Carrot cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting and toasted coconut-almond garnish

Easter coconut carrot cupcakes (with chocolate Mini Eggs), with mini strawberry cheesecakes in the background. 

A simple, grown-up (?) version of carrot cupcakes.

For me, there are three cardinal rules of carrot cakes:

1. Moistness: The cake has to be moist but not dense/heavy/greasy, with a coarse but soft crumb.
   
2. Nuts (pecans, walnuts - take your pick): These can go on top as a garnish to add crunch and flavour but never inside the batter. I hate those soft mushy greasy lumps of nuts in some carrot cakes. I might consider adding raisins in the cake if I'm having that kind of a day.
   
3. Frosting: It's all about the cream cheese frosting.
   
4. The third rule is so important, it's worth repeating: it's all about the frosting.
   

This carrot cupcake looks melancholy without the frosting.

Gluten-free vanilla cupcakes with berry cream cheese frosting

A co-worker recently was diagnosed with gluten intolerance and has been having trouble finding gluten-free food (not just baked goods, but also a lot of Chinese food, as soy sauce contains wheat), so I decided to bake some gluten-free cupcakes to cheer her up.

I've never baked gluten-free before (besides some meringues), so I did some Googling and was initially a bit intimidated by the recipes I found, which all seemed to require unfamiliar and exotic-sounding ingredients like xanthan and guar gum. Luckily I found a gluten-free plain white flour mix by Dove's Farm (UK) at the supermarket, which can be used in place of regular wheat flour in most recipes.

Here's the recipe for the gluten-free cupcakes that I made. They came out lighter and looser than regular cupcakes, but I think my coworker will be happy to have these baked goods as they're equally tasty, even without the denser crumb of cakes made with regular wheat flour.