Bee Dessert - January 1, 2011

My friends used to love to come to my house because we always had at least a couple of kinds of potato chips, chocolates, juices and other nibbles that their mothers told them not to eat. Among all the snacks, sweet or savory, sometimes we got a treat: Lotte’s Choco Pie, which, in the far gone days of diet-free oblivion, I used to devour three or four after school. Bee’s honey cake with marshmallow was a more sophisticated and mature take on my childhood favorite.

Covered in a shell of good, shiny (good tempering technique) dark chocolate and stamped with a bee, the cake was pretty. Cracking open the cake prettily, however, posed a significant technical problem. Finally, giving up, I used my knife hammer-style and finally managed to break the hard chocolate wall – hardened in the refrigerator while it waited for my arrival, no doubt.

Once open, it revealed a snow-white, gooey, marshmallow and the famous honey cake. Although acclaimed that the very moist cake was made from honey, and only honey as sweetener, the taste of honey was completely taken over by the chocolate and marshmallow. As far as food combinations are concerned, I do think chocolate and honey are that good a marriage – e.g. apple and cinnamon and chocolate and coffee; therefore, I personally prefer that the honey’s primary contribution to the cake was as a moisturizer to the cake. This doubly sweet cake was refined for children – age twenty-one and up – and even, saved by, the shell of smooth, dark chocolate (70% cacao). Now, I only hope for the youthful reckless indulgence to return with the accompanying vigorous metabolism.

Bee Desserts
Address: 94 Greenwich Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Phone: (212) 366-6110