Carrot Pancake

Carrot cake or pancake? What to make?

Decisions, decisions...and so goes my mid-morning musings playing to the drum of a rumbling tummy's cravings.

As you can see, I gave in to both and being a pragmatic Aquarian, I compromised. I got out my carrot cake recipe and put the core ingredients: carrot, nuts, citrus fruits and spices to this hybrid pan-cake. The resulting effort is a colourful, sweet and filling four o'clock snackette.

 

I only added a small amount of finely minced carrots here as my trusted food taster initially winced at the idea of eating carrots for dessert but if you really love carrots, go ahead and increase the quantity.  I usually add some orange zest and ginger in my carrot cake for extra depth of flavour. I used these ingredients here too and added turmeric for colour.

The secret weapon in many a French crêpe is rum. I recently learnt from the French chef Emmanuel Tessier with whom I had a cooking class not long ago, that Ron Barcelo, a rum from the Dominican Republic, is best for use in desserts. It is a subtle rum with vanilla notes which doesn't overpower the other flavours in the recipe here.

Piece of cake advice: eat these carrot pancakes plain or with cream cheese frosting. Simply spread the frosting and roll the pancake up or for bite-sized party pieces, cut the roll into pieces and insert toothpicks in each. Et voila!

The Recipe Makes 8 pancakes

Ingredients:

To prepare the carrots

3 tbsp of minced carrot (use a food processor)

1 stick of butter for frying

1 tbsp of floral honey                                       

                                                    

For the batter                                                                              

125g plain flour                                                                             

2 medium eggs                                                                              

1/4 litre of milk                                                                           

pinch of salt                                                                                   

30g sugar (or to taste)                                                             

Dash of Rum (Ron Barcelo)                                                 

Pinch of turmeric (for colour)                                                         

1 orange zest                                                                                 

3 tsp of ground hazelnut                                                                 

1/2 tsp of ground ginger

For the frosting

75g unsalted butter (at room temperature)

25g icing sugar

125g cream cheese

1 lime zest (optional)

Sunflower oil to grease the frying pan

 Method

1. Prepare the carrots. Fry the butter in a pan and add the carrots. Cook for 2 minutes and finish with the honey. Leave to cool.

2. Put the flour in a mixing bowl, make a well and add the eggs into this. Pour the milk and begin whisking simultaneously.

3. When the batter is homogeneous, add the sugar, salt, hazelnut, ginger, dash of rum and turmeric. Whisk again until smooth.

4. Add the carrots to the batter along with the orange zest and stir in well. Leave the batter to rest for 30 minutes.

5. To make the frosting, mix butter, cream cheese and icing sugar together until smooth. Then add the lime zest and combine with the frosting.

6. Heat a non-stick frying pan. Add a drop of sunflower oil and spread around pan with  kitchen paper. Pour a ladle full of the batter into the pan and spread. When pancake begins to bubble, slowly lift off pan with spatula and turn over.

Serve with the frosting