I’ll be honest with you, finding time to try new recipes for this blog I love so dearly has been a challenge lately. It gets stressful at times feeling like I always have to choose how to spend my time, because I know there’s not enough to go around for everything. That’s where priorities come in and sometimes family, good books and relaxing have to be placed first and blogging comes fourth. It’s currently 10:30 PM as I’m writing this and if you know me at all, you know that’s certainly past my bedtime; I’ve never been much of a night owl. On top of this problem with time I’ll never be able to solve, I’ve also had some ‘Pinterest fails’ and less than ideal photos in my kitchen the past few weeks. It can become a bit discouraging if you let it (sometimes I do, guilty), but it’s also good ole’ real life and these moments simply deserve a laugh and a shoulder shrug. As my Grandpa would say ‘that’s how the cookie crumbles’. Contrary to what you may think, I actually did not plan to write that into this post about cookies and the way it worked out is making me laugh right now. Since we’re on the topic though, I am thrilled to tell you about a Pinterest success that is these delicious carrot cake cookies! They took a lot of my time today, but turned out so well…and just in time for Easter!

I’ve never made carrot cake in any form so I was excited to try something new today with high hopes of adding these treats to our list of traditional holiday recipes! I’m pretty confident they made that list too after receiving approval from everyone and enjoying multiple cookies myself! I love drop cookies, because they’re so soft to bite into. You can’t beat freshly baked drop cookies, especially when topping them with a rich cream cheese frosting! Yum!

These carrot cake cookies really are quite simple to make as long as you can commit to spending a little time in the kitchen! I came up with a “brilliant” idea this time around to do all of my measuring over a cutting board which made cleanup much quicker. Such an easy thing, but for some reason I’ve never done it before! Another quick tip…if you want to attempt making little carrots on your cookies and don’t own any decorating tools, you can place the frosting in a Ziploc bag, squeeze down to one side and cut a very small slit in the corner of the bag. My grandma and I have always used this alternative to icing tools. Nice and easy. Shall we get to the recipe already? I’m thinking sleep and you’ve been teased with photos of cookies long enough 🙂

Enjoy and have a wonderful Easter holiday this coming weekend!

Carrot Cake Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup (4 oz) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup finely grated carrots
• Chopped pecans or cinnamon, for decoration (optional)

• 5 oz cream cheese, softened
• 6 Tbsp (3 oz) butter, softened
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups powdered sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Set aside.
2. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, blend butter, sugar and brown sugar until creamy. Mix in egg and vanilla extract and then add half of the flour mixture and blend just until combined.
3. Add carrots followed by the remaining half of the flour mixture and blend until well combined once more. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl with a spatula as needed.
4. Scoop dough out with a medium sized cookie scoop and drop onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing cookies 2 inches apart. Bake for 10 – 11 minutes. They will still be soft to touch when done!
5. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. After 5 – 10 minutes of cooling on rack finish cooling completely in an airtight container so they don’t dry out. Once cool, frost with cream cheese frosting and garnish with desired toppings.
6. For the frosting, whip butter and cream cheese in stand mixer until creamy. Mix in vanilla and powdered sugar and whip until light and fluffy. If you are doing the carrot decoration set aside 2 Tbsp to tint green and 2 Tbsp to tint orange.

 

As always, thanks for reading!!