CARROT CAKE REVIEW No 11 - Zesty & Moist

Heydon Tea Rooms, Heydon, Norfolk.

Spiced Carrot & Orange Cake 

First, I must confess a prejudice, Heydon Tea Rooms is one of my all time favourite places to go for coffee and cake. The range and excellence of their cakes is unmatched. How would they perform when stepping onto the hallowed ground of Carrot Cake? 

Well, if I'm being really really honest, this was never going to be the pure unadulterated Carrot Cake that I've extolled in fundamentalist detail in previous blog posts. ( You'll find those posts here:~ Perfect Carrot Cake ) The official title for this one was Spiced Carrot and Orange Cake. So thats spice, tick, carrot, tick, orange? well, lets see. Orange can easily sweep away all that comes into contact with it, so what started out in its bones the very essence of a carrot cake, is frogmarched into becoming a Tangerine. 

As you may be able to detect from the photograph this cake could never be described as solid or weighty. The cake's texture was light, springy and moist. My god was it moist, moist with all those bright zesty citrus overtones, but without being detrimental to the balance of the Carrot or the Spice. It was poised beautifully between the demands of all these competing flavours. There was still room in the mix for good sized chunks of walnut and a scatter of sultanas. Throwing all these ingredients together and not have a cake you could either fiill holes in a wall with or has the consistency of rain sodden soil, is nothing short of masterful. Though it may have looked insubstantial it had enough substance in its structure. It didn't fall into cake rubble as soon as you applied the fork, nor dissolve like a ghost as soon as it hit your pallette either.

Though this style of carrot cake exists on the more experimental fringes, in our world of culinary fantasy, it does somehow manage to pull it off. Plus, it does have a cream cheese filling, so that's another thumbs up from me.  I find it tricky though when assessing these modern twists on the traditional form, when it comes to how to mark them. Though not traditional they are, nonetheless, successful.  Here they manage to cover all the basics of the form, whilst adding a twist that accentuates without drowning the patient. Though it challenges what I set out to do with these posts, it is after all just a personal mission statement, that I can chose to adjust however I wish.

CARROT CAKE SCORE - 7/8