Recipe: Carrot Cake

As-Salam,

Carrot cake does sound yummy and to those who just loves it may want to devour it event more. On the 4th day of Syawal, we had an open house for the family members. So, the night before I decided to make carrot cake for the guest. First time making the cake and its kinda nerve wrecking. Then after 30 minutes in the oven, the cake turns out nicely and I think the cake may needs a thing or two of alterations. The end taste of the cinnamon was quite. I did not use walnut in this recipe thus the cake was really chewy by the presence of dessicated coconut. It would taste even more better if there's some crunchiness from the walnut. Here are the ingredients of the recipe that have been altered. The original recipe was taken from the Kitchen Guardian. Click here for the recipe.

Carrot Cake Recipe

Ingredients

1 cup Canola Oil
4 large Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 ½ cups sugar
2 cups All-purpose Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
½ tsp Salt
3 cups Grated Carrots (about 2 large carrots)
1 cup Coarsely Chopped Roasted Walnuts or Pecans
1 cup Dessicated Coconut (unsweetened)
½ cup Raisins

Method

1. Preheat oven at 170°C.
2. Prepare 2, 8 inches cake tins.
3. Grate carrots and chopped the walnuts/pecan.
4. Sift together flours and cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
5. Beat oil, sugar, vanilla and eggs together with a mixer until twice the volume.
6. Add flour mix, following with carrots and walnuts. Divide the cake batter equally in the cake tins. Bake

    about 30 minutes and test with tooth pick until they comes out clean.
7. Let the cakes cool and cover the cake with Cream Cheese Frosting.

Less Sweet Cream Cheese Frosting

250g Cream Cheese
1 tsp Lemon Juice
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
½ cup Powdered Sugar

Beat the cream cheese with vanilla and lemon juice until soft. And beat in sugar until well corporated. You can add more sugar if it wasn't sweet enough for your tooth :) 

The half way eaten cake! 

          Then, after baking the carrot cake, there were some white eggs left overs from the chocolate chips cookies. Decided at that night to make some not so mini pavlova. One day I would really love to try to make cute pavlova with the size of a cupcake that will suites for any events.  I would really like some green kiwi but unfortunately, I've taken the wrong box of kiwi and it turns out to be yellow kiwi. Yellow kiwi was sweeter compared to the green one.

Pavlovas with yellow kiwis, black grapes and strawberries

Recipe: Making Pavlova!

Alhamdulillah, we meet again. It has been a while I didn't write a thing or two for the blog. Yup, been super busy with the cookies and some madness situation that I have to handle patiently. The cookies business have been a great deal lately and for that I am so blessed and thankful for the sustenance. Syukur!

           From making the cookies, there are lots of egg whites leftovers. After watching the Second Season of Masterchef  Malaysia, I am so keen to make myself a beautiful and puffy pavlova! It looks simple to make and yes people, it is so simple to make it. On the first trial, I gained the recipe from the net and the taste, masyaAllah! Super sweet and seriously I cannot eat them. Luckily I have my office colleague to finished them off. Actually I made the first pavlova especially for Maisarah birthday! Sorry Mai, it was too sweet to consume and happy belated birthday!

          This second trial came out perfect with some alteration to the previous recipe. A major alteration of course! Less sweet and the fruits was so tempting! These are the recipe and may you enjoy baking it.

PAVLOVA RECIPE

Ingredients

150g egg whites
150g castor sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 teaspoons of corn flour.
125ml non dairy whipped cream
75ml milk or any liquid will do
2 tablespoons of powdered sugar.
Fresh fruits.

Methods

1. Pre-heat oven to 170˚C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Draw a 8 inch circle on the parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, beat egg whites, vanilla, sugar, corn flour and lemon juice until stiff but not dry. Beat until thick and glossy. Do not over beat. Be absolutely sure not a particle of grease or egg yolk gets into.
3. Spoon mixture inside the circle drawn on the parchment paper. Working from the center, spread mixture toward the outside edge, building edge slightly. 
4. Put your meringue into the oven and decrease the temperature to 100-120˚C. Bake for 1 hour and let the meringue rest a little bit in the oven (open the door a little bit). Cool on a wire rack.
5. In a small bowl beat cream, milk and powdered sugar until stiff peaks form; set aside. Remove the parchment paper, and place meringue on a flat serving plate. Fill the center of the meringue with whipped cream. Top whipped cream with fresh fruits as what  you desires ( I recommend sweet sour fruits such as berries, mango, kiwi, passion fruits to balance the sweetness of the meringue).

Pardon my falling apricot :)