The Cookie Project - Part 5

My friend Tom loves carrot cake. In fact he loves it so much that he once swapped one of his beautiful framed black and white photographs (this one to be precise) for one of my carrot cakes. OK, it's a slightly longer story than that, but I can't help feeling that I got the better end of the deal...

Anyway, when Tom's partner Catherine asked me to help with the catering at his 50th birthday party last weekend, Martha's Carrot Cake Cookies were one of the first things that came to mind. Thankfully Martha has saved me the trouble of typing out the long recipe by publishing it on her website here - and this is one recipe that I didn't feel any need to change in any way whatsoever. The cookies are just perfect, although it may be a sensible precaution to warn you that they are really more like mini cakes than cookies, being soft and squidgy as opposed to having any kind of crunch. However, the addition of the oats does give them a delicious chewiness, and quite possibly stops them falling apart too. They are filled with the traditional carrot cake topping of sweetened, buttery cream cheese, so you end up with little cakey sandwiches, quite filling but one of those things of which everyone somehow manages to eat 'just one more'. As the order of the day was 'finger food' I made them slightly smaller than Martha suggests, thereby getting many more than the 3 dozen that she indicates in the book. I'm not sure exactly how many it was, but they more than filled all 4 of my wire cooling racks.

Despite Rob's initial reaction that they looked rather odd (I won't repeat his exact comparison) - it's the grated carrot, what can you do?! - Tom said they made him 'weak at the knees'. What more can you ask? I think that's a pretty great endorsement.

Happy Birthday Tom!