Cake Man Raven is a store in my neighborhood that, more often than not, sells just one type of cake: red velvet. if you don’t like red velvet, you might as well walk on by. Their website actually lists several different cake flavors (and cookies, too), presumably for sale by special order, but when I asked the guy behind the counter at the shop if they ever were going to offer other flavors in the shop, he launched into a long-winded response ultimately saying that they have a hard time keeping red velvet in stock so they aren’t offering other flavors right now. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, I mean, so you aren’t going to sell other flavors until the red velvet isn’t selling well? One flavor selling well doesn’t seem like it should preclude the sale of other flavors. I don’t have an MBA, and they have been in business for 8 years, so what do I know, maybe this makes business sense. I admit these complaints are self-serving—I am just desperate to try their other flavors after tasting the great red velvet.
In any case, the Hubs and I visited the shop and got a slice to go (they also offered cupcakes, but the frosting-to-cake ratio appeared higher in the slice, so we naturally went that direction). The slice was huge–more than enough for two. It was really decadent and delicious. The cake wasn’t terribly chocolately (red velvet is supposed to be chocolate, right?), but it almost didn’t matter because the frosting was the star. It was a fluffy, rich, slightly cream-cheesey frosting. It was truly spectacular. It didn’t have that weird artificial, mouth-coating, Crisco-ish texture that many frostings suffer from. the sweetness is cut a bit by the nuts, and also, ingeniously, the cake itself. You see, if you took a bite of cake on it’s own, sans frosting, it was a bit on the salty side, in a not unpleasant way. The cake had great texture, and wasn’t oily like some other red velvet cakes I have had, but really sings when combined with the frosting.
Overall, the cake was a winner. I just hope some day Cake Man Raven decides to grace the public with other flavors. Soon.
708-a Fulton St.
Brooklyn New York 11217
(718) 694-2253
Entries (RSS)