Carrot-cake mini cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting

Hello my dear Readers, I know I was lazy again, but finally here I am with a recipe.
I should write this much earlier as I have so many new recipes to share, but don't want to miss any of the cakes I tried.

Carrot-Cake Mini Cupcakes

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs, room temperature

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/4 cup buttermilk

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups grated carrots

1/2 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 42 mini muffin cups with mini cupcake liners; set aside.

Beat sugar, eggs, oil, vanilla, and buttermilk together in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment until well combined.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Slowly add three-quarters of the flour mixture to the sugar mixture; mix until well combined. Add carrots and raisins to remaining flour mixture; toss to combine. Stir into batter until well combined.

Fill each muffin cup with about 2 teaspoons batter. Bake until a cake tester inserted into the center of cupcakes comes out clean, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer cupcakes to wire rack to cool. Let cool completely before frosting with cream cheese frosting.

Maple Cream Cheese frosting:

1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 tablespoon pure maple syrup

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 cups confectioners' sugar

 In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat cream cheese and butter together until smooth. Add maple syrup, vanilla, and confectioners' sugar; continue beating until well combined and smooth.

This recipe is not my own. It's from Martha Stewart's website. (but of course the photos are mine!!:))
I found her site very useful and there are still so many sweets that I want to try.
But I have a few comments about this recipe. Just my own experience.

1. The carrot-cake batter seemed a bit too liquid to me. When I used a little more flour it seemed better and also they got ready easier. Otherwise it took ages to bake them. 10-12 minutes is way too short I think.. but that's only my experience.

2. The same problem with the frosting. I think it should be denser / thicker. Anyway it was ok, and very-very tasty, just it wasn't easy to make precise, nice decoration on the top of the cakes. But it's easier to work with it if you put it into the freezer for an hour.

In general I can say, I recommend this recipe and I'll definitely prepare it again!
Try to listen to your own common sense, sometimes you don't have to make everything exactly like the recipe says. ;)

And of course it's easy-peasy to make the healthier version, just use wholemeal flour instead of white flour (or replace at least the half of it) and instead of simple sugar you can always use fructose and milk sugar. I like to mix both fructose and milk sugar at the same time because they are prefect combination. Fructose is more, while milk sugar is less sweet than real sugar.

If you have any questions, let me know! And sorry for this veeery long post!:)