Carrot cake with Cream-Cheese Frosting

I have known this recipe for long now, but never got around to do it. The time seemed apt today as I wanted to clear up the carrots in my fridge and some remaining cream cheese. :). So its almost like the carrots and cream cheese wanted to be made into a cake. :)

Carrot Cake with Cream-Cheese frosting

Ingredients

Cake recipe adapted from - Laura in the Kitchen

For the cake 

Shredded Carrot - 1.5 cups
All Purpose Flour - 1  and 3/4 cups
Chopped almonds - 3 Tbspn
Raisins - 2 Tbspn
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Brown sugar - 1/4 cup
Baking soda - 1 tspn
Cinnamon - 2tspn
Salt - 1/2tspn
Vegetable oil - 1 cup
Eggs - 2
Vanilla extract - 1Tbspn
Grated orange zest - 1Tspn

For the Frosting

Cream cheese - 100 gms
Unsalted Butter - 1/4 cup
Powdered Sugar - 1/2 cup
Water -1 Tbspn
Vanilla essence - 1 tspn

Method

Preheat your oven at 170 deg C and get that out of the way.Spray an 8 inch square baking pan with non-stick cooking spray and line it with parchment/butter paper.Or prepare the baking tray as you usually do while you bake.

In a bowl, toss the shredded carrots, almonds, raisins and 2Tbspn of all purpose flour and mix well with a spoon. Keep aside. This step will prevent the carrots and raisins from sinking to the bottom of the cake while baking.

Now in another large bowl, add sugar,brown sugar and oil. Mix well. Now break in the eggs into them, add vanilla extract and mix well. Now add all the dry ingredients one by one into the bowl,and also add in the shredded carrots/almonds/raisins as well.Mix with a spatula till everything comes together.Pour the mix into the prepared baking tray and even-out the top layer well with a spatula. Bake at 170 deg C for 20 mins. The original recipe called for 176 deg C for 30 min. But my oven heats up pretty quickly and this temperature and baking time worked for me. So if you know your oven , adjust the temperature and timing accordingly.

How to prepare frosting

Make sure the butter and cream cheese are in room temperature.Mix all the ingredients for the frosting till you get a nice smooth creamy texture, add a tbspn of water if needed. You must be able to easily spread the frosting on top of the cake.

After the cake is done [test it by inserting a tooth-pick into the centre of the cake and until it comes out clean], cool it for 30-40 minutes.Once the cake is completely cooled, apply the frosting on top of it. Leave it on for 15-20 minutes till the frosting sets.

Cut a piece of cake and enjoy it along with a cup of hot tea. :)

 
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Super Easy No-bake Mango Cheesecake

The two words no-bake and cheesecake caught me and i had to try it. This is Valentines' day special dessert, which i wanted to do, but ended up being a day late. But never mind , let me take you to the recipe without further delay.

I consulted many recipes from various sources over the internet and came up with a mixed version. But main recipe reference is from Edible garden

No-Bake Mango Cheescake

Ingredients

Serves 3

Cream Cheese or Hung curd - 1/2 cup
Castor Sugar - 1/4 cup
Fresh Cream - 1/3 cup
Mango pulp - 3/4 cup
Gelatin - 1 tbspn
Mcvities digestive bisuits  powdered - 1 cup
Melted butter - 4Tbspn
Cashews - 5
Sugar - 1 tbspn
Vanilla essence - 1/2 tspn

Method

Base of the cake 

Powder the biscuits along with the cashews and 1tbspn sugar to make about 1 cup. Mix it well with melted butter . Now bring out 3 serving glasses and  spoon this into each of them and press them firmly to make the base of the cheescake.Put it inside the fridge. Let it stay in the fridge while you proceed with the second layer to make the cheescake filling as below.

Cheescake mixture

This consists of the three steps as below

Step 1- Mango pulp - gelatin mix

In a cup, pour about 2-3 tspn of cold water along with gelatin and stir the gelatin with hand. Now add 2-3 tspn of hot water over this - stir and let the gelatin completely dissolve. Mix the mango pulp with the dissolved gelatin and keep aside.

Step 2 -Whipped Fresh Cream 
Whip the fresh cream separately and keep aside.

Final Cream cheese mix

Now mix the cream cheese and castor sugar well for 2-3 minutes to get a smooth texture. Pour 3/4th of the mango pulp mixture prepared in step1 [remaining is to be used for topping] and all of the whipped cream [step 2] and vanilla essence onto the cream-cheese/sugar mixture.

Now take out the glasses from the fridge and fill 3/4 of the glass with the cheescake mixture. Now return to fridge and refreigerate for 1.5 hrs for it to set.

Topping

After 1.5 hrs, bring the glasses, gently spoon in the the remainining mango pulp on top of the cheesecake mixture in each glass. Referigerate for 5-6 hrs, for best results cool it overnight. And there we have our beautiful cheescake ready.

Note:
You can always subsitute hung curd for cream cheese, as cream cheese is expensive and difficult to get in India.But i had tried this recipe with cream cheese.Lucky me! ;).

Gelatin is a meat by-product, so if you are strictly vegan, use chinagrass [agar-agar] instead.

Also the quantities in each layer can be adjusted as per taste/need. I have used more mango pulp mixture for the topping, than necessary.

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