Contemporary Classics: Piece of Cake
Dense and rich or creamy and moist, chocolate cake easily bests the dessert competition
By Laura Yee, Special to R&I -- Restaurants & Institutions, October 1, 2004
Chocolate cake rides the dining-trends wave better than nearly any other dessert. With appeal that is both ageless and timeless, this sweet ending surfaces in different guises and effectively stays on top.
“People want chocolate,” says Mary McMahon, pastry chef at Trio Atelier in Evanston, Ill. “During times of the year when there’s so much fresh fruit to choose from you want to menu only fruit desserts. But you can’t—you’ve got to have chocolate.”
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| The Chocolate Goddess Cake at Sutra Lounge in Costa Mesa, Calif., is divinely decadent. |
Dessert sales confirm that towering slices of chocolate cake satisfy the biggest audience. Classic renditions of moist cake with rich fudge icing are perennial crowd pleasers. But to satisfy all fans, operators such as the Calabasas Hills, Calif.-based The Cheesecake Factory offer multiple versions. Black-Out Cake includes chocolate chips in the cake and sliced almonds around fudge icing, while Fabulous Chocolate Mousse Cake puts chocolate mousse between layers of fudge cake. With layers of cake and frosting, Linda’s Fudge Cake pays homage to homey tradition.
The chain’s molten chocolate cake has gained the most devoted following. Its lava center is achieved by underbaking a rich batter made of little more than butter, sugar, eggs, bittersweet chocolate and a small amount of flour. Some pastry chefs plunge a chunk of chocolate into the batter of the individual molds to accentuate the gooey chocolate center.
For several years, Paul Sussman, chef at The Fireplace in Brookline, Mass., has offered molten cake. “It’s one of the few items that never changes,” he says. “It’s a nice, simple dessert and it’s very popular so there is no reason to do anything different.”
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| Pastry Chef Mary McMahon layers chocolate cake with peanut butter sorbet at Trio Atelier. |
The dessert also is unique in that it is made from prepared batter. “We do everything from scratch except for two things: molten cake and duck sausage,” he says. “They are as good as what we make in house but much more convenient” to purchase. And while the prepared batter reduces labor costs, it also allows the restaurant to improvise.
Many pastry chefs, including McMahon, advocate that desserts offer varying textures and temperatures. Chocolate layer cake or the molten version welcomes ice cream. Warm vanilla sauce, such as crème anglaise, or puréed fruit adds another dimension. Nuts, crushed caramel and nut brittle can serve as garnishes.
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50 Average number of cacao seeds, from which chocolate is derived, in a large cacao tree pod.(Maricel Presilla, “The New Taste of Chocolate,” Ten Speed Press, 2001) |
McMahon layers chocolate cake with peanut-butter sorbet. Sliced into triangles, the cake is plated with roasted peanuts blanched in simple syrup. Caramelized bananas also garnish the dessert.
At Farallon in San Francisco, Executive Pastry Chef Emily Luchetti improvises with chocolate cake. “I used to think that I had to have a different chocolate cake for every dessert but you don’t,” she says. “If you have a good chocolate cake, each dessert can be unique and guests won’t even know they are eating the same cake.”
Her signature Chocolate-Chip Ice Cream Cake (chocolate-chip ice cream spread over a layer of cake) uses the same chocolate sponge as Chocolate-Coffee Towers (chocolate cake as base for a coffee mousse). The ice cream and mousse flavors change for new desserts.
“Chocolate is flexible and takes a lot of flavors,” says McMahon. “That gives you many possible directions to go in.”
Chocolate-Chip Ice Cream Cake With Caramel Sauce and Candied Almonds
Executive Pastry Chef Emily Luchetti, Farallon, San Francisco
Yield: 9 servings
| Flour | 3/4 cup |
| Cocoa powder | 1/2 cup |
| Baking powder | 1/4 tsp. |
| Salt | 1/2 tsp. |
| Unsalted butter | 4 oz. |
| Sugar | 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. |
| Eggs | 3 |
| Vanilla extract | 3/4 tsp. |
| Buttermilk | 6 Tbsp. |
| Chocolate-chip ice cream, softened | 1/2 gal. |
| Caramel sauce, frozen for 6 hours | 2 cups |
| Candied almonds (recipe follows) | garnish |
Start with all cake ingredients at room temperature. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt; set aside.Cream butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating 15 seconds after each addition. Stir vanilla into buttermilk.Add third of flour mixture to butter-sugar mixture until combined. Add half the buttermilk, combine and repeat until all ingredients are combined.Spread batter into greased, square 8-in. baking pan lined with parchment. Bake at 350F about 20 minutes. Cool and split cake in half horizontally.Line square 8-in. pan with plastic film. Return 1 layer of cake to pan and spread with layer of ice cream of equal thickness. Spread with 1 cup of caramel sauce (when frozen, sauce will be thick and spreadable). Repeat.Slice into 9 servings. Plate with candied almonds as garnish.
Candied Almonds
Whisk 1 egg white with 3 Tbsp. sugar. Fold in 8 oz. sliced almonds. Spread onto ungreased baking sheet; bake at 325F 15 to 20 minutes. Stir nuts every 5 minutes to mix and scrape pieces off bottom of baking sheet.
Calling All Seasons
The added value of seasonal fare and ingredients associated with a particular time of year can be extended to the dessert menu. Pairing chocolate cake with seasonal fruit or garnishes keeps the dessert menu fresh with minimal effort and labor.
Fall: Roasted peanuts as a garnish; peanut-butter mousse or ice cream; pomegranate or cranberries as a soaking syrup or sauce drizzled on the plate.Winter: Passion-fruit sorbet or gelato; hazelnuts or almonds for crunch; cinnamon-spiked icing or spiced (star anise, fresh nutmeg, allspice) crème anglaise; blood-orange syrup and segments as garnishes; diced tropical fruit such as pineapple, star fruit, papaya and coconut.Spring: Rhubarb compote puréed with strawberries as a thin filling, with milk-chocolate icing or fresh strawberries as a garnish.Summer: Raspberries made into ice cream or puréed into a sauce; fresh plums, peaches, blackberries or mango served alongside chocolate cake, or as a sauce or in ice cream.
Hot Cakes
Triple Chocolate Meltdown: chocolate cake and fudge filling topped with dark and white chocolate, accompanied by vanilla ice cream and hot fudge
Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar
, multiple locations
Low-carb chocolate-mousse cake topped with chocolate shavings
Museum of Fine Arts (a Restaurant Associates account)
, Boston
Towering Midnight Fudge Cake: chocolate cake baked with chocolate-sandwich-cookie pieces, frosted with chocolate icing and served with vanilla ice cream and hot fudge
99 Restaurant & Pub
, multiple locations
Warm chocolate-bittersweet-chocolate cake with lava center served with white-chocolate passion-fruit ice cream and passion-fruit caramel sauce
TenPenh
, Washington, D.C.
Chocolate Truffle: three-layer torte-style dark-chocolate cake filled with chocolate-truffle cream and chocolate buttercream and garnished with melted chocolate and chocolate truffles
Yale University
, New Haven, Conn.
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