BITES : The Cake Monster

Guinness apparently does not have an official category of Largest Carrot Cakes, but if it ever decides to initiate one, the first winner will have to beat the sweet served in the parking lot of Mrs. Gooch’s Whole Foods Market in Glendale last Thursday. It was 10 feet on a side and weighed 710 pounds.

The giant was put together out of 37 smaller cakes (doubtless an interesting geometrical exercise in itself) and frosted as assembly progressed. Work began at 4 a.m. The component cakes, which had been baked the night before, followed the same recipe as the market’s usual carrot cake: whole-wheat flour, pineapple, raisins, walnuts, organic sweetener . . . and 825 carrots.

There were people on hand dressed up as fruits and vegetables (the kid in the carrot costume was far enough into his role to pretend to lament the carrots who gave their lives for the cake). Like the cake, they were celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Glendale store.

So who ate the cake? The market’s customers and students from nearby Wilson Middle School, who arrived throughout the day in hourly shifts.

You Can Look It Up

A dictionary of desserts? An international dictionary of desserts? Impossible--it would have to be the size of a phone book. But Carole Bloom’s “The International Dictionary of Desserts, Pastries and Confections” (Hearst Books: $17.95) tilts boldly at this particular windmill, and the result is a useful book.

There are some definite surprises among its 800-odd definitions (chocolate turns out to have a Brazilian relative, cupuacu ). The book also includes 86 recipes, from major-league pastries like the Hungarian rigo jancsi to simple pleasures like fruit fool and basic elements such as chocolate plastic and rolled fondant, two ultra-fancy pastry coverings. Some may find the book worth the price just for making clear, finally, the distinctions between all those weirdly named New England fruit desserts: buckle, brown Betty, pandowdy, cobbler, grunt and slump (“a type of cobbler, similar to a grunt, but slumps are usually baked, rather than steamed”). At bookstores.

Update From the ‘Hood

Food From the ‘Hood, the brand of salad dressing developed as a scholarship moneymaker at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles, has won one of this year’s Newsweek American Achievement Awards. The award ceremonies at the Kennedy Center in Washington will be broadcast on CBS Friday, May 26, at 9 p.m. The dressing, currently available at 2,000 groceries (in San Francisco, Denver and Chicago as well as Los Angeles), has raised $50,000 for college scholarships this year.

Blacksmith, White Powder

The symbol of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda originally had nothing to do with pounding ovens into shape or anything else terribly industrial. It was simply brought to the Church & Co. soda company by one of its founders, who had been a partner in a Brooklyn mustard and spice business called Vulcan Spice Mills. Vulcan being the blacksmith of the gods, see.