This past weekend, I made the second cake in my year long post Cake Off comeuppance. After my husband, citing what I will now call the “chocolate rule”, declined to eat the pear chocolate cardamom cake from week one for breakfast, I became bound and determined to make a cake that would be considered breakfast worthy in his eyes and stomach. To fit this bill, I chose a carrot ginger cake with salted butterscotch frosting.
What can I say other than delicious!
For most of my life, I have had to avoid carrot cakes because I am allergic to certain nuts, in particular the walnut. This cake is nut free but for the topping which calls for roasted hazelnuts, a nut which I don’t know whether or not I am allergic to or not, but where I subbed in almonds, a nut I can eat. This cakes does include coconut, which I don’t consider to be a nut at all and have always been perplexed when people inquire whether or not I can eat this type of nut.
For the record, I can eat almonds and cashews. I cannot eat walnuts, pecans, pine nuts, or peanuts. For those of you in the know, this is a seemingly random assortment of cans and cannots. For one, peanuts are not nuts; they are legumes. I can eat all other legumes. Someone once suggested that maybe I am allergic to nuts but not seeds which would explain why I can eat almonds but not walnuts. But where does that leave the pine nut? And good luck turning to the dictionary for any clarification.
nut (nŭt)
n.
1.
a. An indehiscent fruit having a single seed enclosed in a hard shell, such as an acorn or hazelnut.
b. The usually edible seed of such a fruit.
c. Any of various other usually edible seeds enclosed in a hard covering such as a seed coat or the stone of a drupe, as in a pine nut, peanut, almond, or walnut.
But enough about nuts. Let’s get back to the question at hand: cake for breakfast?
In an effort to keep track of my cakes over the next year and continue to up my cake game, I realized last week that I need to establish some metrics. As promised in my last post, I have developed and launched the following husband cake approval survey:
Did you like it?
Would you eat it again?
Would you eat for breakfast?
Would you enter it in Cake off 3?
On a scale from one to five, five being cake cock certainty, what would do you rank this cake?
Here are the results for the carrot ginger cake with salted butterscotch frosting.
Did you like it? Yes
Would you eat it again? Yes
Would you eat for breakfast?
Maybe, icing isn’t breakfast.
Would you enter it in Cake off 3? Why decide now? There’s 11 months to go!
Total cake score: 4
For the record, this cake was eaten for breakfast multiple times over the week by both myself and my husband.
This cake also warranted a text response from our dog walker, aka the fairy dog father, who is an unknowing participant in my evaluation system. Each Monday, I leave him a big hunk of cake. Those cakes that elicit a response will be noted and reported on here. This week’s response: “Thank you for the delicious carrot ginger goodness”.
Next up: All Hail the Rum Baba!
A Cake In Time 