CARROT CAKE REVIEW 24 - The Golden Rules of Carrot Cake.

Perhaps I've erroneously assumed you knew what The Golden Rules of Carrot Cake are. So I've decided to publish them. Here they all are then,the twelve guidelines. Those things to look out for and be avoided by those who make carrot cakes and, more importantly, those who eat them. Never have to consume a maladroit, unpleasant tasting carrot cake ever again. You can no longer make the excuse that you did not know! Learn them or have your taste buds abused.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 1

A spice cake is not a carrot cake.
Blindingly obvious though this is, I have stomached this sort of fart inducing cake far far too many times. Grating a solitary carrot into a basic sponge mix, then trying to disguise the paltry amount of an essential carrot cake ingredient, by throwing in a whole sack load of mixed spice. This should fool no one of anyone discernment. It's not as if carrots are a rare and expensive root vegetable, they are not bleeding saffron! A bald man wearing a mismatched toupee only attracts more attention to the clear lack of hair, so why bother? This is the completely embarrassing charade of the rank amateur.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 2 

Don't be a Size Queen - Bigger is not Better
I've been caught out more than once by this. When ones eyes are bigger than your instinct or judgement, desire combines with gluttony and the outcome is rarely a good one. Why do we assume a larger slice of cake will mean a bigger piece of bliss will come with it? This should be a salutatory lesson to us all in the deficits of consumerism. Frequently as you sink your teeth into a huge slice of carrot cake, you experience the bursting of overinflated expectations. The moment it hits the palete it painfully informs you that your entire life experience has had all taste, satisfaction and meaning sucked from within it

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 3 

Marzipan carrots are spawned from the devil's a-hole.

To paraphrase Captain Beefheart - ' A carrot cake doesn't have to hit me to let me know it's there'. Similarly a carrot cake does not require those little orange almond paste turds arranged around it in a clock dial formation. Its a patronising insult, catering for some cliche of the confectionery simpleton. I prefer in a carrot cake a 'show not tell' approach. Fortunately these 'little bits of macerated shit' usually indicate a factory produced carrot cake. These are so often dreck anyway, the marzipan carrots just scream at you - avoid! avoid!! avoid!!!.... loudly. Please pay attention and respond according to whatever your level of personal integrity is.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 4 

A gluten free carrot cake is a fake carrot cake
In these days where relativity and sensitivity rule, how do we ascertain the true from the false? The pure carrot cake from the adulterated imitative facsimile? Sometimes a cafe doesn't even have the courtesy to tell you its gluten free, they perpetuate the illusion that whatever they substitute for the sake of those delicate of stomach, produces a carrot cake indistinguishable from the real thing. This is an arrant lie, the most greasy of egregious falsehoods.  Let us call a spade a spade. I'm fine with gluten free cakes etc etc, etc ( I'm grovelling quite low right now ) but if I want a carrot cake that is free of being gluten free where can I now go? Increasing the range of choice is fine if it works for everyone's benefit. But there is a point where its held like a sword of Damocles over you, and one persons expanded choice becomes another persons diminished choice and loss of quality.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 5 

A carrot cake recipe cannot be strained.

This is pretty much a repetition of No 4 but extended to include dairy, egg, wheat, nut free etc etc.etc ( Oh how tired I am of my neutered invective)  One day there will even be carrot free carrot cakes and the ludicrous degree of substitutions to a carrot cake recipe will have reached its complete nadir. Once you start messing with a recipe that's taken generations to refine, you start having to throw all sorts of unmentionable things into the recipe mix simply in order to cement the dam thing together. The result is either the nearest thing you can find to an orange brick, or an over-puffed cake that disappears into dust or a Burnt Sienna slurry once in the mouth. Yuk!!! 

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 6 

Tray bakes are not real cakes

Making a superlative carrot cake is an art.  There are many diversions, wrong paths you can take, that walk you away from the path of righteousness and truth. Tray bakes are one. Tray bakes lack everything that make a cake enjoyable, the care over presentation, the layering, the complementary flavours, the frosting choices you make, I could go on and on. With all these delectable choices to be made, why the frack would you even consider a tray bake? How often do tray bakes have marzipan carrots on them? There, I rest my case. Tray bakes are just lazy baking. Do not ever allow yourself to be so brazenly short changed.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 7 

Drowning it in sugar will not disguise its blandness.

Imagine you've made a carrot cake, a delicately flavoured thing. You then make a frosting, which in order to make it stiff you dump a whole ton load of icing sugar into it, or worse, a few too many pipettes of saccharin. What you end up with is a cake which you can no longer really taste, it is a dead cake, very effectively strangled whilst having a sugar high. 

Now, stretch your visualisation still further, and conjure up the remote possibility, that you've actually made a particularly bland carrot cake. One you would be hard pressed to identify in a darkened room. Then slaver it with overly sweetened frosting, or even icing sugar with a bit of water. Then weep like the Madonna of Syracuse, tears falling down your cheeks, a compassionate wreck, as the icing dribbles like a sweaty moron down the side of the cake.  Sugar never rescues the bland.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 8 

No Banana! do you hear me, No Banana!!

Many of you will already know of this bet noire. Its one of those tendencies, particular in the dairy free cake, to use the banana as a substitute glue. In a carrot cake once banana flesh enters the mix, like an alpha male, who will simply take over and dominate the proceedings, overpowering and beating the subtle humility of the carrot cake flavours into submission. It becomes de facto a Banana Cake in all but name. 

What I find really annoying, is that until it enters your mouth you do not realise what has been done to you. Perhaps you get a slight whiff of it as the cake wafts by your nostrils on the way to your gob. But by the time the cake has gained entry into the temple of your taste buds, it will be too late, The Banana Masquerade will have been successfully perpetrated.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 9  

Before I buy tell me exactly what I'm purchasing.
Give us the information master, do not let us stray from the straight and narrow through lack of adequate signage. Be clear about what confections you are offering up to the world. Do not practice a deceit upon any true believer, nor withhold or be economical with the truth. It's a sacred right of any cake worshiper to know exactly what is to be offered for their digestion. Whether it's gluten free, vegan, dairy free, wheat free, or made with the yogurt of Tibetan Yak milk thrice fermented through the yeast infected sock of an old man, etc etc etc, just bloody well say so. 

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 10 

Sponge cake with grated carrot thrown in, is an insult.

This is, I acknowledge, rare, but it has been known for disreputable cafes to serve up a basic sponge mix and simply throw in a few strands of grated carrot and voila its a carrot cake. If there were such a thing as a Cake Licensing Board, I'd be on it. Issuing cafes permits only after stringent retraining and quality control to serve particular types of cake have been passed. I'd insist on regular refresher courses and inspections. So if I discovered anyone passing off a basic sponge as a carrot cake they'd lose their license immediately.  They'd be humilated in the catering press and the chef banned from ever running a cafe ever ever again.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 11 

Keep it Traditional - experiment but be convincing

The true, authentic and blessed traditional Carrot Cake, is currently fighting for survival, in the face of attacks coming at it from so many fronts at once. Many find issue for health, dietary, ethical and ecological reasons with one or multiple ingredients. So actually to find a cafe that still makes a straightforward classic carrot cake is a very rare delight indeed. Simply to ensure its continued existence I have endeavoured on my blog to pioneer, uphold and defend it in its original and purest form. 

That said, occasionally a carrot cake does successfully stretch the traditional envelope by experimenting with adding orange rind or other such 'moderne' ingredient. If this is a convincing innovation whilst remaining at an identifiable adjunct to a true carrot cake, then I'd be the first to applaud.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 12 

The Sultana Paradox

Part of the lusciousness of a truly weighty carrot cake, lies in its happy blend of texture and moistness. The nuts add grist to a carrot cake, as do the sultanas with their globules of re-hydrated grape. However, there is one unforgivable sin with regard to the use of sultanas. This is when they're used simply to compensate for a general lack of moistness. I've eaten a carrot cake as dry as the Gobi Desert with only speckles of sultanas within it as the sparse oases of moisture. It had more in common with kiln dried wood or a five year old Panettone than a carrot cake. So as with many things the context is all.

Postscript

Here in the midst of our pandemic strewn lives, it seems harder to remember what a flat white and a slice of carrot cake eaten inside a cafe is like. Once we are free again to indulge ourselves in public spaces, will we just be grateful to just stuff any old dross down our gullet, or will we stand up and fight not just for more - but for better?  Awful carrot cakes are being made all the time, some probably lurk still, frozen in a fridge, waiting to be defrosted and catch you unawares once the doors of cafes can fully reopen. So be vigilant.

Until we can once more safely widely venture further out, I'll be re-posting a few past Carrot Cake Reviews, over the next few weeks, to both instruct and torment your appetite.