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

Selamat Hari Raya 2013

As-Salam,

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri

Maaf Zahir & Batin

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri to all my family, friends and to all Muslims too. Today is the fifth day of Syawal and at this very moment updating from the office. This year's celebration of raya was a bit discouraging. I had fun on the first day of raya but had a terrible diarrhoea, flu and swollen eyes at 3.00 am the day after. The swollen eyes, still can't be explained but I reckon it may due to the Rendang Hitam (I may be allergic to the cow's liver and have eaten a lot of it). So, with the slanting eyes, I went to KLCC to meet the girls and watching Percy Jackson : Sea Monster. The movie was kinda good but not as good as I was expected it to be. I'm giving 4/5 stars for the movie. 

          And now I am back at the office struggle finishing the packaging design for the ice cream. TOLONG! As at now, I had only finished with the design and may it turn out great. While surfing the net for some ideas, I did stumble upon some awesome packaging and it was great with modern twist! I had few here for you.

Alphabet Scoop Packaging by Rebecca Lim

Gorge’us Ice Cream by Matt Barber

Cavistons Coffee Cup by Steve Simpson

Milagros Tea Packaging

Mr Nice Cream from Tesco