Carrot Cake Parfait with Custard and Strawberries (Celebrating 200th Post)

My Prize Winning Carrot Cake Parfait with Custard and Strawberries is a perfect and beautiful dessert with layers of creamy vanilla custard, chunks of moist, delicious carrot cake and ruby red berrylicous strawberry compote.  It is great as a simple dessert for a special occasion or as a show-stopper sweet ending to any party.

I cannot believe my blog is still going great guns! It has been a little over a year since I started food blogging and sharing my homemade culinary creations with all of you; and now I am already on my 200^th creation! With lots of love and appreciation from all of you, this amazing journey has been fun, exciting, creative and exhilarating to say the least.

I am so grateful to all of you for stopping by to comment, pin, and share my recipes!

I wanted to present something special for this ; hence the long gap in my posting of this scrumptious looking colorful dessert!

I had made moist carrot cake (followed Betty Crocker recipe with a few changes) a few days ago. I reduced the sugar, substituted some of the white with brown, half of the all purpose flour with wheat and cut down on the oil too. It still made for a moist delicious cake. My son detests nuts in his cake; so added raisins instead. For the rest of us, I sprinkled some chopped walnuts and slivered almonds on half the cake! For an eggless version, you can make my Super Moist Carrot and Apple Cake.

Since I had baked it in a large pan, there was more cake than needed. Over the years, I have made a lot of desserts but although parfaits or trifles were some of the treats at my parties, I have never shared the recipes with my viewers. Not anymore! So, the surplus carrot cake was going to be one of the components in my parfait. Just cut them into rough chunks or cut into the shape of the glass you are serving.

Trifles or parfait normally have custard in them. Nowadays, you can see some of them layered with whipped cream, cream cheese etc. I love my plain old vanilla custard. Digging into a bowl of creamy, chilled vanilla custard is reminiscent of my most favorite childhood dessert, creamy vanilla custard with lots of chopped fruits like mangoes, apples, grapes etc., sometimes topped with roasted chopped nuts like cashew or almonds.

There was a half-used box of custard powder lying in my pantry so this carrot cake trifle was going to have creamy custard as one of the layers. You can make your own custard (with our without eggs) or take the easy route and use a boxed variety like I have.

I had recently bought a couple of gorgeous dessert glasses and what better time than now to show it to you? These thick parfait glasses needed to be filled with something colorful in it; like some gorgeous seasonal bright colered fruit. I love berries, especially strawberries. Whenever in season, I always have some in my refrigerator. So I decided to make compote (fruit cooked in sugar and spices) with fresh red strawberries.

You can choose not to cook them; just mix chopped strawberries with some sugar and let sit for a few minutes. The fruit releases its juices to make for a beautiful fresh fruity concoction. Cooked or uncooked, this makes for a great topping for French toast, pancakes, over ice cream, crepes or any dessert! Feel free to use any fruit of your choice.

With all the elements ready, all I had to do was dress up the serving bowl or glass with the different flavors and textures of the parfait. Just layer chunks of carrot cake, strawberry compote (the juices in the compote is enough to moisten the cake) and creamy vanilla custard until you have filled the glass, top with toasted walnuts along with powdered cinnamon and serve chilled! That is it!

The final drop gorgeous dessert glass was so beautiful, it was fun clicking photographs at all angles, trying to get the best ones!

One spoon of this scrumptious and decadent parfait and I was floored by how a simple carrot cake with some fresh fruits can lend such delicious texture and flavor to this easy to assemble dessert! You will love it too! So, do try this and let me know how much you loved it!

Update on this decadent easy dessert: It won the second prize in "Best Party Recipe" Contest on BetterButter.in! Head on down there and check it out!

Other cakes you can use in this amazing dessert:

Eggless Date and Cashew Cake

Ice Cream Muffin Cake (Eggless)

Eggless Gulab Jamun Cake

Super Moist Eggless Cocoa Cupcakes

Now, let us get on to the recipe, shall we?

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Yum

Carrot Cake Parfait with Custard and Strawberries (Celebrating 200th Post)

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 45 minutes

Serving Size: 3

A perfect and beautiful dessert with layers of creamy vanilla custard, chunks of moist, delicious carrot cake and ruby red berrylicous strawberry compote!

Ingredients

FOR THE CARROT CAKE:
• Granulated Sugar ½ cup
• Brown Sugar ½ cup
• Vegetable Oil ¾ cup
• Eggs 3
• All-purpose Flour/Maida 1 cup
• Whole Wheat Flour 1 cup
• Ground Cinnamon 1 ½ teaspoons
• Vanilla 1 teaspoon
• Salt ½ teaspoon
• Shredded Carrots 3 cups
• Raisins ¼ cup
• Chopped Walnuts and slivered almonds ½ cup
FOR THE CUSTARD:
• Milk 2 cups or 500 ml
• Vanilla flavored custard powder 4 teaspoons
• Sugar ¼ cup
FOR THE STRAWBERRY COMPOTE:
• Strawberries 15
• Sugar 2 teaspoons
• Lemon/lime juice 1 teaspoon
• Additional toppings:
• Strawberries
• Chopped walnuts and Cinnamon powder

Instructions

FOR THE CARROT CAKE:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 180 degrees Centigrade. Grease and flour a 13x9 inch pan and keep aside. In a bowl, beat both sugars, oil and eggs with a beater until well blended.
2. Stir in both flours, cinnamon, baking powder and salt and blend again on low speed for a minute. Fold in carrots and raisins (you can add nuts at this stage as well).
3. Pour into prepared pan, level the batter and bake in preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from oven and remove from pan after 10 minutes. Cool completely on wire rack.
FOR THE CUSTARD:
4. In a small bowl, place ¼ cup of milk and stir in custard powder. Mix well until smooth; ensure there are no lumps. Keep aside.
5. Heat the remaining milk in a saucepan on medium heat and bring to a boil. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. add custard-milk mixture into the hot mixture and keep stirring until it comes to a boil and the mixture thickens.
6. Simmer for a minute, remove from heat and let cool. Keep stirring while it is cooling or it will form a thick film on top. Let cool completely.
FOR THE STRAWBERRY COMPOTE:
7. Wash and chop strawberries into 2 to 3 pieces. Sprinkle sugar and heat in a saucepan on medium heat, stirring often for about a minute until slightly cooked and mushy.
8. Remove from heat, stir in lemon juice and let cool. Keep aside. To assemble the carrot cake trifle: Break up carrot cake into chunks that fit into the dessert bowl or glass you will be serving the parfait in.

Notes

If making eggless, use an eggless carrot cake in the parfait.

The same parfait can be made using any other fruit instead of strawberries.

Let your imagination go wild and make any flavor combinations of parfaits you like!

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Step-wise Instructions to make carrot cake parfait:

• Bake carrot cake (or any cake of your choice or you can even use store bought cake) and cool. I have covered only half the cake with nuts as my son does not like them in any cake. Cut into chunks or pieces to fit into your dessert glass or bowl.

• Prepare custard according to package instructions or make your own from scratch.

• Prepare strawberry compote.
• Assemble the components of the parfait.

To assemble the parfait:

• Layer chunks of carrot cake into the dessert glass.

• Spoon strawberry compote over the cake chunks; add some syrup too to moisten the cake.

• Gently pour the prepared and cooled custard over the fruit to cover it completely.

• Sprinkle with nuts and cinnamon powder.

• Continue with the rest of the dessert glasses, lightly cover with plastic wrap and chill thoroughly until serving time. Just before serving, garnish with fresh strawberries and serve immediately.

• Enjoy!!!!!

I am sharing this with:    #CaramelTintedLife | #SarasLittleKitchen | #WastenotWednesday | #RecipeoftheWeek | #FiestaFriday

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