Gooey decadent chocolate oozing flavor and rich scent as I peel back the paper surrounding the confection and take a bite of cake topped with just the right proportion of icing and sprinkles. Chocolate sprinkles, chocolate icing, and, oh yes, chocolate cake.
Alas, I had really high hopes for my cupcake, purchased at a local bakery after lunch today. The bakery’s name will remain anonymous since I obviously don’t encourage anyone to eat their vegan cupcakes. I seldom get dessert, since most are made with eggs, a no-no in my diet. Normally I just sneak a few spoons of icing off the slice of regular cake that my husband ordered. He’s never happy about it, since he likes the icing and cake together, and I don’t leave much icing for him if I can get in a few bites before he says something.
In the interests of keeping K happy, though, I do try to locate desserts I can eat, although they seldom include chocolate and never involve cake. So perhaps my expectations for chocolate satisfaction were unrealistically high and doomed to disappointment when I tore into this eagerly awaited vegan cupcake.
The first bite was chocolaty and sugary. Almost cloyingly sweet, in fact. The next bite of cupcake revealed the real flaw – the cake lacked depth of flavor. Texturally, the cake was moist, and not too heavy, which is K’s common complaint with my eggless (but not vegan) cakes. They tend to be kinda dense, which this one wasn’t.
However, what it provided in terms of mouth-feel it could not deliver in terms of flavor. The rich taste of chocolate simply wasn’t there. My go-to chocolate cake recipe happens to be vegan (although I do add a couple spoons of honey to keep it extra moist) and provides much deeper flavors than this cupcake did. All I need is a good chocolate icing recipe and the time to do pretty piping on my own cakes.
Honestly, the best tasting part of today’s cupcake was the chocolate icing. Sorry, K, it looks like I’ll keep stealing the icing off your cake while the hunt for the perfect eggless chocolate cake continues.