Carrot Cake Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting
Easter is a fun holiday—it’s relaxed, the weather always seems nice, and most importantly there is carrot cake!
The fact that I’m such a carrot cake fan is a little odd considering carrots are not one of my favorite veggies.
But let’s be real here—this dessert is much more about the cinnamon, spices, moist cake, and cream cheese frosting than it is about the carrots.
And as much as I love bringing an impressively large, layered carrot cake to an Easter celebration, it can downright be a pain in the butt.
So I’m re-imagining the carrot cake into a cookie.
It’s easy to transport, there's no need to spend time slicing up a cake, and most importantly you get a higher frosting to cookie/cake ratio.
And although these cookies have sugar and whatnot in them, there are also carrots—and that’s something you can feel good about!
Carrot Cake Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting
servings: Seventeen 2-inch cookies
Ingredients:
- 1¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- Pinch of nutmeg
- ⅓ cup + ¼ cup packed light brown sugar
- 1 stick unsalted butter, softened (½ cup)
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup coarsely grated carrots (about 2 medium carrots)
- ⅓ cup raisins
- 1½ cups Cream Cheese Frosting
- Finely chopped carrots, for a garnish
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease two baking sheets or line them with parchment paper. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg, then set this mixture aside.
- In a second large bowl, use an electric mixer on medium speed to beat together the brown sugar, butter, granulated sugar, egg, and vanilla until the mixture is pale and fluffy—about 2 minutes. At low speed, mix in the carrots, then the flour mixture, and lastly the raisins; beat all the ingredients together until they are just combined.
- Drop the batter on the baking sheets in 1½ tablespoon-sized balls, 2 inches apart. Then bake the cookies—switching the position of the baking sheets halfway through baking time—until they are lightly browned around the edges and cooked through—12 to 14 minutes total. Let the cookies cool before frosting.
- While the cookies are baking, make the Cream Cheese Frosting. Top each cooled cookie with 1 to 2 tablespoons of the frosting and then garnish each with finely chopped carrots if desired.
