Cornell & Diehl Kajun Kake

Cornell & Diehl Kajun Kake is full, bold and spicy. The Perique gives it some peppery edge, but very interestingly so and you will seldom find a blend showing the true nature of this unique ingredient better than KK. I didn’t get much sweetness, rather hints of cigar and unsweetened black tea. Earthiness, hay and roasted dark bread are the predominant impressions. I found the nicotine content way above medium. KK is one of the view blends, that can be enjoyed with a carbon filter at nearly unchanged, full taste, at a lower nicotine level, though.

If you like satisfactory (nic) tobaccos and the distinct taste of Perique in a high quality crumble cake, this one is a must. If you don’t, leave the tins for the ones who do.

Kajun Kake is a pressed Virginia-Perique-Cavendish block. Typically a few brownie-looking bars of tobacco come in a tin and one breaks off a piece and rubs it out. While the blocks are quite dry, I've never found the tobacco to have unpleasant burning characteristics.

Kajun Kake produces a full volume of sweet unflavored-Cavendish-dominated smoke without ever biting my tongue. I found Kajun Kake to be a naturally mellow sweet blend with a light, yet clearly detectable, Perique spice. I have gone through many tins.

My complaint about Kajun Kake is that my pipe always start off quite bitter. The bitterness last though about a third of the smoke and dissipates to the pleasant flavor I described above.

I read somewhere that burley is the base tobacco used in making Perique. I don't know if it's at all related, but the bitterness I experience in the first third of the bowl reminds me lot of the bitterness one gets from abusing a burley blend.

I tolerated the idiosyncratic nature of this tobacco for years. Recently, I moved to Bullseye Flake which I find to have very similar characteristics without the bitter experience.

As a lover of Perique I expected a lot more from this blend. The branding emphasizes the perique as part of the Cajun inspiration for this blend, however the decision to use wholly Red Virginia for the base provides a sweetness that overpowers the spice of the Perique. It's like pouring sugar into a spicy dish. The sweetness cuts the heat, and exposes the bitterness of the peppers.

Even as a fan of Red Virginia, I don't think this is an exemplar of the leaf. There is a sort of ashy bitterness that muddles the breadiness and hinders that sweetness which I want from Red Virginias. Maybe my tin came from a bad harvest year? I tried this in three different pipes including a new one just to make sure this isn't an old ghost haunting the smoke.

The peppery notes from the Perique are more detectable when retrohaling, but I have to search for it in the smoke otherwise. It is not completely absent though, because there is the expected fig and plum as well as a hint of spice left on the tongue after exhaling. I would have preferred these notes to not be overpowered within the smoke itself. That spicy note does linger for a while after you finish your smoke, which seems to cast the illusion that this blend is spicy.

Here I must concede that the flavours of Perique are more pronounced towards the end of the bowl. This still leaves a lot to be desired for a tin that states "just the right touch of everyone's favorite Cajun spice, Louisiana Perique". I might have to crack open Bayou Morning after this tin to get a proper taste of perique.

This blend also seems to be very dry, in the red wine sense. It's a very peculiar sensation, as its not a tongue bite but almost feels like it. This is not a sensation you expect from a good smoke. I could see a dry tobacco working, but not to the degree that this dryness is present here.

My final complaint is that this comes far too wet out of the tin, unusually so. I have never had to relight a bowl of tobacco so often as this one. I personally don't believe I should have to dry out my tobacco for half a day or longer to get it to the right moisture level. You run the risk of forgetting it is open and losing a lot of flavour from the Perique.

This is my first 1 star review for a C&D blend. If I want a more nuanced blending of sweet and spicy in crumble cake form, I would rather reach for their Cellar Series' Bourbon Bleu. That's a blend where the Perique is more harmonious and the sweetness works much better and isn't interrupted by unexpected flavours.

Update: After crumbling the entire cake and allowing it to dry since the moisture is just too overwhelming here (which is suboptimal because you want the cake to continue aging in the jar), I can report that the bitterness and astringent dryness has improved. The blend is much more smokeable and the plum and fig notes are far more pronounced. I will raise my score to 2.5 rounded down to a 2. There is promise in this blend but it needs better execution.

I can see why some smokers might like this blend, but it's just not my taste. It has a pleasant, sweet tin aroma, but I detect no sweetness after I light it. I agree with the reviewer who described the aroma as dry. Like another reviewer, I also found it to be somewhat bitter for a while after being lit. Nonetheless, it's not a bad blend, but it's not what I'm looking for in a Va/Per.

In a nutshell: Bayou Morning Flake with no sweetness.

Damn this is a hit and miss blend for me. On paper I should love it, in the bowl I don’t. It is not bad, it’s far better than most C&D I tried, it’s honest, i just don’t like it much.

The smell from the tin is sour, cheesy almost, peaty. The brick of crumble cake is uniformly dark brown, with some black strands and some lighter browns. As this is an American cake it breaks apart very easily, and comes ready to smoke in terms of moisture. That’s something at least!

Taste wise, it is sour, earthy, a bit vinegary and tangy, with a bucketload of Perique. Some wood here and there, very little to no sweetness. Pretty heavy on the nicotine, so it’s relaxing, and the room note is pretty strong. JimInks’s review is spot on as usual, but somehow with this I really do pick out almost everything he mentions.

I don’t dislike it, I just don’t like it much, or crave it. I feel this blend is very honest, it is not sweet and doesn’t try to be, yet that’s what is missing for me. Thankfully there’s the excellent Bayou Morning Flake.

I've spent about 2 weeks with Kajun Kake now. It is a bold medium-full strength VaPer crumble kake with some Cavendish. This is undoubtedly the most earthy tasting blend I've ever tried. That is where the cigar comparison comes from to me. The red Virginia has a lot of earth and a slight sweetness. The Perique is also earthy in the mushroomy category with some pepper. The Cavendish really helps to keep the blend smooth and cool and adds its own subtle sweetness. The three tobaccos combine to give notes of soil, a mild dark fruit sweetness, and some pepper. I have also found that the blend performs differently in different pipes. I prefer it in cobs or a very narrow-bowl pipe to enhance the sweetness. In a Savinelli 320 I got nothing but earth and I had never tasted mushrooms in smoke before but the Perique was definitely mushroomy. The room-note is ok for me but for others it's barely tolerable. 2 & 1/2 stars for now may get a higher rating with some age if the blend sweetens.

Every time I assess or review material things, a part of me seeks to ascertain my thought processes and understanding of that object-in light of the same subjective influences that similar like-minded individuals. After all, your reviews have led me to some awesome blends where I was in agreement with the brothers. Subjectivity increases as constants reduce. In the case of tobacco reviews, tastes (in the base objective sense-one of the major 5) are so affected by so many variables that its a wonder so many agree on what we do agree upon.

Still, using this as a prime example, this toby review reinforces the fact that I often dont share in the majority. The beauty is in understanding that its really okay to do so. Really it is.

Positives for KK include a very well constructed cake: Its 2x3 inches, very brownie-like in color, appearance, and in texture. It breaks apart densely, but with light effort becomes uniform in its cut. Very easy to pack.

Tin note is yummy, in that the cavendish provides a chocolatey wine smell, one tou can bury your nose into. Wish it was edible.

Negatively: the smoke itself....though I dont allow it to burn hot, it smokes so dry that it reduces the available taste profile. Its thin, but its also bitter. The bitterness is not assuaged by the virginias, nor did I ever get any Cav sweetness at any point of any bowl. There is no early bowl mid bowl or late bowl shifts, well other than peppery bitterness late, versus salty bitterness early.

UPDATE DEC 2017 - Revisited cake that has been canned under heat x 4 more years and what a difference in flavor as well as smoothness. Cake still intact, more crumbly now and lights easily. 3.5

To that end I tried it in dedicated Vaper pipes large and small, with no alteration. I packed in dense, I tried the Fred Hanna method, but the experience was consistent.

Im going to defer to Bluenoser and jar this under heat until such a time that I've forgotten its existence, then revisit this blend. Until then I give up...but that's okay because its a subjective experience, and one I'd rather not repeat.

May your experience be better!

This is another tobacco that doesn't quite do it for me and I don't think it's the tobacco's fault. I've never gotten along particularly well with blends that have much Cavendish in them. I suspect there's something about my technique that doesn't work with Cavendish because this blend smokes very wet and hot for me. It also bites pretty hard unless I smoke it so slowly that it goes out all the time. The room note is very pleasant but the taste is just bitter to me. If you like Cavendish and Perique I suspect that you'll love this stuff, but I'm going to stick to my Virginias.

Your not missing out on anything if you never smoke this. Smells like a cake too.