Cakes

While imma firm believer that no chocolate cake can go wrong, there’re still of course clear distinctions between mind-blowing and slightly meh ones. Made using Ocoa chocolate, a 70% dark chocolate, the cake layer’s set on top of a crisp French butter biscuit, and topped with a dollop of what I presume is crème fraîche/chantilly/or something along those lines. It’s tasty for sure: chocolate-y enough, tender-crumbed, and has a sort of flourless chocolate cake-like custardy texture. It was aight, it just didn’t wow me. And at $8.80 I’d much rather have a go at the other, more intricate desserts they’ve got on display.

I love creativity and innovation when it comes to food, but I gotta admit being an ultra basic bitch and falling back on good ol’ time-proven classics. Like Plain Vanilla’s Salted Caramel cupcake 🥰🥰 Always fluffy, tender-crumbed, with the lightest buttercream and a good hit of salt in their caramel.

I’ve ATTEMPTED to dine at LUNA a couple of times now but was never able to get a seat, so having been offered the opportunity to try their new cakes recently...dudes I hopped on the bandwagon like *snaps fingers*. And, as per my first — and only — experience there, I left super satisfied. My fave of the 2 new flavours I tried was their Yuzu Meringue. The sponge layers were fluffy and soft, good but nothing to yell home about. What screamed out to me was the curd. Texture-wise it was textbook perfect, and it had just the right amount of tang: discernible but not in-my-face, keep me reaching for more bite after bite. I also really enjoyed the little bits of sweet yuzu peel folded in there. It tastes exceedingly reminiscent of the Korean citron marmalade, and the very mild bitterness from the peel balanced out really well with all the other flavours.

The cupcake itself was moist and tender-crumbed, but really didn’t taste like a good chocolate cake. It had a really waxy kinda aftertaste, completely lacked the rich depth and flavours from good chocolate, and was definitely more like an American butter cake (ie tastes like cheap chocolate/cocoa powder). The frosting also had too strong of an unpleasant buttery mouthfeel, and really where’s the speculoos in there? Also, idk if it’s cause I didn’t eat them on the spot or cause of incorrect storing instructions, but what I suppose was intended as a soft speculoos core turned out to be a hard, crunchy ganache-like ball. This was after letting the cupcake sit at room temp for 45 min after being in the fridge.

For $9, you get this little palm-sized — actually smaller — cloud-shaped entremet of white chocolate mousse, strawberry basil filling, and a shortbread base. The mousse was actually pretty good: delicate and airy, and not overly sweet, and really light on the palate. The filling however was rather plain jane. It makes for a decent strawberry jam, but I didn’t get any hint of the basil and, to be frank, it was so ordinary I don’t really have much to say. The shortbread base was also (how do I say this in English) lou hong/limp/stale, nothing like the buttery crumbly cookie I had in mind, and exceedingly underwhelming. Compared to its lookalike (also pioneer of this cloud entremet), Antoinette’s Fluffy, this is a couple of bucks cheaper but several grades down on the satisfaction scale. And if you think about it, it’s not exactly cheap either: $9 can score me a really complex and delicious entremet, so... 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

I actually liked the cake on its own: it’s very similar to a regular butter cake, lightly sweetened with gula melaka, crisp on the edges and fluffy on the inside, with a crushed cashew and gula melaka icing on the top. The ice cream’s pretty decent as well, nice and creamy without annoying icy chunks. Now problem is when the espresso goes on it, everything becomes crazy acidic. The thing about espresso, is that it turns really acidic when flash chilled — regardless of the quality of the beans. So when that chilled, sour espresso seeps into the not-very-sweet cake, it becomes way too acidic a dessert. I’ll personally just have the ice cream and cake without the espresso next time (which kinda makes the pricetag a little unwarranted though?).

I thought this Paris Vert ($7.50) would be really sweet, what with the meringue, matcha and azuki creams; but it turned out way way better than expected, and I wiped the plate clean all on my own 🤤 I’m usually not a huge fan of meringue, but this was really more like a cake with just a thiiiin layer of crispy meringue on top: so not overwhelmingly sweet, great textural contrast as well. The matcha and azuki cream were wonderfully ethereal and light, boasting an amazing nuttiness that comes through in every bite. Absolutely delicious.

Aside from the cream cheese frosting being a little too stiff, that is. The cake was moist and fluffy, ridden with loads of walnuts, and had a really good ratio of frosting to cake — always super important in my books 👌🏻

I do mean tiny when I say so, if you notice it’s relative size compared to our palm lol. Which isn’t really a bad thing cause who wants to be binging this much on sugar after cny?! Price wise it’s really pocket friendly at $2-2.50 as well so these definitely work well for an afternoon tea break. Of the 3 items they offer now my fave was the banana bread. Super moist and fluffy, with the distinctly earthy aroma from the bananas, I’d say this is one of the better banana breads I’ve had if they’d lower the sugar content a little (though I’m sure those with a sweeter tooth would find this perfect). The brownie was the more cakey sort instead of the mega fudgy ones, so tbh it was more of a moist chocolate cake to me 🤔 As for the bite-sized financier you can’t see here, I’d also say it’s more an almond cake instead of a financier, cause I felt it lacked that super moist and buttery simplicity.

Especially in cake-form with fudgy, moist, and fluffy layers, filled with chocolate ganache, and topped with the moist delish marshmallow meringue frosting?

I know many come for their tofu cheesecakes, but my fave here has always been their Hummingbird Cake. In terms of flavour I always thought this has a very similar profile to a classic carrot cake, with nuances of pineapple and earthy toasted coconut. I’m not really a fan of pineapples, not fresh and definitely not in desserts, but I love how Cake Spade weaves it smoothly into the batter so you don’t get strong big chunks of it. Rather it just adds to a lovely, tropical fragrance. The cake’s also incredibly moist and light, just the right amount of sweet, and finished with a thin layer of tangy cream cheese frosting — not too much, not too cloying, just the way I like it.

Though I’d really recommend going for their Rose Pistachio over anything else. The Salted Caramel & Avocado looked really promising, but the plain yellow cake turned out too dry and gritty, decent but nothing fantastic. Their Nitro Cold Brew’s also a really cool drink to try if you’re hitting them up! #CEBeatsCBD