CARROT CAKE REVIEW 23 - Sponge Bob Not Pants

 Sponge Cakes Ltd, Holt

After the edible gloriousness of the last carrot cake recipe, did we now come crashing down to earth with a more prosaic version? Well, this slice of carrot cake was made by Sponge Cakes Ltd, situated on the delightfully named Sponge Rise in Holt. This is, wait for it, my first review of a mass produced gluten free carrot cake. Good, got that sentence out without implying a modicum of snooty disdain.

Hubby and I were taking our last day off before re-opening the shop after lockdown. We were doing a favourite circular walk down the promenade from Wells next the Sea along the pinewoods to Holkham Bay, down Queen Anne's Drive to the Hall and back through the estate to Wells. On the way stopping off at the beach cafe for a takeaway coffee and cake. They'd just re-opened so the choice of cakes was not extensive or that appealing. Now that I'm not averse to reviewing commercially produced confectionery, I feel a degree of glee at embracing the unknown and sampling a gluten free slice of carrot cake. Sealed neatly in its cellophane wrapper, it fitted the bill for that moment. It was a carrot cake, in a landscape at the time generally devoid of such things. 

Gluten free confectionery is rarely an unassailable triumphe in my world wearied experience. Most substitute gluten free flours are not ideal for cake making. So any bakers main focus will be on finding ways to overcome their very evident deficiencies. Which is why the texture and flavours of the cakes are often an overlooked feature of them. For god sake man after all the culinary ingenuity and effort put into them you want it to taste good too. Yup, I most certainly do, otherwise what really is the point that's trying to be proved here?

So what is there to say about this carrot cake? Visually it looked the part, a health tan colour, with a suggestion of carrot and sultanas across its very precisely cut rectangular slice. It was moist, probably to a fault, with irregular gaps across it, as if to prove this was never some homogenous gloop from start to finished cake. The Demon Cake Professional thought that in a blind test he wouldn't have identified it as gluten free. A certain powdery dry aftertaste being a frequent malady of such cakes, this was fortunate not to fall into that particular pitfall sur le palate.  

One look at the ingredients list shows how this was achieved. By using five different flours ( rice, potato, tapioca, maize and buckwheat ) they've covered most of the basic deficiencies which using only one gluten free flour would leave largely still vacant. Also its primed to the hilt with raising agents, plus eggs. Though carrot lies way down the list of ingredients, it didn't taste like it was suffering a carrot deficit. Even the topping and filling, a vanilla flavoured butter icing, was far from sickly with its coyly chopped walnut nestling in it. Quite firm in texture and flavour, but not attracting too much undeserved attention to itself. Though it definitely was a carrot cake you could tell it was factory made, there was just something about its even consistency that gave it all away.

But, for a gluten free carrot cake this was one of the better attempts I've tasted so far. Gosh, that wasn't that hard to say was it?

CARROT CAKE SCORE - 4/8     

POEM - Signposts

arrows point to places

where we cannot ignore

their niggardly pointing

for even a blithe while

firmly gesturing towards

some where, a pinnacle or cleft

confidently affirmative yet never

as sloppily indirect as our feelings

with their under stated destination

more or less empowered with

passions and prejudices unrolling

along a rough puff trajectory

from whence, from whom

to whom, to whence and not 

to mention all the burdensome

patient travelling in between

distances and speed measured

with calipers and inked onto paper

scratched out in a shower of regret

or the dribbling away of purpose

there is the urge, and the urgency

of the urging, the self sabotage, the prod

of old dreams and demons that kick back, 

a blindfolded face pressed against signposts

anxious fingers wrinkling the flesh

of daily time and exigency, never

reach the point of causing wounds

whilst issuing coordinates from virtual maps

that conjecture our desires to be

this way, no, not that, but this way,

I said, this way, not away, 

or the way away, but to be towards

the cunning edge of life's travel package

where the unforeseen piercing 

of an arrow arrives at the intended target

a brittle truth, layed out and pinned down.

written June/July 2020

Stephen Lumb

CARROT CAKE RECIPE No 4 - Toe Curlingly Good

Recipe from the BBC Good Food website a Classic Carrot Cake by Micheal Caines

As this was to be my birthday cake, made for me by Hubby ( TDCP - The Demon Cake Professional ) even he expressed a certain nervousness about permitting me to review it.  However, once it came out well, and what's more one of the best carrot cake recipes that I've tasted, he was much happier to let me loose on a recipe review. 

There are carrot cake recipes and then there are carrot cake inspired recipes. The latter perhaps started out believing they were carrot cakes, but ended up a sponge cake with mere decorative pretensions. This recipe is not one of those. One glance down the ingredients list and your jaw drops through the floor at '525gms of grated carrot!' Carrot cake recipes frequently operate between 150 - 350 gms max of carrot, most baulking at anything over 250 gms. One can perfectly understand why, because the more carrot you use the overall moisture level in the mix increases and cooking it becomes trickier if you are to avoid a doughy undercook, ingredients sinking or soggy posteriors. So 525 gms is bravery indeed.

Grated carrot was the second largest item in terms of weight, but the largest by far in terms of bulk. The rest includes a very moderate two and a half teaspoons of cinnamon, the one and the only spice. This was just sufficient to complement and enhance the earthiness of the carrot, but was never in danger of breaching Carrot Cake Rule No 1. Like all the best carrot cake recipes it is not shy of sugar ( 550 gms ) nor of eggs ( 5), and adds a couple of teaspoons of bicarb for good measure too. Vegans will be saddened to hear.

That leaves the fat -vegetable oil, the flour - plain, a half teaspoon of salt and 150gms of chopped walnuts. The walnuts are for me always a crucial ingredient, they break up the even texture of the grated carrot and give your teeth something to bite into and savour the nutty flavour hit. And its not a small scattering either, when you looked at a wedge of this cake the walnut aggregate is spread like a marbling effect evenly across its flanks. There are no sultanas in this recipe, but then you would only add them if you were concerned about the cake lacking moisture. In other words, sultanas are often used as substitute cover for a general lack of carrot.

The suggested cooking time of an hour and a quarter was, so Hubby informs me, not sufficient to really cook the cake through. Though once released from its spring form tin, it was indeed a magnificent edifice, like a segment cut from a pillar. The frosting was classic, traditional and understated.  A cream cheese base ( hurrah!) and added caster sugar rather than nightmare amounts of icing sugar. You'll always tend to use too much icing sugar whilst attempting to bulk up and stiffen your cream cheese. Cream cheese has a lovely astringent after taste, easily lost in a packet of icing sugar. Also TCDP wanted to make candied curls of carrot slices for the top, an idea he pinched from Martha Stewart of all people. Dusted with castor sugar these were a gentle sweet hit to play on the palate when you ate the frosting with the cake.  

All in all this is a classic carrot cake recipe that I was unexpectedly more than a bit bowled over by

CARROT CAKE RECIPE SCORE - 8/8

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