First time baking, carrot cupcakes! （杯子蛋糕）

I was re-watching the Taiwanese drama Inborn Pair (真愛找麻煩) and in one of the seasons the OTP were making cupcakes together. (I recommend the drama btw- I don't usually rewatch dramas and this is one of longest dramas I've seen to completion at 80 episodes, so it must say something...). It just looks so romantic to make 被子蛋糕 (bei1 zi dan4 gao1) with your SO. I also love the chinese translation of cupcake: 被子蛋糕. It just sounds so cute!! It just sounds so different than just saying "cupcake" which reminds me of 1st grade birthday parties... hahaha.  So I decided to try my hand at making some. Tell me what you think!

This is the first time trying my hand at baking by myself. I mean I "baked" with friends before in college but I don't consider it baking because I was mostly just "helping", or more accurately, helping eat the cake/cookies/whatever it was. :P

Note to self: baking soda can be a considered a cleaning product so using too much baking soda can make the cupcakes taste bitter, kind of like eating soap! I think I didn't mix the baking soda well enough because although the first batch of cupcakes tasted good, the last batch that I tried came out a little bitter. I think my mixing wasn't even!

Ingredients (材料): 

2 cups all purpose flour (I think I may have used too much, probably try 1- 1 1/2 next time)

~1 cup white sugar

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground giner

*2 Tablespoons grapeseed oil (or any other vegetable oil)

*water

2 large eggs

2 cups of grated carrots

*note: Using the above ingredients, when I mixed everything together I found that dough wasn't moist enough so I added more water and oil gradually until I felt like the dough was moist enough. Sorry I don't have the exact ratio. :/

Initially, I tried to follow a recipe, but found out I only had two eggs instead of the 4 eggs it required. :( I also used less carrots because the recipe called for 4 carrots and I only bought 3. But, when I was grating the carrots, I was already getting 2 cups of carrots after finishing 1 1/2 carrots! (I learned that grating carrots by hand is tedious and it takes forever).

Method (做法):

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Mix flour, baking soda, sugar, cinnamon, ground ginger together until they are well mixed.

3. Now, the hard part: carrot grating!

4. Now add in the oil and eggs, stirring them in one at a time. I added some more oil and water to the mixture because I found the ingredients wasn't moist enough.

5. Heat in the oven (about 20-25 minutes). Use a toothpick or fork (something long and narrow) and stick it straight down the cupcake. If nothing sticks onto the toothpick when you lift it up, then it's done.

6. Let it cool.

7. Add whip cream, frosting, or making your own cream cheese frosting or eat it without the frosting:

(I added Light Hazelnut whip because I was too lazy to make cream cheese frosting... haha)