My favorite vegetable since I was a child is Ampalaya. I never outgrew it. The bitterness that presses the brain down as the juice from crunchy gourd escapes and triggers the back side sensor of the tongue. I like it maybe because I have an insatiable sweet tooth. It either makes the sugar I devour sweeter or it lessens my guilt for eating too much cake. Cake is one of mankind’s greatest food invention. I mean it’s not a derivative of something that naturally exists in the world like salad. It’s like when we invented the simple bread, we knew that there must be something more to this! Cake is a proof of creativity, like music. Cake makers are like alchemist to a fan like me.
I like my living situation. I love where I live, north of the Metro. I have Cake 2Go, Geni Sison and her Pistachio sans rival , and the revered Estrel’s caramel cake. The south of Manila got Becky’s but Chocolate Kiss can fill that void. Then I met this guy, John who shared my cake fanaticism. But he had a chip on shoulder the size of a full blown 8 inch diameter pastry. He told he got something much better. I asked him where he buys his confection contraband? He told me he makes his own.
An alchemist.
So I asked him to bring some. I asked him to bring two. A double dare of sorts. He said it’s going to cost me more than the Ribbons I’m used to but I told him it won’t matter if it’s worth it.
He made me a choco caramel cake and a choco-macadamia sans rival. Sans Rival (‘no rival’ in French for a reason) is my sister Aiyee and I’s favorite cake. It’s a light and creamy killer that if done perfectly, it does not make you feel like you’re ingesting 500 grams of butter. I like the crunchy contradiction of the meringue aided by the nuts. I offered the choco-yema cake to my dealer friends at Midas. Yema have that thin crispy crust that breaks through every bite in a bed of moist chocolate cake. With sweetness amped to 11, I hoped I had a cup of Highlands Coffee, black and aromatic to compliment it.
I brought home the Choco-Macadamia to an excited wife. It was perfect and within the night, it was history. Usually, Sans Rival have a short shelf life. The meringue layers get damp and it pulls like cheap tira tira. The formula or the art for keeping Sans Rival crunchy became as elusive as the Holy Grail. Cake Planet is the Holy Grail or at least the gold standard for the Sans Rival crunch.
I like where I live, but for once, I wished I lived in Better Living and orbit by Cake Planet for an out of this world Cake experience.
danDAman 