Dogmatic Evangelist

They're dogmatic about good food.

Taste & See: I'm sort of on indefinite hiatus while I work on a few intense writing projects elsewhere (sorry) but wanted to give you all an FYI: one of my fave cheap eats, former street food cart Dogmatic, has redesigned their menu yet again and is now offering, in addition to the sausages, sides, salads, and homemade sodas ...

Energy shakes & SLIDERS! Yes, Dogmatic has entered the game. And not only are the sliders paired with the same delightful sauce already used on the sausages (truffle gourmet, swoon), they have a BISON BURGER. Swoon again. As if I needed another reason to visit.

Dogmatic is on the NW corner of Union Square, just to the left, on your left. Enjoy!

An Angeleño Eats in Brooklyn, vol 2: Carb Fest

The NYC Carb Trifecta

Treasures untold await.  Until you read this.  Then they'll be told treasures. But still waiting...so go eat them!

Taste & See: There are a few foods associated with NYC that every visitor should try to eat, and, perhaps no coincidence, many of them are carbs. 

A prime example is bagels.  The best of these is generally agreed to be H&H, at W. 80th & Broadway, on the Upper West Side.  During his 93 plates project, The Wandering Foodie wrote about his expedition to H&H, and really said all that needs to be said.  I won't be redundant, except to agree wholeheartedly: just order whatever's most freshly baked & tear into it like a lover.  The Angeleño concurs.

Next on the list is probably pizza. Sure, we quibble with other cities around the US that make good pizza, but NYC's overall quality-per-slice average is pretty phenomenal. Even the bad pizza is good.  It is possible I've had better pizza at random locations around the US than the best pizza I've had here:

Mushroom & Prosciutto and Pear Pizzas, Wine O'Clock, Prosser, WA
BBQ Chicken & Meat Combo Pizza, Pizza A Fetta, Cannon Beach, OR (the Thai chicken is superb but alas, I haven't got a photo of that).

But I'll never really know, unless these rival pizza makers set up shop right across from each other, fire the pies, and immediately feed me.  So far I have been unable to create such a gathering and thus rely on the charity of others who have taken on the terribly wonderful task of consuming pizza from Franny's to Keste in the quest for the best.

I took the Angeleño to Keste, on Bleeker between 6th & 7th in the Village, widely regarded as "best," whatever that can possibly mean in a city with such great choices.  I'm a huge fan, and my huge pizza fed me twice, which was handy, given that it cost about $25. The waiter neglected to note the price when he described the special in glowing terms.  I mean, I could have asked, but why spoil tales of rucola & prosciutto with a price tag? The Angeleño & I were a little sticker shocked at the total bill but he was more than persuaded: NYC makes good pizza.

*It should be noted, of course, that Keste, like many of the other great NYC pizza joints, doesn't make New York style pizza. It makes la vera pizza napoletana, "true" pizza, of the style of Naples.  But if borrowing someone else's culture and blending it in to what's already there isn't what it means to be American, I don't know what is. I'll gladly claim Keste as ours.

Finally, the NYC carb trifecta wouldn't be complete without the cookie.

What, you didn't know we are famous for cookies?  Oh, man. Someone swindled you good if you came all the way to NYC and didn't taste our famous cookies.  I mean, I can understand wanting to hide the good stuff from our guests, but it is still not very nice.

Tell you what.  I can't make you the famous cookie; none but the sacred cookie masters can do that, though many of tried. But I can give you a big fat photo, right up in your cookie-craving face. 

Oh. That just added to the craving? Sorry.

Levain Bakery, W 74th St, just off Amsterdam on the Upper West Side, is the cookie temple. I'd recommend trying them all, but that will cost you half a Keste special pizza, so you may want to pick one and savor it.  I love them all, but the oatmeal raisin is the sleeper favorite; you just don't see it coming.  The Angeleño was a fan of the double chocolate.  A Levain cookie, still warm, gooey with melting chocolate, savored on the steps of a nearby brownstone on a chilly day is about as close to perfect as you're going to find this side of heaven.  

Levain's cookies are so big, a small man can fit inside! Amazing! The Angeleño eats on, nonplussed.
 
Next time you're in town, forget the five star restaurants and get yourself a cookie. 

An Angeleño Eats in Brooklyn, vol I: RBC Coffee

The Slayer Does its Job & Then Some

Taste & See: Caveat--little of this series is actually based in Brooklyn. While the Angeleño in question did spend most of his NYC visit in Brooklyn, I admit we did quite a bit of Manhattan eating--but that doesn't mean Brooklyn food isn't better! But if you get the reference, and perhaps even if you don't, "An Angeleño Eats in Manhattan" lacks a certain charm. So there you have it--no truth in advertising.

But I digress. When an Angeleño was stranded in our fine city due to inclement weather, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to show off the food we have to offer. Sure, we may lack taco trucks and the dizzying array of "grown in my backyard" fresh produce, but what we do have is pretty great. His week to kill before his plane could depart was the perfect opportunity for the Angeleño & me to embark on a little culinary adventure, tasting our way through some of my favorite spots.

One of our first hits was RBC, a new cafe in Tribeca. I confess I didn't go to RBC for the location, the atmosphere, the menu, or any of the other reasons one might choose to while away a caffeinated afternoon. No, I came to RBC for the Slayer.

I'd just read on Tasting Table about a beautiful espresso machine made in my beloved Seattle, selling for about $18,000 a pop. Apparently there are about 20 cafes in the world that have them. This fun video was all it took to convince a coffee lover (me) & a tech lover--that is to say, a man--to check it out. It is worth watching to the end to see the espresso dripping like pudding and the coffee grounds packed like thick molasses biscuits.

So through the snow we trekked, on a pilgrimage to see this fantastical machine for ourselves. Upon entering RBC it seemed appropriate to approach the sleek beast hushed and on tiptoe. The baristas couldn't have been kinder, welcoming us behind the scenes to view the nifty mirrors tilting up to allow a glimpse of the dripping espresso.

I had a Macchiato, an espresso with but a touch of milk, to better appreciate the power of the Slayer on raw espresso. It was intense, green, almost springy, a little more acidic than my latte-drinking self could fully enjoy, but I could tell an espresso aficionado would be blow away. I could only appreciate its greatness vicariously, like those critic-adored indie indie bands that you shamefully must admit you don't actually enjoy listening to.

The Angeleño had a Cortado, an espresso with a bit more milk, too strong for him but perfect for me. Both drinks were a wonder to behold, thick with power and crema.

RBC also has, in its favor, charming little cookies, a Vietnamese latte (bringing back fond memories of Barefoot Coffee, of which I've written before & one of my favorite haunts during my California days), and guest-bartenders who appear at set times like coffee rock starts to whip up specialty drinks for the adoring fans. So far, so good.

Now I'd like to go back and see what the Slayer can do with different beans, with different proportions of milk--with a Macchiato, the Slayer was a bit too aptly named for me.

Do it yourself:

RBC | http://rbcnyc.com/ | Twitter
71 Worth Street, Manhattan (@ Church/Broadway)
7-7 M-F; 9-7 S & S

Pop!

A cozy treat to warm up winter.
 

Taste & See:  Start with a dried ear of corn.  Oh, you don't have one of those?  Well, just go to the farmers' market and have a friendly man give you one for free.

That's what I did, sometime last fall.  Just sauntered on by the booth selling expensive mushrooms at the Grand Army Plaza farmers' market and after exclaiming in only-partially-mock surprise at how much my little brow bag of chanterelles cost, the nice man with the beard and plaid shirt--not a hipster, an actual, "I do this for a living farmer"!--reached into a carton behind him and pulled out a maroon ear of corn, dry as a bone.  

"Here," he said, "take this.  Just throw it in the microwave and make yourself some nice homemade popcorn.  Great for a crisp fall day."

And it was a crisp fall day, a beautiful one.  Then it was a cold slushy winter day.  Then it was a cold slushy winter week.  And a cold slushy winter month.  Then I broke my arm and didn't go to work for three days.  Then I finally got ready to go to work, on a Friday, feeling grand after a week of downtime.  I walked 2 blocks, fell on my tush, checked my email to see work had been canceled, and promptly walked back.

This, turns out, was the perfect, perfect day to make that popcorn.  I microwaved it about 5 minutes, on a plate covered in a big plastic bowl.  That was just about perfect; when I stripped the cob & tossed back in for another minute to get the straggling kernels, I filled the microwave, then the apartment, with smoke--but notably, the smoke alarm did not go off.  It goes off when I make toast. It goes off when I turn on the oven. But when I fill my microwave with thick brown clouds it is silent? WHAT?

For your part, you can start with popcorn, however you choose to make it.   Then comes the fun part: caramel sauce. Yum.

Caramel sauce comes in a jar, if you want to be supremely lazy, but even better, it comes in the form of butter & sugar & salt, swirled together over heat for about 10 minutes, or until it reaches about 300 on a candy thermometer.  I let it get to 310 on accident and it got pretty crunchy--which was great, on popcorn, but makes the leftovers a little harder to use.  But whatever you choose, do yourself a favor and use a thermometer; it isn't easy to eyeball bubbling sugar.

Do it Yourself

Ingredients: 

• Handful of nuts (I used cashews; pecans or walnuts would be lovely as well)
• About 3 cups popcorn
• 6 Tablespoons butter
• 1.5 cups "sweet":
  I used about 1 cup raw sugar, 1/4 cup honey and 1/4 cup maple syrup because that's what I had on hand. 
  You could use all sugar, or for more maple flavor, you could use all maple syrup.
• 2 tsp good sea salt

Instructions:

• Make popcorn.
• Melt butter.
• Add the sweet and the salt and stir to combine, allowing to get hot & bubbly, up to 300 for a softer sauce or 310 for more crunchy.
• Meanwhile, toast nuts in oven or on sauce pan til golden.  Once toasted, promptly remove from heat or they'll burn, you'll waste money, feel stupid, and perhaps even set off your fire alarm.  Not that I'd know.
• Combine nuts, popcorn, and sauce to coat.  Break clumps into smaller pieces to make it easier to eat once caramel hardens.

Quick Links: Shakes & Sandwiches

Speaking of strawberries, the New York Times Nutrition page had a recipe for making the ultimate strawberry shake today. The secret is, apparently, a very ripe banana. (The Thai versions are entirely strawberry but they're closer to smoothies; I can see how a banana would give a shake a nice texture).

I also recently found a story highlighting the ultimate in faux gourmet--cheap Asian sandwich-esque offerings, posed as an alternative to the classic bahn mi. The photos are beautiful even if a few of the offerings sound a bit unappealing (stir fried noodles in bread?). However, they forgot to mention one of my favorites, the as yet unphotographed (by me, anyway) sesame pancake sandwich. The bread is crispy on the outside, soft and airy inside, and stuffed with beef, carrots, cilantro, and chilis. I get mine at Prosperity Dumpling, on Eldridge Street in Manhattan. As the first Yelp review (at least when I checked) says, the beef sesame pancake is divine. Yes indeed.

Better be street if you lookin' at me II

A beginner's guide to snacking on Thai fruit

Taste & See: My family is in town to visit, and naturally I'm busy trying to cram in as many delicious eating experiences as possible in a three day span. My stomach is currently the size and shape of roughly a bowling ball but I'll deal with that later. In the mean time, we are eating our way through New York. Or, more precisely, yesterday afternoon we ate our way from Union Square to SoHo, savoring snacks at a half dozen of my favorite eateries. While I'd be happy to recreate the food tour any time, that's not what I'm writing about today.

The experience of grazing on small bites up and down New York neighborhoods was reminiscent of what I love about eating in Thailand. There is food in abundance, lining the streets, tucked into alleys, perched along the edges of bus and train stations. Any time you get hungry you hardly have to turn around to find a cheap snack, ready and waiting. There is rarely camel-eating in Thailand, gorging til you can't take a bite more, justified by the need to hold yourself over until the next food milepost. No. Food is an ongoing constant and you can afford to take a small snack of one thing now, knowing another small snack of something else is waiting for you around the next bend, the moment you are in need.

While snacks in the US tend to be carb-heavy, Thailand offers a rich variety of fruity treats, the perfect respite from the hot and dirty Bangkok streets. In fact, one of the delights of Thailand is the abundance of fresh fruit, all the time, everywhere. This doesn't begin to cover the variety of fruits available--no photos of the alien-esque rambutan or the jewel-like mangosteen--but these fruity snapshots from Thai street life aren't a bad start for a wannabe Thai snacker. (Note, this isn't the first time I've written on the topic; see another piece here ("Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old AK"), here ("Sugar + Spice") and here ("Better be street if you lookin' at me I")

One of my favorite Thai snacks is green mango (mah-muan). Or to be precise, partially green mango. The best mango isn't the lip-pursing, bracing hard and sour green fruits, or the sweet juicy candy of those fully ripe. No, the best are just a bit flexible, a bit pale-yellowish soft and ripe in the middle, just the faintest trace of sour remaining and only the beginning of sweet. The effect is not the overwhelming candy of the ripe fruits or the suckerpunch of the raw ones, but a simple, mellow mangoey essence. A mango in pre-cut slices in a bag runs about 10 B; hard to beat.


Everywhere you find little blue carts with glass iced containers containing, typically, coral sticks of papaya, (mah-la-gawn) spiky yellow mounds of pineapple, (za-pa-rote) pink watermelon (dtang-moe) wedges and glossy green rose apples (chom-poo) or guava (farang, which, incidentally, also means foreigners; expect a little laugh at the popular joke: farang gin farang; the foreigner is eating himself). Everything is 10 B for a bag; that is, 10 B for half an ice cold pineapple, peeled, chopped and slid into a plastic bag with a whir of a machete. Stab a piece with a bamboo skewer and feel a cool breeze transport you from Bangkok grime to a beachside cabana.



Chili salt and sugar are option but favored by Thais, especially for guava and raw mango.


One of the boons of Thai street fruit offerings is that all the work is done for you. Jackfruit (tah-noon), durian (tuhr-ri-ahn) and pomelo (some-oh!) are all a pain and a half to peen and serve, definitely not something you buy for a casual stroll down the street. (For durian, there is also the small matter of that smell . . . ) But thanks to ingenious vendors who do the dirty work for you, a snack sized takeaway container is ready and waiting to provide that crisp fresh pomelo burst, any time you like.


Don't let jackfruit's spiky outer covering fool you; it looks like durian but the fruit is nothing like it. The yellowing hunks of jackfruit, like oversized corn kernels, have a flavor unlike any Western fruit or spice I can recall, sweet but not overpoweringly, with a note of something a bit sour and tangy—but not acidic. The fruit itself is fairly hefty, with a stretchy, chewy texture. Banana leaves make a convenient serving tray—waste not, want not!


150 B for the durian, 20 for the pomelo and jackfruit is usually comparable to pomelo in price/serving size; prices vary more widely with these kinds of specialty fruits.

Oranges (som!, as if an exclamation) by the kilo are pretty cheap, but I might prefer the piles squeezed into made-to-order juice than whole.


Whole coconuts (mah-prao) conveniently provide natural containers for coconut water with coconut shavings options; prices vary but expect to pay 20-35 B.


Guava (farang) and passion fruit (nang chom) juices are two other fabulously refreshing treats. This woman also sold an orange carrot mix.



Be wary, juice may be salty; it can come as a shock if you're not prepared. Check to make sure it is not by asking, “mai kem, chai mai?” Not salty, right? You want to hear them tell you “mai kem,” not salty.

And when the sun beats down, your feet are sore from a day of traipsing the Bangkok streets, and your throat is dry with the pollution of a bustling city, nothing beats the heat like a strawberry smoothy (bun sah-traw-ber-ree!) made from almost nothing except strawberries chilling in a fat of icy water. It is kind of like drinking summer. 15 B.

Winter Farmers' Market

Quick Tip: Apricot Jam + Fresh Black Pepper Chevre + Whole Wheat English Muffin = Yes, please!


I often think of farmers' markets as a summer activity but I was delighted to find my local market thriving this weekend. In addition to spicy Italian sausage, organic eggs, apples by the bushel, rack of lamb, winter root vegetables, and a plethora of baked goods, I found all kinds of treasures to liven up the non-cooking cooking I find myself doing when I get busy. Read: toast bread. Spread something yummy.

I picked up a jar of Beth's Farm Kitchen Apricot Jam, ($8) made & grown in the Hudson Valley. Containing nothing but apricots & sugar, essentially the filling of my favorite summer dessert, apricot cobbler, it was more or less summer in a jar.

Image, courtesy Beth's Farm Kitchen.

Next I wandered over to the Lynhaven Goat Milk Cheese ($6; lynnhaven@hvc.rr.com) stand, hard pressed to choose between goodies like Honey Chevre & Chevre with cranberries and cinnamon. I ended up selecting Cracked Pepper, a nice all purpose flavor with a kick.

Back at the ranch . . . spreading a toasted English muffin first with the chevre, which gets kind of nice and melty on the warm muffin, & then the jam: Oh, yes. A very tasty snack with a pretty good nutritional balance (but I'm more concerned about the taste, let's be honest)

Do it yourself: Try mixing any kind of jam (though I like non-berry jams better- pumpkin or apple butter, pear jam, etc.) with chevre or even cream cheese on warm bread of some kind. Another favorite: pumpkin butter & cream cheese on whole wheat tortilla.

My goodies weren't cheap compared to a box of Philly & a jar of generic jam, but like fashionistas justify spendy purchases with the "price per wear" statistic, my goodies turn quite a few cheap-o slices of bread into something extraordinary, and the "price per snack" is still cheaper than buying an oily muffin at a corner stand.

I bought my items at the Union Square Farmers Market, New York City.

Not Even Faux Gourmet

The Faux Gourmet Wants to Know: What is your favorite easy on-the-go snack? Leave your comments below!

I was ridiculed yesterday (again) for munching on one of my favorite snacks: pure, unadorned, celery.

Photo, Organic Passion

"Watching you eat that makes me doubt your abilities as a chef," one of my friends joked. It isn't that I'm trying to lose weight (celery famously has fewer calories than the number required to eat & digest it, but it is not a weight loss tool).

Nor am I seeking the health benefits (vitamin C, dietary fiber, potassium, foliate, molybdenum, manganese and vitamin B6, calcium, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, magnesium, vitamin A, phosphorous and iron, not to mention reducing high blood pressure, clearing uric acid from painful joints, possibly helping the treatment of arthritis and rheumatic problems, and helping the kidney as an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant).

I tried to explain that the fresh, clean celery was just a nice break from the more complicated flavors in the rest of my food but she was having none of it. Celery is, apparently, so lame, it isn't even faux gourmet. I suppose what with celery being so popular among such luminaries as guinea pigs, dogs, horses, birds, squirrels, and small rodents, it is a hard sell. But come on people, without celery you couldn't have chicken noodle soup, or Cajun cuisine, or a decent Bloody Mary! (My Auntie R's excepting.) Give me a break!

Photo, eat'n style Munchen (see also accompanying recipe)

So I persist in my celery eating ways, iconoclast that I am. I scoop up piles of velvety hummus, I fill it with peanut butter and dot it with raisins for a sweet little treat, or I just munch away, keeping me awake through hours of thick reading. Delicious!

Photo, Inside Voice (see also accompanying recipe)

Meanwhile, the Faux Gourmet has been wondering what simple snacks you, dear readers, turn to in a pinch, when you need an easy, portable snack to tide you through. You can't sound sillier than me, with my celery-munching ways!

Please post a comment & share your favorite on-the-go snacks.

Better Together

Some foods were meant to be soulmates.

Taste & See: I thought of about five different titles for this post about delectable food pairings, but I seem to keep entitling my posts after songs so I figured might as well continue the trend. (See also: Exhibit A, Exhibit B.) But really, that's the crux of the matter: some food pairings are as enduring as one night stands; others are meant to be food soulmates, each flavor bringing out the full beauty and potential of its other half.

Caramel & fleur de sel is one such delectable pairing. Sweet, gooey caramel punctuated by coarse, grainy bits of salt is an unbeatable combination. (Gourmet mag, home of food photos glorious enough to frame, has a wonderful recipe. Oh Ruth Reichl, what must I do to make you want me?)

Fleur de sel is a sea salt obtained by harvesting the crystals from the top of the pond, literally. It smells oceany and has a higher mineral content than table salts- and tends to come in coarser grains. (Read about it compared to other salts for different foodie needs here. Salted caramels are conspicuously absent, to my dismay.) It is expensive, about $20/lb. But you can use kosher(ing) salt or any other big grainy salt for a close second in a pinch. No pun intended.

The prospects of the joyous combination tempted me to undertake the foolhardy feat of making caramels without a candy thermometer. The result was disastrous. Trying to "eyeball" when melted sugar and butter would, once cooled, become neither liquid nor hardened but a gooey, chewy cube of perfect caramel resulted in caramels with the consistency of peanut butter.

This is what they should look like, as made by my Auntie Rachel for a recent party celebrating my brother's wedding:


Auntie Rachel clearly has a candy thermometer.

You can't really see the grains on the caramels above; they were smaller and faded into the melty caramel. On this truffle, however, they stand out beautifully:


This is from Juliette et Chocolat, a gorgeous little chocolaterie in Montreal, (could be straight from the movie) with thick chocolate drinks and heavenly desserts.

Another lovely format for the sweet-salty combination, also from Juliette et Chocolat:


This is a single-serving molten chocolate cake with caramel sauce, sprinkled with fleur de sel. Joy! I copied this by adding a caramel in the center, which melted as the individual cakes (made in cupcake pans) baked. Super easy. (I won't reprint it here, but the recipe I used is available on allrecipes.com.)

I've been loving balsamic vinegar reduction & strawberries, which I've written about before, as well, often with a bit of chevre, a creamy goat cheese.

This is a strawberry daiquiri (limeaid + frozen strawberries + rum + blender) with a modified version of "Beggars Purses," something I had at a great tapas restaurant in Brooklyn called Cafe Tapeo. (Great date restaurant. Lovely ambiance, not too pricey, and inventive culinary creations, all of which hit the mark. I wanted to steal their entire menu, and have been trying to recreate parts of my meal ever since my visit.)


They stuffed wonton wrappers with goat cheese and crisped them up, topping them with a rosemary syrup. My local grocery store had only phyllo dough, and I mixed goat cheese with plain yogurt because I didn't have enough cheese. I also added honey, rosemary and chopped almonds for a sweet crunch.

First couple tries with the phyllo were a mess. My stuffing was far too liquidy to hold up to the paper thin phyllo. I had to put my 'wonton' in a ramekin to keep it from imploding.


My 'egg roll' attempt just bled stuffing all over the baking pan.


Finally, I tried laying whole stacked sheets of phyllo dough on the baking sheet, topping with spoonfuls of filling in a grid, and pressing a few more layers on top with butter as glue- like ravioli. I gently slid a knife along to cut the big squares into single-serving pieces, baked about 10 minutes, and drizzled with rosemary balsamic reduction.

Served with a bright strawberry daiquiri, tangy and sweet like the vinegar reduction itself- another winning pair.
When making balsamic reduction try adding a sprig or two of rosemary, letting the woodsy flavor seep in. The sweet reduced syrup with a hint of a forest atop a pile of fresh strawberries incredible. It also works as a summer salad, with sliced strawberries atop mache or spinach, and pecorino or chevre. Or, again, with chevre with a spoonful of honey mixed in, as a play on strawberry shortcake. I ate mine atop polenta; you could also try a toasted whole wheat muffin if you're not the kind of chef who makes fresh biscuits on a daily basis.


PS: I've always loved chocolate & chile as well. It is always great in mole, in winter as a hot drinking chocolate, or in the summer as gelato. Sadly I have no good photos in my repertoire and haven't cooked anything in this vein in a while.

Sweet Lady Jane!

Just a berry cordial away
from an Anne of Green Gables remake.

Image from sweetladyjane.com

Taste & See: The name of this well-loved bakery sounds like something Anne of Green Gables might have exclaimed, wearing a straw hat and sipping on a lemonade at the church picnic. In roll the thunderclouds and Anne yells out, "Sweet Lady Jane, I think its gonna rain!" I can see her clasp her bosom buddy Diana's arms now, running to take shelter under a tree--but only after grabbing a big slice of Princess Cake to share while the storm passes.

Image from sweetladyjane.com

Today, though, "Sweet Lady Jane!" is probably reserved for exclamations of delight following a first bite (or a hundredth bite) of one of these pretty little cakes from this pretty little bakery by that name.

Image from sweetladyjane.com

The bakery also has a lunch menu with a few kinds of sandwiches and salads, and serves undrinkably strong French Press coffee, but let's be honest, we're here for the cake. They're so pretty, its kind of difficult to disturb the day-dreamy swirls (though once we got going we had no problem polishing them off without a trace, pretty swirls and everything):

Images from sweetladyjane.com

See here for more info on all Sweet Lady Jane's cakes- and to find out what yummy treats the pretty little things pictured above have inside.

The cake the other cakes must love to hate, the one always lauded in reviews, is Triple Berry Cake:


I don't mean to rain on the Triple Berry Cake's parade (or picnic, as the case may be). The bright berries against the ivy-bedecked white whipped cream and yellow butter cake are lovely:


But the cake itself was just . . . cake. Sweet Lady Jane generally makes good cake (though some complain it is too dry) but I like a some pizazz with my sugar high, and this was a little too normal for me. But apparently I'm the only person on the face of this earth who thinks so; even the USDA recommends this cake . . .

Another favorite, the undeniably girly Princess Cake--probably the cake all the boy-cakes get crushes on:


The green outer shell is not-too-sweet marzipan (almond paste).


The red is a layer of raspberry jam. I liked this a bit more than the Triple Berry; a little more mystery to it, with the nutty sweet of the marzipan and jam. The combination worked well.


But maybe beauty really is only skin deep, because delightful as these cakes appeared on the surface they were nowhere near as satisfying as Lemon Tart with Meringue-- the ugly duckling of the cake world.


Little Meringue, you may be big and round and your skin may not be smooth, but don't you worry, you'll grow up to be a beautiful swan of a dessert.

Now cupcakes are quite the rage in NYC- many people pin it to lady SATCs' obsession with a certain hallowed cupcakery-so I've had me a good cupcake or two. Tonnie's Minis, behind NYU law school in New York, is still my favorite. They might not be as pretty, but they're oh so good, and the people there are wonderful.) Sweet Lady Jane's versions make a strong showing, though, with perfect frosting, not too sweet, as perfect frosting must not be, and the moist red velvet cake.


But Sweet Lady Jane, I think your frosting decor needs a little inspiration from my own personal Valentines Day art project.


My favorite:


Well. What I lack in skill I make up for in originality.

Warning: Most of my reviews are overwhelmingly positive, but I should note a fair number of folks have complaints about rude service and dry cake, not worth the pricey slices. (Though others complain the portions are too big--and I'm prone to agree, I couldn't finish one by myself.)

As for me-I had a great time. Maybe it's hit or miss? At any rate, definitely worth going to see the temple to sweetness for yourself.