Publix Carrot Torte Cake Review
Author’s Note: Not a paid review. Not sponsored. These are my own weird little opinions. I have no affiliation with Publix or Costco.
Look mom, no raisins!
Good gravy. This is a lot of cake. The label says 4 pounds, but I weighed mine on my kitchen scale at almost 5 pounds. That’s a Costco-sized dessert!
Anyway. Publix Carrot Torte Cake is somehow both elegant and unpretentious. I love the super tall, four-layer height. This one looks (and tastes) like a far more expensive cake than it is.
Not much spice taste.
The ingredients list cinnamon, but I can barely taste it. Unlike Costco’s Carrot Bar Cake, this one has less “spice” flavor, and more of a “butter pecan” taste. Butter pecan is one of my favorite flavors, so I’m not mad. Unfortunately, there are artificial flavors at work. But, it is scrum-de-li-umptious. Almost addictive.
No Raisins. Not a single one.
Notably, the cake has no raisins. This will be cause for rejoicing for certain folks. Ahem. Personally, I think carrot cake tastes better without those squashy road bumps.
Lots of carrot.
If you’ve been disappointed by other carrot cakes that were basically a “spice cake” with meager carrot, that won’t be the case here. This is full of delicate carrot shreds. In fact, carrots are the third ingredient. They are grated small enough that it doesn’t overwhelm. However, this IS a hearty, dense cake. It has an almost homemade texture. This is how I like my cakes.
Right out of the refrigerator, it’s a tad stiffer than I expected, but it softens after sitting on a plate for 10 minutes and becomes more agreeable. Maybe I should try sitting on a plate for 10 minutes, too.
Two kinds of nuts.
The cake itself is generously filled with chopped walnuts, but the garnish is entirely pecans. And, I gotta say, these pecans are especially juicy, plump, and fresh-tasting, with a tender-crisp texture and moistness that I prefer. I’ve roasted Publix in the past for serving up disappointing cakes with flaccid, stale-tasting nuts. Not so here.
Sweet, but flavorful icing.
This is cream cheese icing, and it’s fairly sweet. It has a lightly tangy and deep buttery flavor. As much as I wanted to eat it all, it was just too sugary for me. I scraped half my icing into the garbage. Alas.
Festive garnishes and decorations.
Which brings me to the garnishes. The top is a wheel of 8 carrot garnishes, and 8 chocolate-divided slices. But, you’d have to be a famished sumo wrestler to eat an entire “slice” in one sitting — that’s waaaay too much cake! In fact, that would be almost 10 ounces of cake per slice. Yikes. But, the tragic alternative is to cut the adorable carrots in half. And that is barbaric.
Since the garnishes are made with unfortunate artificial dyes, I scraped mine off and threw them away. So, I guess it’s a moot point.
Minus the garnishes, I would have sliced this cake into 16 slices, minimum. I personally got around 24 thin servings. The slices are so tall and so rich, more than that feels like one of the seven deadly sins.
Ingredients in Publix Carrot Torte Cake
Here is my best attempt at typing out the ingredients, from the label. Buckle up, my friends:
- Sugar
- Soybean Oil
- Carrots
- Cream Cheese (Pasteurized Milk and Cream, Cheese Culture, Salt, Stabilizers [Carob Bean and/or Xanthan and/or Guar Gums]
- Bleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid)
- Palm Oil
- Pecans
- Walnuts
- Cornstarch
- Egg Yolks
- Egg Whites
- Butter (Cream, Natural Flavor)
- Water
- Baking Soda
- Salt
- Cultured Skim Milk
- Cinnamon
- Skim Milk
- Nonfat Dry Milk
- Mono-Diglycerides
- Vegetables Oils (Palm, Canola, Hydrogenated Cottonseed)
- Soy Lecithin
- Natural & Artificial Flavor
- Vitamin A Palmitate
- Cottonseed Oil
- Beta Carotene Color
- Monoglycerides
- Potassium Sorbate Preservative
- Cocoa Processed with Alkali
- Polysorbate 60
- Corn Syrup
- Fructose
- Dextrose
- Sweetened Condensed Milk (Milk, Sugar)
- Citric Acid
- Cream Powder (Pasteurized Sweet Cream, Skim Milk Solids, Sodium Caseinate)
- Natural Flavor
- Phosphoric Acid
- Rapeseed Lecithin
- Unsweetened Chocolate
- Tocopherols
- Ascorbic Acid
- If decorated, icing may contain colors (Yellow 5 & 6, Red 3 & 40, Blue 1 & 2)
Ewww. These ingredients are extremely disappointing. Especially the Cottonseed AND Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oils, Soybean Oil, Polysorbate 60, Artificial Flavor, and hot mess of dyes. Yuck.
Price and Servings
The 4 (or 5) pound cake cost $22 at my local Publix. If you divide this into 8 servings (as prompted by the carrot decorations) each slice will cost $2.75. If you divide it into 16 servings, a serving will only cost $1.38. IF you divide it into 24 servings (like I did), each slice is only 92 cents. This is an outstanding value for a Publix cake.
P.S., Publix also sells a “bar” version of this carrot cake. It’s much less fancy (and has an obnoxiously large carrot decoration on top), but also a lot cheaper — typically $8-9 for 19 ounces.
Shelf Life
The sell-by date on my cake was dated for 3 days after purchase. It took me over a week to eat this. The cake seemed to improve in taste the longer it sat in my refrigerator — it got a little moister and more flavorful.
Dramatic Conclusion
Publix gives Costco a run for their money with this rich, flavorful carrot cake. Both in value and quality, this cake is a winner. The understated decorations make it an elegant, yet unassuming centerpiece for your celebration. If we could swap out the icky ingredients for something better, I might swoon.
The End.
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