The Take on Cake

A piece of cake on the plate is making a comeback.

By Suzanne Hall

Cakes are on the rise. Like meatloaf and macaroni and cheese, they're making their way out of neighborhood diners and cafes and back onto more upscale menus. Even restaurants with themes that don't seem to lend themselves to cake are getting into the act.

Ginger Grove, for example, opened last October in Miami's Mayfair Hotel featuring an Asian-inspired menu that includes elements of Chinese, Japanese and Thai cuisines. For his dessert menu, executive chef Christian Plotczyk created a toasted-lemon-cake/ice-cream sandwich. The dessert, featuring two slices of lemon cake, two scoops of ice cream, drizzles of chocolate and fresh berries, is a hearty palate pleaser for cake and ice-cream lovers.

"Cakes are back, and customers are driving the revival. They're tired of one-bite, $10 desserts," says Barbara Pires, executive pastry chef for Metrotainment Cafes and Bakery in Atlanta. "They want the sweet comfort of traditional layer cakes, like carrot cake, that are old-fashioned and fun."

Cake on the plate

Carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting is a best seller at Vibrato Grill Jazz...etc. in Bel Air, Calif., where executive chef Chris Ennis' main-course menu includes roasted chicken, osso buco, seafood stew and an assortment of steaks. "We offer the kinds of dishes people associate with comfort. Cakes fit in with our retro kind of theme," Ennis says. "We make upside-down cakes with seasonal fruit, chocolate cake, even a yellow cake. We vary our offerings, but cakes are on the menu every night."

"If you're going to serve cake, you've got to have a chocolate cake," adds Rick Sordahl, who, as executive chef at the 254-room Grove Hotel in Boise, Idaho, is responsible for providing food throughout the hotel and in the corporate suites at an adjacent sports/entertainment center. Sordahl's cake menu includes chocolate/Kahlúa cake, chocolate-ganache cake, carrot cake, cheesecakes and caramel/apple cake. "Not everyone wants cake for dessert, but cakes do sell well," Sordahl says.

Since cakes dry out quickly, shelf life is one of the obstacles to putting cakes on the menu.

"Many cakes simply don't hold up well. You need to bake them and sell them," says Susan Ettesvold, CEPC, who organizes cooking classes and maintains the Web site for Rudy's-A Cook's Paradise in Twin Falls, Idaho. A longtime pastry chef, she owned and operated Metropolis Bakery Café in Twin Falls until rheumatoid arthritis forced her to give up pastry. When selecting cakes for her café and bakery, Ettesvold leaned toward cheesecakes, flourless chocolate cakes and dense, moist cakes, which have a longer shelf life than sponge cakes and fruit-topped cakes.

Jon Mortimer, CEC, another Boise chef, agrees that shelf life is a consideration when it comes to serving traditional cakes. That's why the executive chef and owner of Mortimer's, a 78-seat, fine-dining room, only bakes layer cakes by request or to offer as weekend specials. "I probably do about a dozen birthday cakes a week. But for the regular menu, I reserve layer cakes, which tend to dry out, for Fridays and Saturdays, when we are the busiest and I know the whole cake will sell," he says.

When cakes are on the menu, Mortimer often opts for cheesecakes and parfait cakes layered with ganache and seasonal local fruits such as berries, pears and apples. "Cakes also are very labor-intensive. They often take twice the time of many other desserts," he adds.

"Finding people with the ability to produce them is another problem," Sordahl says. "Big operations often have an executive pastry chef, assistant pastry chefs and pastry cooks. I don't have a pasty chef, but I do have someone who has formal training, a good vision and understands the principles. She does a good job. You need someone who understands that baking is a science."

Old recipes-new presentations

To increase shelf life and save time, chefs often opt away from towering layer cakes and instead serve individual cakes. They're usually faster to prepare, can be made partly in advance and eliminate waste.

For Emilio's, the Grove Hotel's fine-dining room, for example, Sordahl's staff prepares the batter for individual chocolate cakes a couple of days in advance. They fill 4-ounce aluminum soufflé cups with the batter, and store them in the walk-in. Since baking time is short, the cakes can be baked to order, and come out with a liquid center. Caramel/apple cakes are baked in individual ceramic ramekins.

Vibrato's carrot cakes are true three-layer cakes with cream-cheese frosting between the layers and on the top. "They'll hold in the walk-in for four or five days, but we never have them that long. They sell out in a day or two," Ennis says. His upside-down cakes--a pear version with chantilly cream was a recent menu offering--are made in individual pans. "When necessary, we can pre-bake them until they're about 90% done, and hold them in the cooler. At service, we put them in a 400°F oven for a couple of minutes."

Chocolate Valrhona cake is another popular dessert at Vibrato that's baked in individual portions. "On busy nights, we'll get them ready in advance," Ennis says. "The pastry chef pipes the batter into buttered pans, and par-bakes them for six or seven minutes. Before serving, we pop them back into the oven so they heat up but the center doesn't completely bake."

Outsourcing cakes

Because he has a pastry chef, Ennis can have cake on the menu every night. "If I didn't have someone dedicated to desserts, I might have to buy from local bakeries or use pre-made frozen cakes. I prefer to do everything in-house," he says.

Sordahl prides himself on producing as much of his menu in-house as possible. "Ninety-eight percent of our à la carte items are made from scratch," he says. When it comes to banquet service, though, that number drops to about 60%. Cakes are among the banquet items he purchases.

"We have several cakes on our banquet menus, to serve as plated desserts or on a dessert buffet. We just don't have the time or the freezer space to bake those cakes ourselves," Sordahl says. "And," he adds, "it's not cost-effective. Labor and food costs are just too high."

When purchasing cakes, Sordahl looks to his main purveyors, who provide cakes he can taste before buying. "Purchased cakes are better than they used to be," he says. "But, they're still not as good as the ones we bake ourselves."

Pires at Metrotainment Cafe and Bakery agrees that outsourcing cakes saves a restaurant time and money. "It's cheaper to buy cakes than hire someone to bake them," she says.

She disagrees, however, that purchased cakes are necessarily lower in quality than cakes made in restaurant kitchens. Supervising a team of 15 bakers, Pires produces cakes for Metrotainment's eight units and about 90 other restaurants in the Atlanta area. Her 10-inch round, four-layer cakes weigh between 8 and 10 pounds and cost $24. They're delivered in heavy-duty boxes that allow them to be stacked in the walk-in, and have a shelf life of five days.

"Our customers buy from us because they know we produce consistent cakes made with top-quality ingredients and no preservatives," Pires says. "Cake baking is a science," she agrees, "but it is also a passion. We have that passion."

Suzanne Hall is based in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn.