Grain Free Carrot Cake Cupcakes are just as good for breakfast as for dessert—somewhat better for you than traditional carrot cake, but just as delicious!
I serve cupcakes for breakfast and call them muffins. These Carrot Cake Cupcakes are #glutenfree, grain free, nearly Paleo*, and kid approved as “real carrot cake!” That’s high praise coming from my kids, because nobody in my house is fooled by that healthy stuff I try to pass off as dessert!
Read on to see why it’s not that crazy to serve cupcakes for breakfast.
That’s “nearly Paleo” ingredients—you can’t just eat all the grain free, refined sugar-free, homemade junk food you want and pretend it’s healthy food!
Real cream cheese frosting required. Get the printable recipe for Gluten Free Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Homemade Cream Cheese Frosting!
[Affiliate links in this post are for your convenience and offer free shipping with Amazon Prime. Get a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime!]
These Gluten Free Carrot Cake Cupcakes have just one “weird” ingredient (coconut flour) and they taste like regular carrot cake—not the technically-edible-yet-not-exactly-delicious healthy cupcakes/muffins I usually serve my kids for breakfast. We all get along just fine with muffins sweetened with bananas and grain free pancakes, but every once in a while, I make the real deal and we come to our senses: there’s really no substitute for cane sugar or good old All Purpose flour.
Follow me on Instagram! @CarissaHouston
These Grain Free Carrot Cake Cupcakes are a compromise between healthy and tasty. Thanks to five eggs they’re fluffy like a cupcake made with flour (instead of dense like this Paleo Pumpkin Breakfast Bread), and they do have a bit of real sugar (gasp!) along with honey and maple syrup. If you can limit yourself to one cupcake, this is how much sugar you’ll eat:
Sugar in One Grain Free Carrot Cake Cupcake:
- Counting the cane sugar only: 3 grams sugar
- Counting the cane sugar, honey, and maple syrup: 13 grams sugar
- Counting all sweeteners, with 1 Tbsp cream cheese frosting: 23 grams sugar
- So yeah, just eat one.
Cupcakes for Breakfast!
If 23 grams of sugar seems like a lot, that’s because it is! But compare these Carrot Cake Cupcakes to kid-friendly breakfast foods like pancakes, juice, chocolate milk, and cereal:
Sugar Grams in Breakfast Foods
- ¼ cup maple syrup on pancakes (assuming the pancakes are sugar free): 53 grams sugar
- ¼ cup pancake syrup (HFCS free Log Cabin All Natural Syrup): 40 grams sugar
- ¼ cup cheap pancake syrup (Aunt Jemima): 32 grams sugar
- 1 cup apple juice: 24 grams sugar
- 1 cup orange juice: 21 grams sugar
- 1 cup chocolate milk (whole milk, 2 Tbsp Nesquik): 23 grams sugar
- 1 cup chocolate milk (whole milk, 2 Tbsp Hershey’s syrup): 32 grams sugar
Did you know that a cup of plain milk has 12 grams of sugar in it?!
- Sugary cereal (1 cup cereal with 1 cup milk): 26 grams sugar
Read your nutrition labels, even on “healthier” choices: organic Koala Krisp has more sugar than GMO Lucky Charms!
[Tweet “Read your labels: #organic Koala Krisp has more sugar than #GMO Lucky Charms! #health”]
As you can see, eating a cupcake for breakfast isn’t any worse for you than eating pancakes or cereal!
[Tweet “Eating cupcakes for breakfast isn’t any worse for you than eating pancakes or cereal. #kids#recipe”]
Read Disneyland on a Budget FREE with Kindle Unlimited!
Pumpkin-Jalapeno Meatballs recipe! Gluten Free, Paleo, and Whole30 approved!
Fast & Easy Carrot Cake Cupcakes!
The easiest way to shred carrots is in the food processor! This is the food processor I use every day—it’s cheap and works better than more expensive models! I use the fine grating disc because I don’t like the texture of chunky carrots in my carrot cake. Then I transfer the carrots to a mixing bowl, and puree the rest of the ingredients in the food processor. I stir the batter into the carrots, and pour the batter. It takes less than 3 minutes to make this recipe!
Wait a minute! Powdered Sugar isn’t grain free!
Remember that regular powdered sugar is made with cornstarch! And if it’s not organic powdered sugar, you can bet that the cornstarch in your powdered sugar is GMO! If you can’t have corn at all, you can make your own corn-free powdered sugar with tapioca starch! If you don’t want that mess, you can buy organic powdered sugar with no cornstarch at Trader Joes, or extremely expensive organic powdered sugar without cornstarch on Amazon.
Give your kids a thrill and serve cupcakes for breakfast! Get the printable recipe for Grain Free Carrot Cake Cupcakes below.
- CARROT CAKE CUPCAKES
- 1/2 cup, packed, shredded carrots
- 5 eggs
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 1/4 cup coconut oil
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 tsp molasses
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp allspice
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 3 Tbsp sugar
- 6 Tbsp coconut flour
- CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
- 2 oz cream cheese
- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- dash salt
- drops of water
- Preheat oven to 350°
- Put 12 parchment liners into a muffin/cupcake pan and spray with nonstick spray.
- Grate the carrots in the food processor and transfer to a mixing bowl.
- (About 3 regular size carrots make 1/2 cup packed carrots.)
- Put remaining ingredients in the food processor and puree.
- Stir the batter into the carrots and pour into the cupcake pan, filling each liner about 2/3 full.
- Bake at 350° for about 25 minutes, or until the tops of the cupcakes spring back when touched.
- For frosting, whip cream cheese, vanilla, and a dash of salt with a hand mixer. Slowly add 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar. Add water, a few drops at a time, until the frosting reaches desired consistency.
Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial
Have you tried Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program? Get FREE UNLIMITED KINDLE BOOKS all month long with your free 30 day trial!
Join Amazon Kindle Unlimited 30-Day Free Trial
Use my Amazon hack to watch FREE movies on Amazon Prime—even if they cost $5.99!
Thanks for reading! Pin this Grain Free Carrot Cake Cupcakes recipe!
