Posted by Kathy YL Chan, November 4, 2008 at 6:00 PM
No stranger to desserts, olive oil is almost a mainstay in sweets throughout New York—be it the famed Olive Oil Gelato of Otto, the Olive Oil Cake with Riesling Poached Peaches from Terrior, or the Chocolate-Ricotta Tortino with Pistachios and Olive Oil at Del Posto.
But sometimes an olive oil treat takes you by surprise and reminds you once again just how lovely it shines in sweets. Simple is best, and a sunny, golden slice of Abraço's Olive Oil Loaf is just that. Pleasing to the eye, a single $3-slice is far from the typical "light" and "fluffy" adjectives we associate with cakes. Abraço's slice conjures up descriptors like moist and luxuriously dense. The loaf is only a touch sweet, with the ever-present taste of olive oil—ideal for when you crave baked goods but not sugar. The loaf satisfies in a way a triple-frosted cake cannot.
Abraço
86 E 7th Street, New York NY 10003 (at 1st Avenue; map)
212-388-9731
Posted by Zach Brooks, July 23, 2008 at 6:30 PM
Photograph by thewanderingeater
From the Gramercy Tavern restaurant week and regular dessert menu: "My blackberry streusel cake with blackberry lime sherbert was simple yet so delicious. The cake was moist [and] densely dotted with whole sweet-tart blackberries, the streusel added a crunchy dimension, and the sherbet added a touch of creamy-tartness." Read about the whole meal on The Wandering Eater.
Gramercy Tavern
42 East 20th Street, New York NY 10003 (nr. Fifth Avenue; map)
212-477-0777
Posted by Ed Levine, December 4, 2007 at 3:55 PM
Thanks to our friends at Eater, I've spent the morning contemplating my fourteen favorite birthday cake toppings, fillings, and frostings in New York. I've even added one more for good measure. Think of the fifteenth as the cherry on top. These are for you, Ben Leventhal.
Continue reading »
Posted by Ed Levine, August 15, 2006 at 10:28 AM
Why do most birthcake cakes suck?
I'd really like to know. While everybody else is singing "Happy Birthday," I'm thinking about how that first forkful of cake is going to be dry, virtually tasteless, and inedibly sweet, with grainy icing. Birthday cakes are often so bad I welcome the taste of the melted wax from the candles. I know I'm going to be seen as a killjoy and a curmudgeon, but I'm willing to take one for the team (of passionate eaters) here.
But on Saturday night, at a friend's 50th birthday, we had a killer chocolate mocha cake that could have been served as a dessert at a great New American restaurant like Craft or the Union Square Cafe. That the cake was great was no surprise to me. I told my friends to get the cake from Two Little Red Hens. I've had at least ten different kinds of cake from TLRH, everything from yellow to white to chocolate cake, with every kind of frosting and filling imaginable, and I've never been disappointed.
There are a few other neighborhood bakeries that make very good birthday cakes: Soutine, and Amy's Bread.
I used to love Cupcake Cafe cakes, and while they are indeed beautiful, I have found that over the years they have gotten so buttery that's all they taste of. The Cupcake Cafe cakes prove that in fact food can suffer from butter overload, and I didn't think that was possible.
So maybe birthday cakes don't have to suck. We just have such low expectations for them that we accept bad birthday cakes as a given, and we convince ourselves that they're not all that bad (my very polite wife's solution).
As a result we suffer in silence. Not any more. Join me in my "Birthday cakes don't have to suck" crusade.
Posted by Ed Levine, January 3, 2006 at 1:25 PM
I managed to get through the holidays without gaining any weight. In fact, I lost a pound between Christmas and New Year's Eve. I am particularly proud of this given the amount of food that not so mysteriously makes it way to our house during the holiday season. You see, for a food writer, every day is Xmas in terms of the flow of food presents. While the rest of the world only has to resist temptation from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day every year, food writers are constantly tempted by people who send us food to sample 24-7 the entire year.
This year we received the following at our house between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day:
- Buttered pecans and candied pecans from North Carolina.
- Peanuts from Virginia
- Six pints of Graeter's Ice Cream in Cincinatti
- Six pints of Capogiro Gelato from Philadelphia.
- A huge gift basket of food sent by a writer client of my literary agent wife
- Samples of what turned out to be an awful low-cal ice cream.
- Two kinds of pound cake.
- A pound of delicious Smoked Salmon.
- Three different kinds of designer chocolate
- An eight pound smoked brisket from Texas.
Most of these were holiday presents from friends and colleagues. I know it sounds churlish to complain about this flow of free grub, but if you're someone who adores food who happens to be on a diet, it does make it difficult.
I am accepting all gifts of kelp and miso this post-holiday season.
