Carrot Cake-off!

I absolutely love carrot cake.  Carrot cake is my favorite cake.  I first experimented with baking a carrot cake last spring for a potluck event, and found a great and simple recipe that turned out beautifully- complete with cream cheese frosting.  I perfected my own version of this recipe a couple of months later when I baked a carrot cake for Mom's birthday, and it turned out even more delicious than the first attempt.  I have faith in my carrot cake.  Therefore, when the idea of a carrot cake bake-off was hatched over beers late this past summer, I was immediately on board.  Megan and I talked about such an event for quite a while, building up the smack-talk and hype and recruiting other chefs with whom to compete, and the long-awaited Carrot Cake-Off finally came to fruition last Tuesday.

With approximately 20 people in attendance, we had more than enough "judges" to sample the six different carrot cake creations.  We came up with a scorecard that included six different categories, where each person chose their favorite cake for each category.  I would have preferred a more complicated scoring system that included a 1-to-5 ranking for each cake in every category, but this seemed a bit overwhelming to the mass of people who really just wanted to stuff their faces with cake.  So, we ate a lot of cake and then we chose our favorites.

(My cake is #4, the one on the red dish.)

I am very proud to say that my cake won the award for "Best Classic Carrot Cake-ness", which in my opinion is the second-most superior award next to overall best.  I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to my carrot cake, and I think mine is pretty damn good in a traditional sense.  [Biased and/or overly-proud?  Nah...]  Lots of cinnamon, walnuts, carrots, cream cheese frosting... and NO DAMN RAISINS.  Raisins do not belong in carrot cake, people.  Anyway.  I also tied with Megan (appropriately, we decided) for the "Best Overall" award.  Hand-made, crayon-drawn awards were presented, and then everybody ate some more cake.

... and it is times like this that make me realize just how much of a crazy, competitive person I am.  Sigh.