CARROT CAKE REVIEW - No 38 - It Comes In An Effin Tin !

 

Friends of ours sent us a What's App message saying they had bought something specially for me, fresh that day. This was the mild level of teasing mystery we have come to expect. Then another message said - we've left it on the patio in your back garden. So, by the time we got home later that day our curiosity was fully roused. What exactly had they left 'for me'. We found a bag from a North of England  cafe/bakery chain called Heavenly Desserts, singularly devoted to serving desserts, cakes and confectionary. Inside the bag, was the gift of a tin with a label declaring it contained a carrot cake within. Ah, now I understood what all this was about. A subsequent message confirmed the intent with a - Looking forward to the review! I was being goaded into assessing this -carrot cake tin thing. 

Well I was, initially, tempted to not deign to respond to such blatant arm twisting. But my response to this confection in a can, did create a near compelling need to cough up a bit of catharsis. This could not pass uncommented upon, surely! Of course the 'in a tin' concept is essentially a gimmick. But it did have one very practical application that I don't really have to vex my imagination much with. You can buy a tin sized piece of cake, and without having to ensure its carefully packaged in a confectionary box or nurse it like a delicate vase, travel all the way down the A1 with it.  As a concept this evidently does work.

Whilst on holiday I'd seen probably the very same thing on sale in York, and was quite frankly dismayed at its mere existence. I mean how much further could you descend in turning finely crafted traditional confectionery, into a travesty? Well, not far, because that particular benchmark has frequently been transgressed. Read past reviews I've written, for the tawdry road of shame full sized proper carrot cake confectionery can drag you kicking and screaming down. 

The tin is aluminium, about the size of a small tin of car sweets. Once opened, what you discover is not a neat piece of cylindrical cake in a tin, more a chaotic melange. The cake and the frosting roughly mixed up. It is in essence not a proper carrot cake, no layers, no fine finishing touches, more cake rubble shoveled in. It appeared to have all the right carrot cake ingredients, though definitely not in the right order.

You might say, does this really matter Stephen? After all this was a kind gift, so let us be kind about it. Aren't you just being a bit too prissy here? What does it actually taste like? Let us hear the review. Well, to my crestfallen surprise, the cake was not awful. In fact, if I hadn't actually been wolfing it down out of the said tin, my enjoyment might have been excessively perked. The cake mixture tastes as if its got a reasonable amount of carrot, and hence texture, to it. A sufficient suggestion of a spice mix, but not overwhelmingly so. It felt to have the right amount of weighty heft,  perhaps teetering mildly onto the wrong side of doughy. The frosting was an effective butter cream. You could casually encounter bits of catering quality chopped nut, of an unspecifiable origin, without being unduly alarmed by flavour. Dried fruit? Well, I really can't remember being struck by any shrivelled moistness, so I want to say none. No marzipan carrots, which is forever a blessed relief.  In a blind taste test, this would clearly have ticked some primary boxes suggesting approval might be to follow.

Begrudgingly, I have to admit this tinned carrot cake spoiled things, by taking the sting out of my desire for a vitriolic outpouring. To unreservedly and publically castigate it for its self-evident horrors. So I will restrain myself to emitting muted approval, the classic English equivocation of - it was not bad. If you're willing to completely overlook the tin that it's in - which I'm not. So with (qualifications ) the scores are in.

CARROT CAKE SCORE (Without Tin ) - 5/8

CARROT CAKE SCORE (With Tin) - 2/8