Hey Rab-baht!
September 8, 2010 Today, we're going to talk about carrots.
Or more specifically, carrot cake. You see, for hundreds of thousands of years, bakers have been trying to hide the taste of carrots - which is most charitably described as "dirt-like"- by mixing it with truckloads of sugar and cream cheese icing. This makes even the most rancid of vegetables - aka, carrots - slightly less disgusting and, of course, extremely healthy.
But how does a baker, who is bound by law to disclose that his cake actually contains putrid dirt veg, tell his customers without making them want to vomit?
"That's funny; why do these red velvet cupcakes taste like feet?"
"Hm. I feel like these orange arrows are trying to tell me something about my Canb cake. But what could it be?!?"
"I'm detecting notes of chocolate icing and...is that...? Yes...I think it is! Fetid bunny swill. Huh."Some have tried tweaking the color to muppet blue:
This way instead of imagining carrots - the ingrown hairs of the earth - in your cake, you can imagine synthetic fur - which is of course a vast improvement.
Cak Rot?Sounds about right to me.
Note: Before the carrot cake coalition comes after me, I should mention that I actually love carrot cake. Carrots, however, are evil like the froo-its of the de-vill. Which just goes to show: if you put enough sugar in something, even the most revolting, repellent, repulsive, sickening, nauseating, stomach-churning, stomach-turning, off-putting, unpalatable, distasteful, foul, nasty, vomitous vegetable known to man can be super duper yummy.
Special thanks to peachesrevenge, Simon L., Nora B., Lacey J., Natasha T., and my Mac Thesaurus, which never lets me down.
Reader Comments (215)
Am I the only one who sees an obscure 'Men in Tights' reference in the title? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c9mlOrDhc4
I hate that guy!
what? i've never met a person who didn't like carrots. they're sweet. they're crispy. even picky kids will much baby carrots happily.
there are vegetables in the world that taste "earthy": beets and beet greens, malabar spinach, some mushrooms, etc. but not carrots!
Uh, yeah. Do that with Lima beans or better yet okra. I DOUBLE DOG DARE you!!
Yes! That is the best collection ever :)
I love carrot cake (first cake I ever made) but I think it all depends on the types of carrots you choose.
I haven't read the 151 comments, but I'm gonna throw in my 2 cents anyway. You must have had rotten carrots or only THOUGHT you were eating carrots when you were eating something like a RAW POTATO if you think they taste like dirt. Carrots are a SWEET vegetable (so much so that I have to limit them on my low carb diet).
[stepping down from my soapbox]
OH I hate carrots too! Finally someone who won't argue with me!
"If you put enough sugar in something, even the most revolting, repellent, repulsive, sickening, nauseating, stomach-churning, stomach-turning, off-putting, unpalatable, distasteful, foul, nasty, vomitous vegetable known to man can be super duper yummy."
Clearly you have not considered the vileness that is broccoli.
WV: cropo - A cropo broccoli is the stuff of nightmares.
The folks who dislike carrots, broccoli, brussels sprouts (note the correct spelling), lima beans, okra, celery, parsnips, tomatoes, and peppers have obviously never had those vegetables prepared correctly.
The American way of boiling vegetables into mush should be outlawed. A light steaming or sauteeing is all most veggies need. Most of the above are also delicious served raw.
"Ingrown hairs of the earth" - I can't stop laughing!!!
Man, those cakes are all wrecked and stuff.
Hm, as I read this and the rest of the comments, I am in fact eating lima beans, carrots, and peas.
I don't suppose I missed any expressions of distaste for corn and green beans too? Seeing as how that would cover everything in my frozen veggie mix.
I only like carrot cake if it doesn't have raisins in it. Nuts are fine, I suppose, but when I make it myself I prefer to leave both out.
Me thinks Jen has carrots mixed up with PARSNIPS! Parsnips are TRULY evil! They taste like ICK and look like anemic carrots! Every time I think of them I think of being made to sit at the table until I finished them, which sometimes took HOURS! Every time I think of them I get ANGRY! I HATE PARSNIPS!
I love carrots. :o)
The second one is the first CANT cake I've ever seen. Perhaps a baby jockey or two would have cleared things up...
OMG! The CANB cake really DOES look like the "C" word!
BTW, the more I read the comments, the more I realize that some of us have 'veggie issues'!
I've always wondered why they put carrots on carrot cake. Afterall, one doesn't draw chocolate on chocolate cake...or vanilla on vanilla cake.
I think vanilla is much cuter than carrots.
Call me crazy, but I'm getting the impression you don't like carrots.
Normally I love carrot cake but these I think would make me reconsider. Especially the phony red velvet cakes lol. I love red velvet so I would cry if I bit into that and got carrot cake. Talk about a waste of money. Then there are the blue carrots..I don't even want to know what happened to make them blue.
Enough with knocking carrots! And lima beans don't deserve a beating either. Anti-veggists!
Brussels sprouts don't deserve the abuse either :)
Are you seriously worried about offending carrot cake lovers, but not carrot lovers? Umm, hello?? Just because YOU don't like carrots doesn't mean you have the right to insult it like that. Some people, like me, LOVE carrots! Why do you think stores sell them in the first place? Because some people actually LIKE them.
Anon @ 5:07,
I don't,
have the right,
to insult,
CARROTS,
on a free,
humor,
blog?
Um...
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that maybe it's past your bedtime. Or that you have an excessively and gloriously dry sense of humor.
Either way, sleep tight!
john
I love the muppet blue carrots!
But I'm stunned that so many commenters agree with you and declare that they dislike carrots too and find they taste like dirt!
Aren't carrots sweet in America? Is it perhaps a different variety? I've never met anyone (including people who are fairly veggie-unfriendly) who doesn't like carrots!
Carrots are awesome. I love carrots! They do not taste like dirt - what's WRONG with you? Carrot cake, however, is awesomer. Is that a word? Probably not. But it does rock.
Carrot cake is nice, but "Cirreb' cake (as it looks to me) or cakes with phalic carrots imbedded on the icing is not how I want my cake presented to me. Perhaps the old saying "Less is more" is definately a good statement in this case.
Oh come on, you're stretching it with this one. Carrots do NOT tastes like dirt, and I didn't laugh once. Standards cake wreckers, standards!
I quite enjoy carrots and have never noticed anything "dirt-like" in their flavor. I was surprised to see so much consensus on the matter.
I love me a good carrot cake. I kind of want some right now.
However, cooking carrots to mush in butter and sugar/honey is just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong. In fact, cooking carrots at all--unless in a cake--seems to destroy their properties of yum. But nothing reverses it to "yuck" for me like making them go gooshy with gag-inducing levels of sugar.
Stare at the blue carrots, then look at something white - you'll see bright orange carrots!
I'm with the first anonymous poster.. Lima beans are truly the most disgusting vegetable! At least you can put carrots in a cake without ruining it, wouldn't you agree? Lima bean cake would taste like the apocalypse. (And I like carrots, especially with ranch dressing. My grandma grows them... pull 'em, rinse 'em, eat 'em! :D )
Carrots are sweet and delicious. Maybe it's the type of carrots you buy. The massive thick ones that come in 3lb bags are no good. You need younger, fresher carrots. Not baby-cut carrots though! They are deceitful, they could be cut from any old wizened carrot!
"The most revolting, repellent, repulsive, sickening, nauseating, stomach-churning, stomach-turning, off-putting, unpalatable, distasteful, foul, nasty, vomitous vegetable known to man"
--I'd have to say rhubarb "beets" carrots. At least carrot leaves aren't toxic.
Everyone knows that the proper garnish for red velvet cake is a beet, not a carrot. Maybe a radish for a cupcake.
LOL! While we’re all hatin’ on veggies, nothing would taste more like dirt to me than the radish. Actually, I think dirt would taste better. I think they are the obnoxious uncle that keeps asking you to pull his finger (because if you did, that smell would taste like a radish *sorry for that*). My hubby plants radishes each year. I tried one - just to see if my taste buds changed – nope. Spit it right out. Vile bile. Blech. I agree that veggies taste best steamed or stir-fried, but I don’t think that would help the radish. Drowning them in salad dressing doesn’t help either.
From reading your blog daily, I think I understand what may have happened with the last cake. See, the bakery manager wrote CARROT on an order slip to let the decorator know what to write on the cakes (plural because there was more than one wreck there), but unfortunately, the pen ran out of ink on the first “R”, making it look like a “K”. Plus, there must have been enough of a gap between the 2 “R”s to have the wreckerator think that they were supposed to write CAK ROT.
wv: waylon (wai-lon). Why you walon carrots, John? Wha’d they ever do to you?
All right, enough with the vegetable insulting! Now go out and play Plants vs. Zombies and have a little more respect for vegetables!!! :P
I've wondered why bakers always pipe a carrot on carrot cakes. Thanks for enlightening me about the "law". ;-)
You've gotta love sugar and fat, it can even turn zucchini (which my grandma grows TONS of every year, even though noone in the family likes it) into edible zucchini bread.
So. Wow. You don't like carrots. Oh well, guess you can't be perfect in every way!
(ingrown hairs of the earth.. rofl!)
Farm carrots are wonderfully tasty, guess some city folk have no clue.
www.babycarrots.com ! DO IT.
Seeing this makes me even more glad that I'm allergic to carrots...
I'm so glad I wasn't the only person to read the "illegible" cake as NAUGHTY! Let's hear it for the gutter-minds!
I didn't realize there were so many carrot-haters in the world. So probably no one wants my receipe for chocolate cake the involves . . . beets? Or applesauce cake the includes kidney beans?
I odn;t see anyone liking cauliflower.
i had ppl tell me i was foolish not to plant zucchini in my veggie garden cause they are so easy and you get a lot. Why would i want a lot of(or any) zuchini? It isn't even good baked into stuff.
I personally have no issues with carrots, but my friend hates them. in fact, she hates all vegetables but thats a whole different story. In science class once we had to eat the (I don't know, it wasn't my idea). I spent the entire class convincing her to take a bite off that carrot. When she did, she chewed for like 20 seconds before almost throwing up all over me and spitting the carrot pieces into a paper towel. Ahhh memories
Just a heads up they do actually have a species of BLUE carrot. They come in purple too.
WAIT!! Are you saying that you don't like carrots? Because I almost got that from the rant at the end, but I just want to be sure.... No carrots for you? So... if you every come to dinner at my house I should not serve you carrots? Just cake. Done.
The carrot-hate made a cute puppy somewhere sad. It's true.
Carrots at best taste like dirt? You've been eating the wrong carrots! Buy a bunch of organic, slender, crisp ones with the green tops (remove tops once at home). Taste the sweet fresh taste of a good carrot!
why such vicious hatred for carrot Jen?
Maybe the blue and green carrots
were for colour blind people???
I am so shocked that only 3 other people caught the Men in Tights reference! Does this mean I am getting old and out of tune? Decidedly un-orange huge kudos come your way, John, for producing a wonderful mish-mash of pop culture references and wit. And eat your carrots.
Hey Abb-bot!
I hate that guy.
OMG, I'm laughing so hard I think I'm going to pee my pants! As a fellow carrot hate, hate, hater, I too love carrot cake.