CARROT CAKE REVIEW NO 27 - Quelle Surprise! Cake Sex!!

 Holt Garden Centre, Holgate Hill, Kelling, Norfolk



We were on a mission, to buy a container for a recently bequeathed gooseberry bush. We start off at Holt Garden Centre because its the closest  Venturing further afield should it disappoint, and in the past it has done so, frequently. During the lockdowns  Holt Garden Centre has undergone a massive makeover, setting them back two million pounds. But the outcome of it all is a Garden Centre that knocks spots off most of the local competition.

If I were to describe their previous cafe I'd have to say it was amateurish. Always looking if it was run by a gaggle of semi retired volunteers drawn from the Kelling WI - Friends of Holt Garden Centre division. The new cafe is large open, airy and no longer looks as though it was set up in a converted milking shed. Its stylish and spacious. Having quickly made our decision on the pot, we rewarded our aesthetic deliberations with a coffee and cake.

And....they had a Carrot Cake. It was a really foofed up one, flouncing on a cake stand. Saying look at me - Oo La La - smack your lips around this hustler. In short, it bore all the outward signifiers of a Carrot Cake posing provocatively in a red light district window. Such 'come hither' cakes can be the confectionery equivalent of Boris - over promising and serially disappointing. So, I was not holding out for a hero with this one. That sort is usually all provocative display and no cake sex.

I ordered a slice, plus the obligatory flat white chaser. Only one cup size of FW's offered, so no annoying sizeism here. It turned out to be a passably strong coffee. OK, but a FW it was not. The Carrot Cake, as I said had all its frilly knickers on show, with a half dried slice of orange stuck in the frosting like a Flamenco hair comb. The exterior circumference plastered in frosting. Pebble dashed exceptionally heavily with walnuts. Served on a roughly triangular shaped ceramic plate. Three raspberries on one side dusted with icing sugar, and the aforementioned half candied orange. One glance at the cake itself, titivating aside, told me that this was not a bad carrot cake. It bore all the visual indications of actually a rather good one. Quelle Surprise!

The texture looked good, an uneven mortar mix with sizable chunks of walnut grits mixed evenly across it. It was in short not stinting on the required ingredients of grated carrot and nuts. So thumbs up there. The taste was rather excellent. Finely balanced, it expertly walked the line between weighty and light on the palette, but had the necessary doughy gravitas that avoided sinking into being under cooked. 

Now a lot of carrot cakes lack confidence in the basic carroty experience of a carrot cake, and tip in a scree of mixed spices to fill in for the perceived lack of flavourings. Either that, or they are fraudulent cheap skates who will con you with a Spice Cake, but lets not go there yet again, eh? Here the spices were very well balanced, just a suggestion, not a clarion call to the international spice trade to 'send more nutmeg and cinnamon'.

The frosting was the only slight disappointment, it being a butter cream. Well actually not even butter if The Supreme Cake Maker is to be believed. He said it was margarine based. But having maligned it, I think I have to say this made a light, not too sweet or intrusive entrance. A compliment to the cake not an active takeover or aggressive drowning. For a marge sludge it was not bad. 

A well judged carrot cake all round. 


CARROT CAKE SCORE 7/8





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