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
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