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With Easter coming up these carrot shaped puffy pastry treats are seriously adorable and the best part, they are stuffed with carrot cake cheesecake! Get your deliciousness on with these over the top insanely delicious Easter treats!
Can I tell you just how much I love my job? No this time I’m not talking about my day job that I went to school for, for a bajillion years. Oh no I’m talking about my TKW job. The one where I get to be free, creative and don’t have to think. I can get my hands completely covered in orange food dye and don’t care. Yes that totally happened to me but it’s all good, nothing a little soap and water couldn’t take care of. It’s totally worth having a few orange fingertips as these are so delicious that honestly it took every ounce of restraint I had to not eat all of them before I finished the photo shoot.
Reddi-wip® is something that I have in my fridge at all time. Like I think it’s part of my wedding vows…’to have and to hold, to honor, love and cherish and to keep Reddi-wip® on hand at all time in the fridge’. LOL If you remember I created a No Bake Coconut Key Lime Mini Cheesecake Pie a while back for them and when they were looking or Spring and Easter recipes I knew exactly what I wanted to make.
Growing up I loved my Mom’s homemade carrot cake. It wasn’t too sweet but it had flecks of pineapple, walnuts in it and topped with such a luscious cream cheese frosting. She always made it around Easter time. Now marrying Mr. Fantabulous he’s not too much of a cake eater but what he does love is cheesecake. So with that I decided to kind of merge my Mom’s carrot cake recipe with a no bake cheesecake recipe that he loves. And since it’s close to Easter it’s only befitting that these are in puff pastry in the shape of a carrot. Now if you’re like me you love new inspirations when it comes to baking. While you’re saving this recipe, make sure you check out some of these awesome recipes inspirations here!
This recipe takes a little bit of planning only because when you make this no bake cheesecake you need to allow it to chill out and firm up in the fridge for a few hours before you pipe it into the carrot molds. One thing you’ll notice about this no bake cheesecake is that it doesn’t have heavy cream or whipped cream in it; instead it has gelatin. The difference between the gelatin no bake cheesecake mixture and the whipped cream one is that the latter doesn’t stay firm for more than a couple of days where the gelatin can hold its shape and not turn liquidy as fast.
Since I was out of gelatin I added that to my shopping cart while I was Walmart. And while I was there I grabbed a few more bottles of Reddi-wip®. It’s always cold and always um… ready. *wink*
As I said you need to make the cheesecake mixture and let it chill out in the fridge for several hours. I actually made this the day before I made the carrot molds. However if you wanted to make them ahead of time you most certainly can. Just keep them in an air tight container.
Now to make the carrot molds it’s pretty easy but it takes patience to make them. Roll out the pastry dough to a 12×12″ square and cut it into 12 – 1″ strips. Roll each strip up into rope and then wrap it around the greased mold. This is the part where it takes patience. Now keep in mind when you do roll them up, don’t pull the dough super tight. You want it to stick to the mold and overlap but remember if you pull it too tight when it bakes it’ll end separating.
Next, I tried this two- ways, painting them before I baked them with the orange food coloring and then painting them afterwards – I actually preferred the painting afterwards. I found that when I painted the dough before baking the carrot colors got darker than and almost zebra streaked. While super cool, it wasn’t full on carrot colors. HOWEVER then I remembered…not all carrots are orange! SCORE!
Once the shells are cooled place the firm cheesecake mixture into a piping bag and pipe some into the molds. To make the carrot greens I could have used parsley or an herb but I didn’t want to alter the carrot cake cheesecake flavor. That’s when I thought about using Easter licorice grass. What I did buy was string licorice, cut the green into 2″ strips and then to keep it all together keep I took another long piece of licorice and tied the strips together. I then just stuck the ‘knot’ into the cheesecake mixture and to finish it off a spray of Reddi-wip® (but only put that on when you’re ready to serve!).
This recipe is one that, if I had kids, I would totally make this with them and make this a family tradition – kind of like dying Easter eggs. These are super adorable and so unbelievably delicious. How do I know? Um, well do you see the tray above of the 4 carrots on it? Yeah, I ate all 4 in a single day. Well okay Mr. Fantabulous had a bite of one. LOL It’s funny as he took his bite he stopped mid-chew and said “what is this? Is it cheesecake or carrot cake?” I smiled and said “Wait? It’s a carrot cake cheesecake??? How’d you do that?” I just smiled and said “Magic!” LOL
This is one of those desserts that you will be proud to serve on Easter Sunday either as a snack or as the main dessert. It’s super fun and so delicious!
Now while you’re making this recipe check out more recipe inspirations here!
Carrot Cake Cheesecake Stuffed Puff Pastry Carrots
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Ingredients
Filling
- 12 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
- 1/2 cup greek vanilla yogurt
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 packet unflavored gelatin
- 1/2 cup cold water
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 cup finely grated carrots
- 1/4 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/3 cup chopped walnuts *optional
Dough
- 2 sheets puff pastry dough
Extras
- Reddi-wip® topping
- Green licorice strings cut into 2” strips
Instructions
- In a small bowl, add the water and gelatin. Allow to set for 1 minute.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle cream the cream cheese until smooth and no lumps remain. Add in the yogurt, brown sugar and vanilla. Mix to combine, scraping down the sides.
- Add in cinnamon, carrots, nutmeg, ginger and walnuts mixing just to combine.
- Take the bowl of gelatin and microwave for 20-30 seconds just until the gelatin dissolved. Do not boil.
- With the mixer running, slowly pour in the gelatin and mix until combined. Scrape down the sides and mix again just to combine.
- Put the mixture in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least 4 hours.
- When ready to make the pastries, set the oven to 400F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, lightly sprayed.
- On a lightly floured board roll out each pastry sheet to a 12×12” square. Using a ruler, cut twelve 1” strips. Take each strip and roll each one up into a rope.
- Taking 12 cream horn molds, lightly spray them with cooking spray. Start wrapping the pastry around a mold from the tip of the cone towards the wide base, slightly overlapping. Do not stretch the dough tight as you want the dough to stay attached and overlapped when it bakes.
- Bake for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before removing the molds from the pastry carrots. Once the pastry is completely cooled, brush each one with orange food coloring.
- Place the carrot cake cheesecake mixture in a piping bag and pipe the mixture into each cooled cream horn shell.
- Spritz each top of the carrot with Reddi-Wip and then place 4 green licorice strings in the end to look like a real carrot.
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