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February 12, 2005
a patisserie kind of guy
I am, paraphrasing Arnold Brown, a patisserie kind of guy. You can take your wine bars, your supermarkets, your delis (up to a point), but if you're trying to close down a patisserie, you will find me mounting a one-person campaign to eat them back into business.
So I was pleasantly suprised to see a new cake shop open in Helsinki. Weirdly, for all its culinary foibles, Helsinki has a disproportionately large number of extremely good cake shops. The granddaddy of them all is Cafe Ekberg, whose creations have graced my kitchen many times.
Kakku Galleria - the cake gallery! - is just down the road from Ekberg; both perilously close to my flat. I'd walked past it a few times before, either not being in a position to buy cake (if you see a Nathan Barley-esque figure wandering round Helsinki with a cake box in one hand, it's probably me), or the shop had been closed.
Today, however, I was on a cake mission.
Kakku Galleria is a wonderful little shop, decked out in minimal but warm design - lots of lovely small old-fashioned drawers containing all kinds of wrapping. It offers 15-20 kinds of cake, against Ekberg's smaller takeaway selection, most offered either by the slice or whole. There's also cookies, a quiche or two, and some capability for hot drinks (untested on this visit).
I decided on a slice each (3 €) of Saschertorte and passion fruit mousse cake, and one of the interesting looking cookies (2€).
I have to say, everything was very good. I started with the cookie, which was a lot harder than I expected on first bite - slightly shortbready, but some moistness in the middle. The large object on top isn't pieces of nut, it's a large hunk of chocolate, added during cooking to slightly melt and embed itself. Fantastic.
Cake wise, the passion fruit mousse cake was a revelation. You opened the box, and there was a strong smell of passion fruit. Taking a bite, I realised the base was made from ginger nuts, giving a wonderful gingery salty counterpoint to the strong fruity mousse. Excellent.
I chose the sachertorte because I wanted something chocolatey, but also many sachers are overwhelmed by the apricot jam. This was very well balanced; the cake itself could have been a little bit chocolatier, but this just exposes my preference for extreme chocolate desserts. The chocolate fondant was very fine indeed.
I think I will be returning to try the entire range; it does seem like there's a new cake shop to beat in Helsinki. A big differentiator is that they really understand chocolate - you can buy many single-region chocolates, and they offer buttons of many different cocoa strengths as well. Prices are slightly more expensive than Ekberg I think, but the wider range available, friendly knowledgable service and dedication to quality mean that the cakes are well worth the money.
Kakku Galleria is at Bulevardi 34, and also operates the cafe in the Design Forum at Erottaja 7 (another place that always seems to be shut when I have tried to visit before). The shop is open until 3 on Saturday, 7 on weekdays, and not at all, sadly on Sunday (not sure about the Design Forum hours).
(sorry Fiona!)
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