Hope you all had a great Diwali
time. I really liked the hype of Diwali celebrations on the social network and
the blogs. For me, Diwali is associated with nothing but the Indian sweets and
my feeds and updates have been overflowing with bloggers posting Diwali sweets!
The amount of sweets that were being cooked by fellow bloggers did tickle my sweet tooth.
But I had to succumb myself to a little cake to satiate my sweet craving. During
Diwali my dad used to bring home some desi
mithais and that is what I missed the most.
This is my 250th recipe post and I would like to thank all my
dedicated readers and friends for the constant support and to reach this
milestone. Without you this would have been just impossible. Even though my
posts come erratically, you supported me and checked on me on regular basis.
Thanks to one and all for the continuous support and love. Thank you for making
me feel that I have a world of friends who love me unconditionally. Thank you
for everything.
Before I get on to my recipe, let me share you few photographs of few wonderful
places that we’ve been to – The Oban, Isle of Mull and Isle of Iona. These are
places in the North Western part of the UK, The Mighty Scotland. It is
naturally very beautiful place, with stunning landscape and sceneries and lot
of history to speak.
The place is adorned with lakes, castles, mountains,
fields etc. It’s just few hours from where we live, the north East. So we tend
to drive to Scotland around our anniversary in April. We have covered almost
all of Scotland now, visiting all important spots and I am still looking
forward to going there again and again. It is just couple of hours drive from
our place and a piece of heaven on earth. This time I am going to share some pictures
from our last trip, Oban and couple of surrounding islands. I shall cover rest
of Scotland in some post later.
We try to take off from our regular routine and travel across the
country ones or twice a year. Last year we drove to Oban which is situated in
the west coast of Scotland. It’s is about four and a half hours drive from Newcastle
and the drive is splendid with scenic
beauty, spectacular landscapes, lakes and mountains. There is much more to
discover than just the dramatic landscape for which the Scotland is known for.
Castles, towns, distilleries, islands, villages, sea safari are some of
the things you would want to keep in mind when you visit Oban. There is lot to
see in and around Oban and two days is too short to go through all of them. But
you may choose what you want to do once you reach there. Every hotels and b&b
will have many booklets and leaflets of interesting things that could be done
around the area, but a detailed search on the net would save you much time. You
may also go through the guides and booklets or the official Scottish tourist
site for more information.
Oban is known as the ‘gateway of isles’ as the car ferries head for
eight islands near Oban. Oban’s largest Ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne or
Calmac do an extensive service in and around Oban. We stayed in a hotel in Corran
esplanade in Oban bay overlooking the Kerrera Island which is visible directly
from the Oban bay. Although kerrera being a large island, it is less populated
and it is quite compared to the busy Oban. As the unofficial capital of the
western Highlands Oban has plenty to occupy the visitor.
The 200 year old Oban distillery is right in the town centre. There are
two cathedrals though neither is particularly old. St. Johns Cathedral in the town’s
main street hosts regular music recitals. As Oban is located with shoreline and
hills nearby, it lends itself to plenty of outdoor activities. Charter
companies offer boat trips around nearby islands and one could also signup for
a kayak outing from the bay. There are also interesting walks in and around the
town. Oban has always been a fishing
village and nowadays it is dubbed seafood capital of Scotland and there are
plenty of places to enjoy excellent fresh seafood. We spent our first day
roaming in oban and the next day we set off to Isle of Mull and Isle of Iona,
two very beautiful islands near Oban.
Isle of Mull is 40 minutes ferry crossing from Oban and is worth
exploring two impressive castles nearby. Torosay is a Victorian mansion with
extensive gardens and Duart castle, guarding the Sound of Mull. Mull’s western
side is dotted with white beaches. You also get to see white tailed sea eagles
and otters and it is a good place for a whale-watching trip. Once we got off
the ferry, we drove around the Island covering not all, but most of the area.
We could not cover the Northern part of the Island, Tobermory which is famous
for its brightly coloured buildings. The kids television series Balamory was
shot in Tobermory. We took another ferry to Isle of Iona, which is one of the
smallest islands, but beautiful in all its sense.
Isle
of Iona is an idyllic and enchanting island situated just a short ferry
ride from Isle of Mull. It takes a bit of planning reaching Iona, as it involved a ferry ride from Oban to Isle of Mull and then a road trip to the Fionnphort where we take another ferry to Iona which takes just about 10 minutes.
Looking from the Mull’s southern corner, the tower of
St. Margarates Cathedral. part of Iona Abbey dominates the skyline. The Abbey is the main tourist attraction in
Iona. Cars are not allowed in the Island and the abbey is just fifteen minutes
walk from the port.
The island is less populated with just about one hundred
and twenty people. So, I guess everyone in the island would know each other! It
is one of the most serene, tranquil places I have ever been to and we all left
with a feeling of tranquillity. There is also a heritage centre on the island
that reveals more about the historic past and culture. You can take ferries or
boats to other islands nearby from there.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Coming to the recipe, this gorgeous recipe was baked to take over to our
friends place when lot of friends were meeting up. I always wanted to bake this
cake, but the amount of fat and sugar that went into the cake put me to a halt.
I thought I will wait for the right occasion to bake, usually when the friends
get together for dinner.
The dinner that day was planned late, so the cake also was baked at the
last minute. And I blast cooled the cake by leaving it at the window sill,
leaving the window open! I dint have time for the cake to cool down completely,
so I frosted whilst the cake was still warm. As I started taking pictures, I
noticed the frosting dribbling down slowly as the frosting started melting! I
had to hurry taking pictures, but I think that oozing frosting added an extra
chic to the cake that was simply great.
I had been rushing through out that day as we were running late for the
dinner unlike usual and it was just halfway through our journey, that I
remembered I had forgotten the cake at home! Aargh! After all the rushing,
chaos and stress I left the mighty cake at home. It was a total disappointment
as I knew I would be nibbling on the cake all day which I did and the whole
point of splitting the calories between friends failed miserably. However, the
husband and son enjoyed it much. Although, they had only reasonable amount of
them, the rest being all eaten up by the sweet tooth monster, me.
The cake is really soft, flavourful and the cream cheese frosting makes
the cake absolutely scrumptious. This is a massive cake, so you would too want
to bake it for a time when you have a big gang coming over to your place. Or
else if you have a sweet tooth family, make it for them. Enjoy.
Moist Carrot Cake with Cream cheese Frosting
Recipe : Allrecipes
Prep: 30 mins
Cook: 1 hour
Serves: 18
Ingredients:
4 medium eggs
300ml vegetable oil
400g, 2 cups caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
250g, 1 ½ cups plain flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
350g, 2 large carrots, grated very fine
125g, 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
1 tbsp grated zest of an orange
Cream Cheese Frosting:
125g butter, softened
250g cream
cheese, softened
250g icing
sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preparation method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180 ºC, 160 ºC for Fan assisted oven. Grease and
flour a 23cm/9 inch baking tin.
2. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, caster sugar and 2
teaspoons vanilla for couple of minutes using a wire whisk or a wooden spoon
3. In another bowl, sift in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and
cinnamon. Add this to the wet mixture and
fold well.
4. Stir in carrots, orange zest and fold in pecans. Pour into the
prepared tin.
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 45- 55 minutes or until a skewer
inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10
minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
To Make the Cream cheese frosting: :
In a medium bowl, beat together butter and icing sugar until creamy. Gradually add in
cream cheese and vanilla essence and beat until the mixture is creamy. Set aside until ready to frost. Once frosted, refrigerate the cake.
Spread
evenly on the cake once the cake is completely cool. This is quite a stiff,
spreadable frosting.
*Mine started melting as I frosted it on slightly warm cake.
Notes:
1. While making frosting, butter should be silky soft and smooth. If not, the
frosting will be grainy.
Here, the butter is not soft even at room temperature, so I microwave for few
seconds or until it is really soft. If at all your frosting goes lumpy from cold butter, heat it for a brief amount of time in microwave making sure it does not melt. Mix well.
2. I also place the cream cheese in few layers of kitchen towel to drain
extra moisture in the cheese to make stiff frosting
