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Steamed Carrot Cake With Sweet Potato Ice Cream – Inspired by Anna Olson

Steamed Carrot Cake with Sweet Potato Ice Cream is inspired by one of Singapore’s most notable savory dish, the Carrot Cake.

“My inspiration for this dessert isn’t actually a dessert at all, but a name. When visiting the hawker centres in Singapore, I would enjoy eating “carrot cake” which in fact is a steamed daikon radish side dish and about as far from a dessert that you can get. I love the idea that what I know of as carrot cake is completely different from the hawker version, so I’ve created a dessert where the carrot cake is closer in taste to the dessert I’ve grown up with, but with inspiration taken from the steaming technique, and a little savoury spice addition.” ~ Anna Olson

Steamed Carrot Cake 2

Read about my experience learning from this Celebrity Chef.

Anna’s version of the carrot cake is incredibly easy to replicate even for a relatively untrained  home cook such as myself. When I showed this picture to my hubby, he could not believe that I made it. This dish is so easy to replicate that I am confident enough to teach it to my 10-year-old daughter, who is more keen to cook than I am. For a newbie cook like me, that says a lot about Anna’s recipes.

Aside from the ease of the cooking, I also like that Anna uses natural honey instead of sugar in her recipes. And because the cake is steamed, you don’t get that bloated feeling you sometimes get from eating too much cake. So it is an easy to follow recipe and healthy to boot. Win-win on all fronts.

Anna Olson (1)

If you will like to try this recipe at home, here are the ingredients and instructions from Anna Olson.

Yield: 6 servings

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

    • 150g finely grated peeled carrots
    • 90ml vegetable oil
    • 150g dark brown sugar
    • 30g honey
    • 6g finely grated fresh ginger
    • 1 large egg
    • 1 large egg yolk
    • 125g all-purpose flour
    • 1.5g ground cinnamon
    • 0.75g ground black pepper
    • 1.5g baking powder
    • 1.25g baking soda
    • 1.25g fine salt
    • 75g raisins or crushed pineapple (well-drained)
 Methods:
  1.  Grease six 150 ml (5-fl.oz) ramekins and place them in a pan with sides that are higher than the ramekins. Preheat the oven to 180 degree Celsius (350 degree Fahrenheit).
  2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk the carrots, oil, brown sugar, honey, ginger, egg and egg yolk by hand until evenly blended. (How EASY is this?!)
  3. In a separate bowl, sift the flour, cinnamon, pepper, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add this to the carrot mixture and stir by hand until evenly combined (the batter will be very wet). Stir in the raisins (or pineapple). Divide this between the prepared ramekins.
  4. Pour boiling hot water around the ramekins so that it comes up halfway and cover the pan with foil or a lid. Bake the carrot cakes for 35-40 minutes, until a tester inserted in the centre of a cake comes out clean.

Chef Tip:

Remove the ramekins immediately onto a cooling rack, and cool the cakes for at least 30 minutes before serving, or they can be served at room temperature.

To serve, run a palette knife around the inside edge of each ramekin and turn the cake out onto a plate. The cake can be served on its own, or with a scoop of ice cream, crème fraiche and/or caramel sauce.

SWEET POTATO ICE CREAM

As this is a Singapore-Philippines inspired dish, Anna taught us to make sweet potato ice cream to top it off. Since I do not own this gorgeous ice-cream making machine shown in the picture, I guess I will be serving my carrot cake with normal store-bought vanilla ice-cream.

Sweet Potato Ice Cream Demonstration_4

 

Yield: 4 cups

Prep Time: 10 minutes, plus freezing

Cook Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

  • 1 large sweet potato, at least 300g
  • 250ml coconut milk
  • 250ml whipping cream
  • 100g granulated sugar
  • 45ml corn syrup
  • 30ml instant skim milk powder
  • 7ml vanilla extract
 Methods:
  1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius (375 degrees Fahrenheit).
  2. Pierce the sweet potato with a fork and bake it until tender, about an hour. Cool it completely, peel it and puree the sweet potato until smooth.
  3. Measure out 260g (1 cup) of the puree into a large mixing bowl.
  4. Whisk the coconut milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, milk powder and vanilla into the sweet potato puree until smooth.
  5. Pour this into an ice cream maker and churn following manufacturer’s instructions. Once frozen (but it will still be soft), transfer the ice cream to a non-reactive container and freeze until firm.

Sweet Potato Ice Cream Demonstration_1

Anna scooping the ice-cream for us to try on our carrot cake.

Steamed Carrot Cake 3

Catch Anna in action!

Tune in to Anna’s new show, Inspired with Anna Olson which premieres on Friday, 29 July @ 9pm on Asian Food Channel (Starhub Ch435).

If you like this post, please share your thoughts with Us in the comments below or connect with me on FacebookTwitter and Instagram.

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Till our next post, love yourself, love one another.

Meiling Wong

Meiling is a Singaporean mom who loves spending time with her 2 kids until they ditch her for slime-making and digital gaming. These days, she keeps herself busy trying to keep up with the social media while still contemplating if she should learn how to play "Clash Royale".

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