Ingredients

60g Finely Grated Carrot

40g Caster sugar

60g Chopped Pecans

 

2 tsp Ginger

¼ tsp Ground All Spice

150g Melted Butter

100g Light Brown Sugar

100g Caster Sugar

1 Egg

230 Plain flour

½ tsp Baking Powder

¾ tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

¼ tsp Salt

2 Heaped tbsp Corn starch

1 tsp Vanilla

1 tsp of milk powder

¼ tsp lemon juice

Filling

280g Full fat Cream Cheese

50g Icing Sugar

1 tbsp Plain Flour

1 tsp vanilla

Topping

A few chopped pecans

Method

Make the filling ahead of time.

Gently mix all the filling ingredients together, careful not to overmix.

On a lined tray (I use a 1 tablespoon ice cream scoop) scoop out tablespoon mounds of the cheesecake filling. Pop the tray into the freezer for an hour, when they are frozen you can pop them into a bag to use later if you like.

Pre heat your oven to 100C Fan. Put your grated carrot on a lined baking tray and sprinkle on the 40g of caster sugar, mix this in with your fingers so that all the carrot is covered in sugar and evenly spread out on the baking tray. Bake in the centre of the oven for 30 minutes.

When the carrots are crystalised gently scrape them of the baking paper with a spatula, best to let them cool a little first. They will try to stick together so just pull them apart a little.

To make the cookie dough, gently melt your butter and add in the sugars, vanilla, and spices.

Add in the egg and give this a good mix, then mix in all the dry ingredients until almost incorporated.

Mix in the crystalised carrots and chopped pecan.

Take the frozen cheesecake mounds out of the freezer.

Scoop 10 tablespoon of the cookie dough onto a lined baking sheet and flatten them out to about 1 cm deep circles.

Pop the frozen filling on top of the cookie circles and scoop 2 ½ tbsp of cookie dough (I use a 2 ½ tbsp ice cream scoop) onto the top of the filling. Gently press these around the sides sealing the filling in.

Pop some chopped pecans on top.

Pop the cookies in the freezer for half an hour, this amount of mix makes exactly 10 large cookies. You can leave these in the freezer in a sealed bag for another day if you don’t want to bake them all at once.

After half an hour in the freezer bake the cookies with plenty of space between them for 17 minutes at 170C Fan.

Allow the cookies to cool on the baking tray, when they are cooled, you will need to store them in the fridge as they have the cream cheese in them but trust me, they are still absolutely beautiful cold and if you like carrot cake you will love these.

Enjoy