Temple Bar

June 14

Please accept our apologies for the months-long hiatus! But don't fret, your favorite fat kids were still hard at work finding the best chocolate cake in Boston! After almost two months chocolate cake-free (what were we even doing in May??), we finally sat down at Temple Bar on Mass Ave for dinner with a side of catching up. Even though we had just spent the previous 2 weekends together. (Trip to NY and Second Saturday at the Machine!) But Xing-Yin chose the location, and I think at this point we both hadn't seen her for a while, so we did have a lot of catching up to do! If only that were my job.

The only chocolate cake on the menu was German chocolate cake. Did you know that German chocolate cake is not from Germany? It was invented by an American whose last name was German, and was originally called German's chocolate cake, and people dropped the 's over the years. Neither of us are the hugest fans of German chocolate cake, but Steph thought it was good! So passable, but still not the best.

The strawberries make it healthy.

Kickass Cupcakes

April 17

For Marathon Monday weekend, two of our favorite girls came to visit Boston and join in the chocolate cake adventure: Lolo and Dana! Lo really wanted to have brunch, and even gave our little group a name: Bitches Who Brunch. Love it! The first meeting of BWB took place at Gargoyles on the Square, which turned out to be a really fun disco-themed fête complete with self-served coffee. Steph was a little suspicious of how we chose the place (we picked it off the Metro's list of brunch suggestions, its primary advantage being that it's listed first), but the food was great and the ambiance was fun! Definitely recommended.

On to dessert! It was really nice out, so we walked the long way to Kickass Cupcakes in Davis Square. First of all, this place obviously gets points for the name, and the cupcakes lived up to it! Among our group, we tried red velvet, carrot cake, a banana bread-like cake, and quite a few others (true fat kids). The one that looked to be most promising, of course, was the Super Chocolate!

Kickass Cupcakes are really pretty too!

Super Chocolate turned out to be more like a brownie than cake. It was awesome, but so brownie-like that we thought it wasn't really cake. So in the world of best chocolate cakes: disqualified! However, we also got the vegan chocolate cupcake, a flourless cake with a chocolate ganache center and chocolate frosting. Yum! This was a much better chocolate cake! Steph's rating: pretty bangin'. And because it's vegan, it's healthy too! (Well, relatively so...)

We spent the rest of the day reminiscing at Wellesley, which has a wonderfully elaborate retrospective at the Davis right now of the found-objects/material artist El Anatsui. We then had dinner at Lemon Thai (a Wellesley College student favorite, though I stand by my opinion that it is not good Thai food), and Lauren and Dana experienced more nostalgia by treating themselves to Truly Yogurt. What a happy day! 

Lauren's fat-kid comment of the day: "I only eat this much when I'm with you guys." We love you too!

Finale

April 2

When we first came up with this idea and were still gathering places to try, we couldn't think of any place that was really renowned for their chocolate cake, until Steph's co-worker said, "Umm...Finale!" Finale is really known for having truly indulgent desserts, and we knew we eventually had to try their Dark Chocolate Decadence. This flourless cake is so dense, it's really like solidified fudge--you actually have to put some effort into getting your spoon through it!

Steph's photo comment: "artsy!" Thanks, friend!

We enjoyed our chocolate cake with frequent guest taster Xing-Yin, as well as Hillary's sister and brother (visiting from San Francisco). This heavenly little dessert followed brunch at Hillary's, and it was actually a small post-birthday surprise for Steph! Seriously, I got her a gift card for her birthday and registered it on Finale's website. You get a free dessert for your birthday, and this was Steph's...just a little tip from your favorite chocolate cake blog!

Steph's comment when I told her this one was free for her birthday: "Sweet! No pun intended."

L'Espalier

March 20

Happy new year from the girls who never plan ahead and rarely accomplish things in a timely manner (including writing of blog posts)! We kicked off the first chocolate cake excursion of 2011 at L'Espalier, the Back Bay restaurant probably best known for its fancy French cuisine and as one of the most expensive restaurants in Boston, because you know how we roll. Thank goodness for Restaurant Week (this is our second) because L'Espalier had a $20.11 prix fixe lunch menu. Our first course was not especially memorable--endives with some foam--but everything else was yummy! We both had the arctic char with risotto. Arctic char, if you remember from our first Restaurant Week at Mare, is a most environmentally friendly choice of seafood. So delicious and sustainable!

We decided to go crazy, mix it up, and order different desserts! There were two options and we always share because we were raised so well, so this wasn't too difficult. One was a cute pairing of panna cotta and raspberry mousse cake, but the star of the show was the dark chocolate cake. It was really good--it had a lightness that was airy, but still dense enough to be darkly satisfying. Yum!

What is with French food and foam? 

L.A. Burdick

Nov. 14 and 18

Ever since Hillary moved to Harvard Square, we've been trying to go to L.A. Burdick, best known for their sumptuously rich hot chocolate that you practically have to eat with a spoon. Steph's not too into hot chocolate though, so not to worry, the cake still takes center stage on this outing! 

Our first try was on a Sunday, after a vegetarian lunch at the newly-opened Clover Food Lab in Harvard Square, introduced to us by Xing-Yin. (We agreed months ago that she introduces us to such wonderful things in life!) Though we won't get too into the lunchtime conversation, please let it be known that Steph gives great and hilarious advice about men! It was a nice, brisk stroll over to Burdick, which is nearly always crowded on chilly weekend afternoons, so we took 2 small hot chocolates and a slice of coconut chocolate cake to Hillary's apartment. After observing the crookedness of the floor (yes, Hillary lives in a crooked apartment!), we gave it a taste! 

We photographed the placard so you can read the description!

The cake was kind of dry, the way coconut cakes often are (Steph said the cake part tasted old), so this was an unfortunate disappointment. Luckily, we had the opportunity to give Burdick a second chance later that week! 

Our super-awesome friend and biggest fan Evelyne was in town later that week! Evelyne also journeyed with us to Sunset Grille, thus far still a top runner. If you've been paying attention, you'll remember that Evelyne is a vegetarian (actually, you'd know this because everyone who reads this blog is friends with us), so Shabu Zen in Chinatown was a great choice for dinner (last time, we went to the one in Allston). But before dinner, Hillary had to run home to Harvard Sq. to drop off her things, grab the camera, take an orgo exam, etc., so she picked up another chocolate cake from Burdick for dessert! This time we had the chocolate mousse cake with lingonberry jam and ganache. What a a world of improvement moisture makes! (The Steph in my head is saying, "That's what she said.") We all thought this cake was really yummy!

Check out that day's headline!

And of course, this adventure was made all the more awesome by Evelyne's presence. Evelyne, we look forward to your moving here soon! 

Blue Ginger

Oct. 15

As a 4-and-a-half-month post-commencement celebration, Steph and Hillary took Lolo to locally-famous Blue Ginger in Wellesley! We had never been while at Wellesley, and had always wanted to try their renown Asian-fusion fare. We wanted to take Lolo in May, but our poor girl was under the weather from lack of sleep. You know, the usual studying too hard for finals, working non-stop on her thesis, and maybe even something caught from having too much fun as well...

Because it's Blue Ginger, we have to share what we had for our meal! Steph loves Shiitake mushrooms, so for our appetizer, we shared the Shiitake-leek springrolls and they were amazing! We also shared our three entrees, one of which was Blue Ginger's signature sake-miso Alaskan butterfish. The butterfish lived up to its name (how can something have the word "butter" in it and not practically melt with tastiness?), it was as smooth and delicious as the arctic char we had at Mare! Everything was also nearly perfectly proportioned, so we had just the right amount of room for dessert!

We had no question about what to order for dessert- the bittersweet chocolate cake, covered in chocolate ganache and served with cardamom (a ginger spice) ice cream and a wafer. In our case, we got two wafers because we told our server that we were celebrating Lolo's birthday! (Who celebrates a graduation on a rainy October night?)

Happy Birthday, Lolo! It even comes with a birthday candle!

Despite being reminded by Evelyne to bring a camera, we forgot! So the above photo was taken on Lo's camera. The chocolate, cake and ice cream were all really good! But Steph argues that you have to take the cost of the dessert into consideration, so her overall assessment: not worth it. However, as Evelyne faithfully noted, the awesomeness of the chocolate cake correlates strongly with how much fun we have on the outing. We love Lo, and now that she's off in Hanover, NH, spending time with her, laughing over a meal and sharing chocolate cake are even more precious celebrations! So as a toast to our friendship, this chocolate cake does pretty well!

Highlight of the evening- Steph: "I would never date a pizza delivery boy because when we go out for pizza, I want him to pay for the pizza. I don't want him to high-five his bro!"

Incidentally, I love high-fiving my girls :)

Legal Sea Foods

Sep. 24

Back when we were still coming up with places to visit for this odyssey, Steph had lunch at Legal Sea Foods with Mama Teresa and came back raving about their warm chocolate pudding cake! You may not think of chocolate pudding cake (with sides of vanilla ice cream and a coconut cookie) as being among the menu items worth raving about at Legal, but Steph insisted that we try it, so on the list it went (by the way, at this point, our list consisted of Bar Lola and Legal Sea Foods)!

Return to present last-Friday: Hillary and Steph hadn't seen each other since our rendezvous at Mare for restaurant week and tiramisu panna cotta! With our non-overlapping (underlapping?) out-of-town trips and hectic life schedules, making time for chocolate fell sadly to the wayside. Then Steph called Hillary on a Friday spent at a conference in Copley Square, and Hillary hopped on the T to meet her!

We weren't quite in the mood for dinner, as Steph still had a business dinner scheduled that evening and Hillary--let's face it--eats throughout the day at work. So Steph came up with the perfect compromise: raw oysters from Legal's seafood bar. Now we feel that our assessment of the oysters is just as important as our quest for the best chocolate cake, not least because many of our friends love oysters! Steph had the clever idea of trying one each of the four types. We judged the Kumamoto oyster, all the way from the island of Kyushu, Japan, to be the tastiest one! Whichever one came from Cape Cod was also really good. Though all delicious, we differed in our opinions of the final two; Steph enjoyed the meatiness of the oyster from New Jersey/ New York, while Hillary liked the sweeter flavor of the Canadian oyster. Also, Steph loves horseradish--when we came back from Memorial Day weekend on the Cape (P-town!), she bought a jar of it at the grocery store. Seriously, I've never seen anyone love horseradish so fanatically!

On to dessert: without even having to consult a menu, Steph requested the warm chocolate pudding cake. This ooey-gooey mound of molten goodness didn't possess the density of the cakes we normally prefer, but it is, after all, chocolate pudding. The chocolate itself was delectable, and the texture was the perfect balance between liquid hot chocolate and flourless cake! Steph insisted that it was even better warm (judging by the degree of melting of the vanilla ice cream, our server had most likely forgotten that  our divine dessert was waiting to find a home in our tummies!). But this definitely goes on the list of possible bests!

I love spontaneous get-togethers!

 We forgot to bring a camera again