Smitten Kitchen's Carrot Cake with Maple-Cream Cheese Frosting

Spring is in the air with all lovely things I'm allergic to, to boot. In any event, sorry for lack there of posts. Truth be told I started this post before Chris & I took a long weekend in Florida last week, more on that later. Right now I'm writing in between gulps of hot water with lemon & honey (which sounds oh so Samantha from Sex & the City but when you're drinking it because you have a sore throat &  a bit of a bark (cough) it suddenly is a little less sexy).

Nevertheless, I'd rather go to a happy place - cupcakes!

In order to fully celebrate the first birthday of this here blog, I deemed it only proper to make cupcakes to share with the class (aka my office) & my number one supporter, Chris, of course.  So I searched for what is now my favorite carrot cake recipe: Smitten Kitchen's Carrot Cake with Maple-Cream Cheese Frosting.

The cake is really moist & yes your classmates will be reaching for the ones with the most icing because it traditionally just so good & this one's made with maple syrup (double good). Plus, there's carrots, raisins & walnuts in them - that makes it healthy right? Yes, let's call these health muffins - now it's ok if you eat ten.

Get the full recipe here  & click through for my (20+) photo story on making these yummy treats.

PS: Happy friday & happy (early) birthday to my gal Alexis!

Baked Coconut Shrimp

 

Chris & I are big fans of coconut shrimp.  When I came across Bobby Deen's  more figure-friendly version of our normally fried guilty pleasure I had to try it.  This recipe for baked coconut shrimp uses egg whites & an oven for baking which means you don't have to clean up messy oil splatters & you can eat more - guilt-free! Oh & the dipping sauce is addictively delicious.

Click through for more photos & the full recipe.

Baked Sweet Potato Chips

I love those colorful root vegetable chips they sell at the gourmet stores. When they come in an assorted bag the first ones to go (into my mouth) are the sweet potato ones, the meatier the better. So while perusing this month's Whole Living Magazine (are you noticing a pattern here?) I found a recipe for baked sweet potato chips to make at home.

I pulled out my mandolin (that I'm secretly afraid of) to slice the sweet potatoes as thin as I could. If you don't have a mandolin or share my fear of this crazy slicer just use your vegetable peeler & make long strips instead of circular ones. The goal is to get them all the same thickness (which is not very thick at all) so they bake at the same rate, otherwise you'll have some very well done (read: burnt) chips & some raw sweet potato slices on your hands.

Click through for the full recipe.