Hello everybody,
Yesterday I finally went for it and performed my first attempt at recreating the flourless carrot cake. Unfortunately I made quite some mistakes and the endresult was pretty much uneatable.
First, I set the temp for my pressure cooker way to high and too much of the liquids evaporated. This obviously had a significant impact on the taste of the carrots - very salty, and not very "carroty".
When I transferred the carrot base to the blender, my blender burned out so I had to mix it with an immersion blender. Worked ok-ish but I'd rather left my blender runner for a couple of minuted for a smoother paste. Also I forgot to sieve the carrot base ('though I have a nice collection of sieves.. dumb..)
I expected the cream-cheese-base to be very thick, but holy shit, it set almost instantly.
Mistake: It was too hot to handle with bare hands when I took it out of the sous vide bath, so I dropped it on my countertop. (twice..) It probably cooled down too much during this step.
I had to plaster the inner layer with a spatula. Frosting the cake was impossible. It didn't occur to me to repack the cheese and cook it again.
When I proudly presented the cake to my wife we tried one bite and threw it away. It didn't even taste like carrot. Boohoo.
Anyway, as always I had a lot of fun and learned a lot! I will try to replicate the exact recipe soon.
Some ideas:
Has anybody tried replacing (part of) the carrot puree with carrot juice from the slow juicer? I love the intense carrot-flavor of fresh carrot juice. I could quick-infuse the juice with spices in my siphon. (vanilla, cardamom, cinnamon, perhaps some star anise) I think it would be great in this cake. Also the bright orange color is nice!
Also, has anybody experimented with the proportions for the cheese frosting? Since the carrageenans work great with dairy I think a more "pourable" mixture should be possible, like 125g milk, 50g cheese.
Opinions?
Thanks, Nico
