The Second Coming of Chocolate Cake

Let's talk about chocolate cake. If there is one food that is eternally disappointing, chocolate cake is it. No bakery does it like Mummy P. did, or at least how The Great Plotnik remembers his mom's. Chocolate cakes are, time after time, year after year, 'way too rich, or the chocolate balance is off, or the texture is more like pudding than cake, or it's too dry, or some idiot decides to use margarine or carob. People don't know the difference between cake and brownies, or they think the idea of chocolate cake is something called Chocolate Decadence or Triple Chocolate Fudge or Chocoholic Zapper.

The French can't make chocolate cake, theirs are too-sweet too-rich too-creamy. The Austrians are too close to Black Forest Cake or German Chocolate Cake, both of which are all right but not what we're looking for. The Mexicans, who invented chocolate, can do hot chocolate but not cake. Today's world is a chocolate cake lover's wilderness. 

But don't give up, because tonight it all changed. Tonight we had the best chocolate cake Plot and Duck have tasted for at least 40 years. It came from Destination Bakery, down the block, and was our neighbor Avanna's birthday cake yesterday. They brought some over and it is astonishingly perfect.

JUST the right Belgian chocolate. JUST the right crumb. JUST the right sweetness. There isn't too much frosting but there's not too little either. It ain't cheap -- $50 bucks for that cake, but it would serve at least 16-20.

Or one Duck and one Plot for maybe a week. We've walked by that bakery on the way to BART for many years and seldom bought anything there. Can't wait for somebody else to have a birthday now.