When it comes to chocolate, nobody is a bigger fan than my good friend Paul, who pronounces his favorite food with a Brooklyn drawl, and it sounds a lot like “chawklit.” And although we’ve shared many a sweet dessert over the last few decades together, we were excited to participate in the ultimate chocoholic showdown, thunk up by none other than yours truly. I know. Hold your applause.
Even though I’d been a frequent visitor to The Cheesecake Factory over the course of my adult life, I was usually too full to order dessert. Hard to believe but true. And lately I had been reading about the difference between TCF’s Linda’s Fudge Cake with layers of rich chocolate cake and fudge frosting and their Chocolate Tower Truffle Cake with layers and layers of fudge cake, chocolate truffle cream AND chocolate mousse. Well, that sounded like the perfect opportunity for a throwdown to me.
So, at my invitation, Paul and I hit up The Cheesecake Factory visiting their Edison, New Jersey location for a weekday workday lunch break. Paul is someone who could skip the savory part of every meal altogether and move right onto dessert, but one of us had to be the adult in the room and on the day in question I nominated myself.
We started with their brown bread served hot and complementary salted whipped butter which calls my name every time. Jeez they have my number. I’m usually a Santa Fe Salad gal with the black beans, corn and cheese. But today we ordered super light.
From the SkinnyLicious Menu I had the Factory Chopped Salad with tiny amounts of grilled chicken, tomato, corn, bacon, and blue cheese with the dressing on the side and Paul had the Beet and Avocado Salad with glazed beets, avocado, fresh orange, arugula and a honey-yogurt sauce. I definitely made a dent in mine while he pushed around the orange segments forgetting there was no beef in his BEET salad. Hilarious moment! We had to make sure we had something in our systems before the intense sugar inebriatory ritual commenced. We enjoyed friendly banter as always but could not hide our excitement for our upcoming caloric challenge—the chocoholic showdown.
After two unimpressive clean plate club failures (sorry Mom), we chose to push aside our entrées and prepare for the task at hand. Palettes cleansed with a swish of club soda, we ordered one slice of Linda’s and one slice of the Chocolate Tower for a head-to-head matchup, and it was game on.
Not being at all shy with the forks, we dug right into the huge plated portions as soon as preliminary photos were snapped. We agreed in advance to go cake by cake and share our thoughts after the initial few bites. Linda’s was up first. At taste one, the fudginess was apparent. The sheen of the frosting and the impressive stack of layers had us both at hello. And the side of whipped cream was a cool offset to the very rich taste. The frosting was terrific but the cake was a bit dry and hard to cut.
But the Tower was a strong contender showcasing even more layers and a whole lot of truffle flavor and boldness to each chocolatey forkful. Again the side of whip acted as a lovely counterbalance, although Paul was a purist avoiding the cream I dug in.
This experiment reminded me of Elle Woods’ quote in Legally Blonde when her advisor was trying to impress upon her that getting into Harvard Law School would be difficult so she would need backups. And Elle replied, “”I don’t need back-ups. I’m going to Harvard,”. She then added, “I once had to judge a tighty-whitey contest for Lambda Kappa Pi. Trust me, I can handle anything.” Well Elle, we too were up for the judging. So, here’s the skinny on our chocolatey results…
The winner by a unanimous two forks to none was the Chocolate Tower Truffle Cake. It was moist, decadent, well layered, sweet, creamy and satisfying. And although we loved this scrumptious challenge, we did not decimate either piece. The Chawklit King himself packed up the remains to be consumed at a later date– and knowing Paul he probably had frosting for dinner!
jenslittleblackbook.com 