Birthday Cupcakes

A friend's birthday was Friday, and I offered to make/bake something for the gathering that night.  I wasn't sure she'd want cake/cupcakes, because she really isn't into sweets (although give her a bag of potato chips...).  I offered a few suggestions I thought she might like - booze based or salted caramel to appeal steer clear of the super sweet stuff.  She replied that her favorite cakes were tiramisu and carrot cake.  I've never made tiramisu (though I have successfully made lady fingers!), and I'm under the impression it has to soak for quite a while, so I went home from working planning to make carrot cupcakes.  I knew there was a recipe I liked (aside from the cream cheese frosting of course) in my cupcake cookbook.  When I was looking for the carrot cake recipe I found a recipe for tiramisu cupcakes - that didn't require soaking!  Looking at both recipes, I was only missing 1-2 ingredients for each, and couldn't decide between them, so the obvious solution was to make both. :)

The tiramisu cupcakes were awesome.  I really, really liked them.  They weren't really the same texture as tiramisu, but they were the right flavors.  The "frosting" actually had raw, whipped egg whites - the frosting was more in line with the texture you expect from tiramisu.  It was the first time I served anybody uncooked egg.  In principle it doesn't bother me (though I know it bothers E big time), but I figured serving them to a bunch of drunks would be a safe opportunity.  If people got sick, excessive alcohol consumption is a far more likely culprit (unless EVERYBODY gets sick, but shhh!).

You see the carrot cupcake?  Good.  Now imagine them with cream cheese frosting flecked with cardamom and orange zest.  I'm a space cadet and forgot to take a photo after frosting them...

Tiramisu cupcakes