 12 muffin sized cupcake cases.
- Add the unsalted butter and light brown soft sugar to a bowl and beat together until light and creamy
- Add the self raising flour, cocoa powder and eggs and beat until a smooth cake mixture is formed.
- Split the mixture between the 12 cases and bake in the oven for 20-22 minutes, or until baked through.
- Leave the cupcakes to cool fully.
Buttercream
- Beat the unsalted butter on it's own for a few minutes until smooth and supple.
- Add the icing sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla extract and beat again until smooth.
- IF the buttercream is really thick, add 1tbsp of boiling water at a time (up to 3) beating well, to smooth out slightly.
Decoration
- Prep the strawberries by cleaning them and drying them well.
- Melt the white chocolate in the microwave and mix well, until smooth.
- Once melted, add a small amount of orange buttercream and mix until combined.
- Dunk each strawberry carefully into the chocolate, and lay on a lined tray to set. Drizzle over any spare chocolate. Set in the fridge.
- Pipe the buttercream onto each cupcake using a large round tip to create a large blob of buttercream, and then carefully press each cupcake into the fine oreo crumbs (the crumbs press into the buttercream to stick).
- Add a chocolate coated strawberry carrot to each cupcake.
- Enjoy!
Notes
- These cupcakes will last for 3+ days at room temp on a cool day.
- I used...
ENJOY!
Find my other recipes on my Recipes Page!
You can find me on:
Instagram
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
Youtube
J x
© Jane’s Patisserie. All images & content are copyright protected. Do not use my images without prior permission. If you want to republish this recipe, please re-write the recipe in your own words and credit me, or link back to this post for the recipe.