Name: Zac Young's Winning Carrot Cake
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 1 h
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour; 2 tsp baking soda; 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon; 0.5 tsp ground nutmeg; 0.25 tsp ground cloves; 0.5 tsp kosher salt; 1.5 cups vegetable oil; 1 cup granulated sugar; 0.75 cup packed light brown sugar; 3 large eggs, room temperature; 3 cups freshly grated carrots, firmly packed; 0.75 cup crushed pineapple with juice; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 0.5 cup toasted walnuts, finely chopped; 8 oz cream cheese, softened; 4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened; 2 cups powdered sugar; 1 tsp vanilla extract

Zac Young is a pastry chef who has been on TV almost as long as Bobby has — Top Chef: Just Desserts, Chopped Sweets, the entire Food Network pastry circuit — and who now runs Sprinkletown Bakeshop at Foxwoods Casino. He is the one who designed the PieCaken, which is a pie inside a cake. He thinks about dessert architecture the way Bobby thinks about grilling.

His weapon in 2019 was carrot cake. The dish is a moisture exam: too much oil and it slumps, too little and it dries within hours of baking. The carrots get grated fine, not shredded coarse, so they melt into the crumb rather than sitting on top of it. The spices — cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove — get bloomed in the warm oil before the dry ingredients meet the wet.

Bobby is a savory chef who said yes to a pastry round against a pastry television personality. We have notes.