CARROT CAKE REVIEW No 14 ~ Too Bad It Was Left Out To Dry

Burnham Market, North Norfolk.

This has a narrow frontage with the cafe going back a long long way, like an ever narrowing tunnel. On a windy and wet day in February it had a very local feel. Similar to wandering into a local people's pub, where all eyes swivel to look questioningly at you the moment you entered - 'Ah, here be foreigners.' Apart from the clientele something in the whole cafe layout and ambiance just felt uncomfortably wrong.

For Burnham Market, usually a beacon for the high end and expensive, it as what can only be described as a 'homely scruffiness.' You need to descend further into its darker recesses in order to view the cakes. I dimly peered at them, everything looked dark brown, and it was hard to discern what the labels said. So I ordered what I believed to be a carrot cake, along with my usual flat white.

Now, I have a word or two to say about flat whites. If you order a flat white and they ask you at the counter if you want a regular or large, you wont be served a flat white, just a strong latte - in a Big Cup! A flat white should be served in a small cup, one size up from an espresso, and be strong and creamy with a rich rounded flavour. So if your flat white turns up in an ordinary tea cup, as here, prepare to be disappointed.

A flat white has the unique ability to lay bare the quality of coffee a cafe uses, and highlights, for good or ill, the skill level of their barista. I've had some shockingly bad flat whites in my time, burnt, bitter, dry and destined to give my stomach a lining of brown acidic dust. Confusion is widespread over these 'new fangled' coffee varieties, what are they supposed to be like?  In North Norfolk they've taken decades to hardly grasp the difference between a cappuccino and a latte. I presume they're just waiting to see if the fad passes.

Anyway, I digress, back at the cafe and to the carrot cake. Well, I was quite taken by surprise, it wasn't actually that bad. It had that recognisably strandy textured look that tells you this has got a goodly amount of carrot in it. The taste was actually moderately rich, had just the right amount of sultanas,walnuts and spice, with a light zesty aftertaste. Also a generous and fair sized wedge to get your molars snapped around too. Quite a traditional carrot cake, neither too weighty, worthy nor wonderful.

The frosting was largely icing sugar and distinctly on the sparse side. Whoever had applied it was super skilled with the spatula, skimming the cake and leaving only a millimetre of frosting in its wake. This was a cake made by the mean spirited for the calorie conscious.There were signs it had once borne a gravel lorries worth of chopped nuts. Somewhere between the cake display and my plate they'd shuffled off their stratified layer.. All that was left was an imprint and a few stray nut nuggets miraculously clinging to the fore skin of frosting.

And finally, well, it was dry. This cake had either been left out overnight or been in and out the fridge one too many times. For it was well on its way to becoming sedimentary rock.


CARROT CAKE SCORE - 3/8