Carrot Cake

In cupcake form!
My mom and I were in need of a most fabulous carrot cake recipe. After a little tweaking I found it! I modified the Silver Palate's Carrot Cake recipe and came up with something pretty awesome!

Carrot Cake

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup butter (I have found that using a butter/oil combination in cakes makes the finished product really moist without tasting like oil.)
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 cup pureed cooked carrots (I cooked a bunch and saved it for baby food)
1/2 cup drained crushed pineapple

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Stir the flour, sugars, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl. Add the oil, butter, eggs, vanilla, and mix well. Fold in the nuts, coconut, carrots, and pineapple.
3. Pour batter into prepared pans : I made 18 cupcakes with this batter. I think you could easily make one 9x13 or two smaller 8 inch rounds.
4. Bake cupcakes 15 minutes

I know that traditionally carrot cake is always frosted with cream cheese frosting, but I dislike cream cheese so I stuck with vanilla buttercream.
Is there anything happier than an army of cupcakes?

Especially when they are sporting "Dora" cupcake liners.

I didn't think I put very much frosting on these. I split this one open and realized they were very heavily frosted...Oops! Oh well.
They are full of carrot, pineapple, and nuts. Perfect carrot cake if you ask me.

Or if you ask Mia. She approves :)