A Very Special Carrot Cake

W is the very antithesis to the softer, gentler, new age man. As comes as part of the whole côte de boeuf-chewing, Montecristo-chomping, and Macallan-swirling package - the very red-blooded alpha-ness of which, very frankly, doesn't bother me in the least - he's, unsurprisingly, not terribly keen on vegetables. But if you were to ask him, he'll have you know that that's a false accusation - hey, aren't mashed potatoes, french fries, and gratin dauphinois three of his favourite things?

Of all the vegetables he's not terribly keen on, the carrot is anathema. But I exaggerate.

He will do the occasional Carottes Vichy - which, of course, is more about the taste of great butter than the taste of carrots. And it amuses me to no end that he loves carrot cake. So much so, in fact, that it ranks as my most frequently used means of sneaking carrots into our diet.

I'd earmarked a pretty spectacular-looking/sounding recipe from Boulevard: The Cookbook by Nancy Oakes and Pamela Mazzola as a special treat to attempt for some time now and finally found the time and energy to give it a go. Like many of the other recipes in the book, it's a multi-component extravaganza that, if you're painfully slow like me, is probably a weekend project.

This dramatic makeover of a beloved classic from homey to haute will appeal to anyone who believes that "the simple truth is carrot cake is our favourite excuse to eat cream cheese frosting" (as Nancy Oakes puts it). Here, thin, multiple layers of cake are filled with cream cheese frosting so each and every bite boasts the perfect cake-to-frosting ratio. The cake is accompanied by scoops of candied walnut ice cream, cream cheese ice cream and carrot sherbet, and finished with a sticky drizzle of walnut caramel and strands of candied carrots.

Time-consuming? Yes. Otherwise, each individual component is not in itself difficult to make (but because the cake is so moist, the trickiest bit comes when splitting the cake layers). Worth the time and effort? Absolutely.