Single Serving: Worst Chocolate Cake Ever!!!! Part Two.....The Re-eat

Jan 29

Jan 29 Single Serving: Worst Chocolate Cake Ever!!!! Part Two.....The Re-eat

A.W.

I do this food blog thing as a hobby. Just for myself to fill some kind of creative space in my life. And, of course, to show off all the pictures of the stuff I am shoving in my mouth and on semi-regular basis. Some good, some bad as you all know. The web is a strange beast. When writing about stuff, one never really knows if anyone is reading and, yes, page views are nice but since I have been doing this for over 10 years, it isn’t what it is about for me (see first sentence). Thus when some random one off I dashed off in a fit of food rage in mid 2018 suddenly becomes my most read post, it surprises. You can read it here, but on that almost summer day I believe I was in a sweet mood and thought I had found my dessert food savior with a generous slice of chocolate eruption cake from Whole Foods. As you can see, needless to say, it was not a pleasurable experience. Now, several thousand views/reads later it is and probably will continue to be my most surfed page. Go figure.

Over the years since I have written it, every now and then I get a comment on it, including one just a month ago about how I must be wrong. It is possible the piece I got could have been a leftover from a few days, could have been prepared improperly, maybe the baker’s measurements slightly off, etc. One comment (from a baker/chef!) suggested I needed to let the cake rest from fridge to eat to allow cake and frosting to soften up making it much better. I did take their comments to heart and over time thought they may be right. I just happened to get a bad piece on a bad day. It is as if my restaurant curse had melded into my grocery store dessert finds. If that was the case I decide, why not give the cake another chance. Follow the guidelines that had been suggested and see if it really was a decent slice that adults, and a lot of kids evidently, did enjoy.

Sadly, by the time I decided to revisit this, I had already had to leave SF and was ensconced in the South. There were Whole Foods there, not a lot, but a random few around. Seems each one I managed to come across offered the cake in complete size, but for whatever reason, no slices. This went on a bit. Eventually, I did come across a piece but it wasn’t the slice, it was more cut square from what was probably a sheet cake. Alas, it didn’t seem right for comparison purposes so I passed. My search then continued here in Seattle with a couple locations and the same results. Just those squares. Come to find out, while they are making it in full cake form now, they are no longer doing it in actual layer cake slices, just those small size squares which are nearly the same price as what that full layered slice cost me. At this point, after two years of searching I just decided to try this version with the caveat, it is the same, but not totally the same.

As a lark, like my last post, I thought I’d see what good old ChatGPT had to say about a chocolate eruption cake. But this time I asked what it thought a good one was and what a bad one was and have to say the replies were quite interesting. Here is the good:

“The Chocolate Eruption Cake is a decadent dessert that lives up to its name. The moist chocolate cake is rich and flavorful, with a hint of sweetness that is perfectly balanced. The cake is filled with a chocolate ganache that oozes out when you cut into it, creating a delicious eruption of chocolate in your mouth. The chocolate frosting is also rich and chocolatey, and it complements the cake perfectly. The cake is also a beautiful presentation, with a drizzle of chocolate and a sprinkle of cocoa powder on top. Overall, I highly recommend this chocolate cake for any chocolate lover, it is truly a chocolate paradise!”

Funny last phrase there, almost like it is trying to humanize the review. Overall, not terribly bad. Speaking of bad:

“The Chocolate Eruption Cake was a huge disappointment. The cake was dry and lacked flavor. The chocolate ganache filling was too sweet and overpowering, masking any hint of chocolate in the cake itself. The frosting was also overly sweet and had a artificial taste. The presentation of the cake was also unappealing. The chocolate drizzle on top was unevenly distributed and the cocoa powder on top looked like it had been sprinkled haphazardly. The cake was also quite small for the price. Overall, I would not recommend this cake to anyone, it was a waste of money and not worth the disappointment. Save your money and go somewhere else for a decent chocolate cake.”

Okay then, it does seem to hit the finer and lesser points of cake in general. The part where it says “small for the price” made me laugh as that is actually something I would and have said many times! Hmm, maybe I should be scared but the machine takeover is inevitable!! (insert evil laugh). Seriously, though, let’s see where this chocolate eruption cake square falls on the AI review scale.

Here it is, and point of note, per the chef’s suggestion, I let the cake rest to room temperature before digging in. First off, visually between the two, there are some stark differences.. Beyond the size being smaller, the original slice was three layers of cake with alternate layers of butter cream and then a thin layer of chocolate ganache across the top. With the square, the ganache is its own thicker layer between the cake slices with the buttercream just on top. Right off I will tell you room temp and the different configuration do make a difference.

The buttercream is softer and doesn’t come off in chunks and the cake is also softer with the thicker mousse like ganache helping a bite of the cake taste somewhat moist. While those two issues were better, ultimately, one of the biggest issues I had with the cake originally is still present. For something that calls itself chocolate eruption, the flavor and essence of chocolate are surprisingly lacking. The overriding taste you get here is sugar of the granulated kind which all seems to trickle down from the buttercream. And there isn’t even that much of it here! One forkful in and all you get is super sugary, tooth achingly sweet without some rich, dark complexity of chocolate. The cake is chocolate and so is the mousse but if you blindfolded someone and had this taste it, you would never know. All I was getting was sugary buttercream. Which kind of makes sense why kids like this cake. They do seem to glom onto and run on sugar fuel.

Now we all know I am a fan of frosting and when it layers equally with the cake, I am all about it. But when it is all I am tasting, then seriously, what is the point of the cake. I could just eat frosting out of the tub (which I will cop to having done) but when I get some cake I am getting it for the beautifully melding combination of the two not the “I can only taste one.” For me, the chocolate needed to really amped up and the amount of sugar in the buttercream dropped a notch or something. Maybe more dark chocolate powder in the mix, more in the mousse, a dash of almond extract to bring out the flavor richness, a finer grained powdered sugar in the buttercream? Just something. Plus, while room temp did soften the cake up, the layers themselves fell closer to the dry side than the needed moist.

After this latest attempt I’ve come to except the fact I am in the minority on this and I will never be a fan of the chocolate eruption cake. Maybe it is my own taste buds failing me here but I just can’t get past some aspects of it to make it palatable to my dessert loving being. I am okay with it because there are so many lusciously sweet desserts out there that can still attract my stomach and I can leave this one for those that do appreciate it. I won’t say this particular square was the worst I have ever had like before but, alas, whatever isn’t working still keeps me from liking this particular cake no matter how they slice and/or layer it up. (And ChatGPT won’t all that wrong either. Go figure.)