A Letter To Carrot Cake
Posted: April 3, 2013 Filed under: favorites, Foolishness | Tags: Carrot cake, food, humor, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, postaweek, rolling stones, writing 27 CommentsDear Carrot Cake,
MMMMMM! (Carrot cake.jpg by Joe Mabel CC BY-SA 3.0)
I can’t imagine eating any other cake that is based on vegetables. I don’t want beet cake. Green pepper cake is not for me. Somehow it makes a difference that you’re full of carrots. Eating you keeps me from going blind, in that way you are one of a kind.
There’s a bit of cinnamon in you; that’s very cool. Even better, you hold hidden treats to surprise me. I might find a nut in one bite, a raisin in the next. Sometimes you’ve even got a bit of coconut for me; not too much, just a hint.
You and Chocolate are my top cakes. Sure, I’ll eat yellow or white cake, but I don’t look forward to them. Yellow and white, those aren’t flavors. No one knows what colors taste like, except possibly people who are on LSD.
I am not on LSD. Tasting yellow isn’t within my range. I get you, Carrot, and our friend Chocolate too.
Sometimes I forget they weren’t always 1000 years old. (Jagger-Richards by Larry Rogers cc-by-sa-2.0)
Carrot Cake, of all the things about you that I enjoy, the most valuable is that you understand why you exist. When you arrive at a table, you understand that you are not the flashy star of the plate. That role goes to Cream Cheese Icing.
But as much as I love Cream Cheese Icing, I could not sit down with a bowl of it and a spoon. Nor would I sit down and have a big slice of you, un-iced. Neither of those would be enjoyable. You’re a cakey Keith Richards, adding tasty riffs to the showy performance of your frosting Mick Jagger.
Let’s face it, no one buys solo records by Richards or Jagger. We’ve all got a ton of Rolling Stones music in our collections though. Well, perhaps you don’t, because your time on this earth is brief. If you were staying, trust me, you’d have a lot of Stones on the iPod. But my point is this – I’m glad you and your partner put aside your differences to perform together. You make each other better. Together, you’re always worth the price of admission.
Sincerely,
Omawarisan
P.S. Please don’t take offense that I never call for an encore. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy your work. It’s that a good thing becomes too much really fast once you hit fifty.
Blurt 
I’m glad you took the high road and didn’t discuss Carrot Cake’s rotten cousin, Zuchini Bread. Everyone knows that Zuke is hardly the leader in that relationship, he’s more like the drummer who took over after the original guy left the band to go to grad school.
Zuc has a big drug problem. It makes him feel long and skinny.
He’s always been envious of carrot, we won’t bother talking color here.
I have yet to meet a carrot cake I like. Like music, it’s subjective. And I wail like Waylon when I’m subjected to carrot cake.
Which just means…you can have my slice. You are welcome.
You give and give. Thank you.
I don’t know which is worse: the globs of overly sweet lard-like cream cheese on top or the fact that carrot doesn’t have the sense to disguise itself and appears as slivers of VEGETABLE matter. Cinnamon should not be sacrificed to make people eat their veggies.
Yes, the fact that there are actual perceptable vegetables in the cake is a little disturbing. Love the icing though. I will eat most of the cake out from under it and then enjoy some cake accented icing.
The Rolling Stones are WAY before my time.
hey,HEY!
I’m a huge fan of the carrot cake with the cream cheese icing. Unfortunately, I am also a fan of the Zuchini Bread so apparently I have been participating in the drug problem. I guess I better look into rehab.
Squash has a very limited range with me. Bread is out of range.
I saw some healthy cooking show on basic cable where they used beets in a chocolate cake, as a sweetener I think? It looked not awful.
I know they were once a huge source of sugar, but I’d have to think about that one.
Boo and Radley used to say they didn’t like carrot cake. I always responded with, “Do you like cream cheese icing? Then you like carrot cake.”
On ode to carrot cake, who woulda thunk it? But I love your tribute almost as much as I love carrot cake! You have the perfect take on the cream cheese to cake ratio & the sweet surprises to be found in this cake.
The surprise ratio is critical. You don’t want them interfering with the icing fun.
Domer loves carrot cake, too. I’ll eat it, but it’s not my favorite — that honor goes to white or chocolate. Still, carrot cake sounds as if it’d be good for you, with all those veggies and fruits. Or not.
White. Nah, not so much. White cake is strictly an icing delivery system.
I know that carrot juice exists because Bugs Bunny, Jimmy Buffett and you tell me it does. I’ve never seen it though.
I like carrots but it must be tough to wring juice out of one.
My husband drinks it. Ew. He says it gives him a bit of a high.
How does carrot cake compare to red velvet cake in your book? I’m a big fan of red velvet cake. It has the same cream cheese icing (plus) and it’s red (bonus)!
I have to admit something. Despite the growing popularity of red velvet cake, I have never tried it. I haven’t because the name doesn’t give me a clue what I’m getting. I’m ashamed of that and am going to correct it.
Carrot cake is a sad excuse for a dessert. It’s dry and brings out the worst aspects of the carrot (fresh carrots are cool and crisp; carrot cake is usually room-temperature with a weird cake-plus-grated-carrot texture). Only the cream cheese icing makes it tolerable.
Several years ago I went to a party where a friend served homemade carrot cake. I took a small piece, just to be polite — and it was amazing. It was moist and delicious. The cream cheese icing was the best I’ve ever had, and the cake was better than the icing. I was shocked. She’s made the same cake a couple times since then, and it always comes out incredible.
I’ve also tried other carrot cakes since then, and they’re still pretty bad. I consider myself lucky to know the only person in the world who can make a good carrot cake.
I’m coming right over with ahalf gallon of skim milk. If you know someone who makes a carrot cake so perfect that it converts non-believers I want to meet them.
Here, here. Carrot takes the… well, you know.
I think a radish cake would be a pretty awesome thing. I plan to bust that out next time I’m on Top Chef.
[…] Did I mention that I love carrot cake? I do. […]