Carrot Cake Cupcakes

I was at Michaels the other night and they had $2 clearance grab bags for sale. Of course, I couldn't resist! It was actually a great value, a really big bag full of neat stuff. One of  the items in mine turned out to be a Carrot Cake Cupcake Mix from Mary Engelbreit. Totally worth the $2 on its own in my opinion! 

I had planned to make the Crustless Pumpkin Pie recipe that I posted previously but I realized this afternoon that I didn't have any Pumpkin Pie Spice. I had promised my husband a treat so these cupcakes were the perfect fix. The kit comes with the cupcake mix, frosting mix, and even sparkling sugar to put on top.

The cupcakes themselves were very easy and similar to any boxed cake mix, just add milk, oil and an egg. They came out of the oven looking a lot more like muffins than cupcakes and they had really sticky tops but a toothpick came out clean after 18 minutes, just as instructed.

The frosting mix is for cream cheese icing. All you do is cream butter then add in the mix, icing sugar and a little bit of milk. It produced more than I really needed but I guess better too much than too little. My only complaint was that, even though I followed the recipe exactly, the icing was pretty thin. I didn't even have to spread it, I just dropped a dollop on top of each cupcake and let it spread on its own. Easy but not great for presentation. Oh well, they won't be leaving the house since Chris thinks they are delicious and promises that he'll finish them quickly. The kit only makes 8 so I'm pretty sure he's telling the truth :)