The bakery at the posh QFC Broadway Market (417 Broadway Ave E, 328-6920) does custom jobs, but they'd dropped my order, and so instead I picked up a readymade cake topped with a jolly snowman of icing, which the focus group found super cute. The cake itself (avg. score: 3) tasted like a sweet kitchen sponge, and the frosting was an undistinguished pale-brown lather. One taster found virtue in its fluffiness: "Super fluffy! Good icing," but another huffed, "I'm not even tasting that cake, it's too fluffy." Although I'd been hoping for an underdog surprise, it remained, sadly a supermarket cake, cheap ($9.99 for 8"), but unlovable underneath its snowman. One thing that might recommend QFC: For a small fee, they can print a photograph on your cake, should you need to top one with an image of Werner Fassbender or Mr. Winkle or your own photocopied ass.
The Erotic Bakery (2323 N 45th St, 545-6969) misunderstood my choco-centrism and produced a cake--complete with a hot-pink Happy Fucking Birthday! greeting--with white icing instead. On top there was a clever rear-end portrait of a very well-hung man, his penis a full two-thirds as long as his legs. But for the pink head of the schlong, the marzipan sculpture was molded in wan, untinted marzipan. "Why is the marzipan such a dead-man's hue?" asked one taster. "Definitely a Seattle skin tone" responded another. The cake (avg. score: 3.3) was darker and more sugary than QFC's, the icing a fluffy poultice of confectioners' sugar. But if you need a cake with a cock or pussy on it, that will probably trump any picky little taste quibbles. As always, you pay for your pornography, and the naughty cake came at a premium ($34.95 for only 7"). Come, though, is free upon request.
It's only a couple of years old, but Two Tartes Bakery in Georgetown (5629 Airport Way S, 767-8012) has an adorable 1950's appeal to it, and its cake ($25) looked like something Ike might like: proud and tall, with scrolls of dark, glossy icing. That "nice sour creamy frosting" turned out to be very good indeed, more supple and sprightly than any competition, but it was unfortunately offset by the too-dry cake underneath (avg. score: 6.1). A little landslide of crumbs tumbled out as we served it up. Still, for frosting queens (you know who you are) it might be the right cake.
It's no surprise here that you get what you pay for, and our tasters made very enthusiastic fork gestures as they swooped in for seconds and thirds of the cake ($40 for 9") from Tom Douglas' Dahlia Bakery (2001 Fourth Ave, 441-4540, avg. score: 7.8). Described as "a good mix of different chocolates; not so dense," it was the most harmonious cake, merging a less-sweet dark cake layer with a band of velveteen chocolate mousse, and a tasty milk-chocolate frosting. It was pretty, too, with a little filigree of ivory chocolate around its perimeter.
If you listened to the loudmouths in the room, there is no doubt that the Dahlia Bakery cake won the taste-off, but in fact it actually rated a statistical tie with a pretty, unassuming cake (avg. score: 7.9, $28 for 8") from the North Hill Bakery (518 15th Ave E, 325-9007). North Hill's offering was unassuming but pretty, with a pale brown "more chocolate than sweet" frosting, and a few silk flowers on top. It was the cake itself that made it stand out--dense and moist like none of its competitors, but without getting into the fudgy texture of a flourless cake. As one enthusiast commented, "tastes more homemade, not all uppity." And the last thing we need in this world is an uppity chocolate cake.
