Coconut Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting HAPPY EASTER!

In the spirit of Easter I made Coconut Carrot cupcakes yesterday. I love carrot cake. I love the warm cinnamon in them and the texture. I added coconut because, well I love coconut too. It added another level of texture to the cakes along with the shredded carrots.  

I could have eaten these with no icing but as you can see, I didn't. It wouldn't have been as Easter-y. Here is what I did- 

4 beaten eggs

2 cups sugar

2 cups AP flour

2 tbsp baking powder

1 heaping tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking soda

3 cups shredded carrots

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cooking oil

1/4 cup coco lopez

1 cup shredded coconut

Mix the eggs, carrots,vanilla, oil and coco lopez. In a separate bowl, combine, sugar, flour,salt, baking soda and powder and cinnamon. Add dry mixture in slowly and whisk all together. Finally, fold in the coconut., Its a very thick batter. I made 18 cupcakes with it. Baked for 20 minutes @ 350- cooled on wire racks. 

I made a cream cheese frosting which consisted of 1/4 cup vegetable shortening, 6 ounces of light cream cheese, 3 cups powdered sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla. I split the frosting into two bowls and dyed them - one bright pink, one yellow. Then in another little bowl, I took about 1/2 cup of shredded coconut and added about 3 drops of green food coloring and mixed it up with a fork. I frosted the cupcakes and topped with a little coconut to make it look like grass. Topped with a few Easter colored M&M's. These were moist and rich. Like I said earlier, they'd be good even without any frosting.