Today on Sugar Spun Run, I'll be showing you how to make a cheesecake
carrot cake. Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here!
And today I am so excited to be sharing another carefully tested,
well researched, and perfected recipe.
Today's recipe is an absolute showstopper.
It is a carrot cake that is just stuffed with a full-sized cheesecake
and topped off with a light, cream cheese frosting.
Now, let's go ahead and get started. The first thing you'll want to do is prepare that cheesecake
because it needs to be prepared at least four hours in advance.
I like to make mine the day before I want to assemble the cake,
so let's go ahead and preheat our oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now in a large bowl, we're going to combine 24 ounces or three 8 ounce bricks of softened cream cheese.
And we’ll add 3/4 cup of granulated sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Now we're going to grab our electric mixer
and we'll use this to cream everything together until it's smooth and well combined.
And you want to make sure that that cream cheese is well incorporated.
You don't want there to be any lumps in there. Now
the next thing you're going to need is one half cup of sour cream.
And I'm just going to give the sides of the bowl
and the bottom of the bowl a scrape
because I want to make sure we're getting everything well incorporated.
All right, now we'll mix this together. Alright,
the next thing that we need is three large eggs for today's recipe.
We're going to be adding these one at a
time and we are going to be beating until each egg is just combined before adding the next one.
Now when you're making a cheesecake, you want to be careful
when you add the eggs because if you mix the batter too much after adding them,
you can end up having kind of like a mealy consistency, or texture, to the cheesecake.
Also, you're more likely to end up with cracks if you over-beat the eggs.
We're not super worried about cheesecake cracks today
because it's going to be hidden inside a carrot cake,
but it's still good practice to not over-beat the eggs.
All right, once this batter is nice and smooth,
we're going to grab ourselves an 8-inch springform pan.
And I have a piece of parchment paper here. I'm just going to put that in the bottom
and the point of that is just to make it nice and easy to remove the cheesecake from the pan
when it's time to assemble our cake. Now we'll pour that batter in there.
Now we'll take this over to our 325 degree
Fahrenheit oven, where it's going to need to bake for about 35 minutes.
Now when the cheesecake is finished baking, if you give it a little jiggle,
the center will not be completely set,
but it should be mostly set. You may even notice a small bit of
puffiness around the edge of the cheesecake
or it may be beginning to turn a very light
golden brown color around the very edges.
Whatever you do, don't over bake your cheesecake,
or, again, it can end up with kind of a mealy texture.
You don't want that, you want it to be nice and creamy.
All right, now when your cheesecake is finished baking, you're going to want to
let it cool for about 15 minutes in the pan.
And then I like to use a knife
and run that along the edge of the cheesecake just to loosen it from the pan.
This will help you prevent cracks, but, again, not super important with today's recipe,
just something I like to do. Now we'll let this sit at room temperature
until it's cool enough to handle,
and then it will go into the fridge where it will need to chill
for at least four hours before you can use it.
Like I said, I like to make mine a day in advance of assembly.
Now once your cheesecake is finished, let's move on to the carrot cake.
We are making a full-sized carrot cake today. This is my all-time favorite carrot cake,
I've shared it on the blog before.
So you're going to want to pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
and grab a large mixing bowl to get started on that.
All right here, we're going to combine two and a half cups of all-purpose flour,
1 cup of granulated sugar, 1 cup of firmly packed brown sugar—
you can use either light or dark brown sugar, I'm just using light today—
one and a half teaspoons of baking soda, 1 teaspoon of baking powder,
1 teaspoon of salt—this is just table salt—
and, for our spices, we're using 2 teaspoons of ground
cinnamon and a half teaspoon of ground nutmeg.
Now, we'll whisk everything together until it's well combined.
I do like to kind of break up this brown sugar clumps
the best I can. We'll make sure everything is well Incorporated.
Now, the next thing that you're going to need is one cup of a neutral cooking oil,
that would be typically either vegetable oil or canola oil.
And I also have 1/2 cup of melted butter,
which we’ll also add. Now, we’ll want to stir the oil and butter into the dry ingredients.
And you can do this using either a stand mixer or today
I'm going to be using my electric hand mixer. Realistically,
you could even do this by hand. I just think a mixer makes it a little bit easier.
Now, after you've added your oil and butter,
the dough is going to be a little bit stiff and seem a little bit dry.
That's totally fine, so long as everything's incorporated and you don't see any flour,
you're good. Alright, the next thing that you need is four large eggs,
and we're just going to stir these into the batter one at a time.
We're also going to add a tablespoon of vanilla extract for flavor.
Alright, the next thing that you need today is, of course,
the carrots. We're going to be using three cups of grated carrots for today's recipe.
Now you can see, I have mine cut up a pretty small.
What I’ll usually do is I will grate these using the grater on my food processor.
And then I'll take the blade of my food processor and chop them up real quickly,
like three 1 second pulses just to make them a little bit finer.
I don't like discernible pieces of carrot in my carrot cake.
All right, now we'll stir these in. And we're going to be baking these in 8-inch cake pans
and I have lightly greased these with a little bit of baking spray.
And whenever I'm making cake, I always line in the bottom with parchment paper,
just guarantees that the cake won't stick.
We’ll divide our batter into these two tins.
I'm going to make it as even
as possible. And we’ll take these over to our oven where they're going to need to
bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean
or with a few moist crumbs. We’ll let those cakes cool in the pan for about 10 to 15 minutes.
And then I like to use a knife to run it around the edge of the cake,
just in case it's sticking to the side any.
And then we'll carefully invert it onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
So at this point, I like to prepare our frosting which is just a simple cream cheese frosting.
It's a little bit lighter than the one that I currently have on the blog. To make this,
we're going to combine eight ounces of softened cream cheese,
with one stick or 1/2 cup of unsalted butter.
And this should also be softened. We’ll also add 1/4 teaspoon
of table salt, just to add a little depth of
flavor, and we'll use our electric mixer to beat everything together until it's smooth and creamy.
All right, this is looking pretty good,
so I'm just going to add a teaspoon of vanilla extract and stir that in as well.
And the next thing you're going to need is three cups of powdered sugar
and we'll just gradually stir this into our butter and cream cheese mixture.
Alright, finally, to make this frosting nice and light,
I like to take a tablespoon of heavy whipping cream and I’m just going to eyeball that,
and we're going to slowly increase our mixer speed to high.
And we're going to beat this on high speed for 30 seconds.
All right, now we are ready to assemble our cake.
Now, these carrot cakes do tend to dome a little bit on top sometimes,
so I'm just going to a level those off. I’m not really great and leveling cakes,
but this is a little bit better than how it was before.
And we’ll place our first layer on our cake platter.
We'll just top that with a little bit of frosting. All right,
and our cheesecake is now completely cooled,
we've released it from the springform pan, so
what I like to do is I just like to take it
and I'll flip it over and then I'll place this on top of the carrot cake.
And I do want to make sure I have that centered right on top of the cake.
All right, now we’ll top this cheesecake with another thin layer
of frosting. We’ll level our other carrot cake
and place that on top.
And then all that's left to do is just ice this cake.
I like to give a pretty thin layer of frosting on the sides and go a little bit heavier on top.
All right, all that's left now is to go ahead
and cut into this beautiful cake. I think you're going to love it.
And that is how you make a cheesecake carrot cake.
I really think you guys are going to love this one. If you try it out,
please leave me a comment and let me know what you think. I always love hearing from you.
Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
Problem is there's not a fork big enough. Mmm.
That's good.