Today is my daughter’s birthday. Twenty-five years ago today, on her first birthday (and well before I had even heard about fat grams), I made a carousel birthday cake: 4 layers of home-made chocolate cake, filled and frosted with thick layers of home-whipped cream, animal crackers around the side, and topped with a paper canopy resting on straws, with a circle of animal crackers underneath. She did what one-year olds always do with birthday cakes – attacked with both hands deep in the whipped cream, and shortly whipped cream and cake was all over her face and everything nearby. Now she is a whole country away, but distance doesn’t deter a mother from celebrating. The cupcakes are a lot leaner (as am I), but the love is the same.
The original recipe came from Cooking Light. It was already very modest in fat, but I lightened it up a bit, because I wanted to add whipped cream (from a can). These cupcakes are like little chocolate chip carrot cakes. Without the whipped cream, these will freeze very well, and be a great addition to lunch, or for a quick weeknight dessert.
Carrot Chocolate Cupcakes
1 pound carrots, peeled and sliced
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 Tablespoons unsweetened applesauce
2 Tablespoons canola oil
1/3 cup low fat buttermilk
1 large egg
1/2 cup egg substitute
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 ounce semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate, finally chopped (I think 1 ounce of semi sweet mini chocolate chips would also work)
3 Tablespoons powdered sugar (optional)
Preheat oven to 350 F. Line 18 muffin cups with paper liners. Chop carrots in a food processor until finely minced. Combine carrots, sugar, applesauce, oil, buttermilk, egg, and egg substitute in a large bowl. Mix until well blended. Combine flour, soda. And salt in a medium bowl and whisk together. Add flour mixture to carrot mixture and stir until smooth. Stir in chocolate.
Spoon batter into muffin cups. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove muffins from pan and cool on a wire rack completely. Sprinkle with confectioners sugar if you are using it. One muffin (without the whipped cream) has about 2 grams of fat
Happy Birthday, dear daughter. This one’s for you.
The Perpetual Feast 
I’ve always loved these … I was just looking online to see if someone else had frozen them. So glad you’ve tried it! Also glad that you substituted applesauce … that was my plan, too.
I substitute applesauce to lower the fat in most baked goods. (It doesn’t work on cookies.) But don’t take out all the fat. I tried this. It makes hard little hockey pucks instead of cupcakes or muffins.I think that the fat has to coat the flour somehow for the goodie to rise properly. I usually substitute 3/4 of the fat with applesauce, so a recipe calling for 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) of oil would take 3 tablespoons of applesauce and one of oil.