3 February: Carrot Cake Day

February 3rd is Carrot Cake Day. Here are ten things you may not know about carrot cake.

1. Carrot cake isn't a modern invention. People put Carrots in puddings in medieval times. This was because sugar and sweeteners were rare and expensive back then, and carrots have more sugar in them than any other vegetable apart from sugar beet.
2. In those times they wouldn't have added the icing, which is usually made from icing sugar, Butter and cream cheese. This addition originated in the 1960s.
3. There is a recipe dating back to 1591 for "Pudding in a Carret Root". While it's basically a stuffed carrot, the recipe does call for shortening, Eggs, raisins, spices, scraped carrot and breadcrumbs, so it may have been an early precursor to carrot cake as we know it.
4. In the 16th and 17th centuries, carrot puddings were served as both a savoury dish and as a dessert served with custard. Sometimes it was baked in a Pastry tart, and sometimes steamed, like a plum pudding.
5. Louis XVI's chef, Antoine Beauvillers, published a carrot cake recipe in 1814 ("Gateau de carrottes"). Other cookery writers of the time copied it into their own cook books and in 1824 Beauvilliers had his recipe book translated into English and published in London, bringing carrot cake to the UK.
6. Carrot cake came into its own again during the second world war, when sugar was rationed.
7. Carrot cake is denser than ordinary cake.
8. It's common to decorate carrot cakes with little sugar carrots. While cakes are often garnished with their main ingredient (Strawberry cake with strawberries, and so on) you can hardly stick a real carrot on top of a cake, so the sugar version is used instead.
9. George Washington is said to have eaten a carrot tea cake on 25 November 1783 at a tavern in Manhattan, while celebrating British Evacuation Day.
10. In 2011, a Radio Times survey found that carrot cake was the most popular cake in Britain.

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A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

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Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

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