Here Comes the Cake

Over a year ago, while we were planning our wedding, AC became focussed on finding the best vendor for our cake. Neither of us are big cake people, but AC had a wacky idea, and he wanted to find the right bakery to pull it off.

We settled on Charm City Cakes, helmed by Duff Goldman, who you might know from various Food Network cake challenges and, now, his own show. At the time, we had no idea of the fame (or, frankly, the mad scientist) potential of our cake baker. He is known for his off-the-wall creations that sometimes involve moving parts and non-edible objects. But when we arrived at Duff's bakery, we knew we had made the right choice.

AC wanted our cake to evoke fin de siècle artist Aubrey Beardsley, so we took in a book of drawings and showed Duff a picture we liked, which actually ended up being a knock-off Beardsley but still had that masqueradey/exotic feel of an original.

Duff seemed to be excited about the challenge and even said something to the effect of "thanks for bringing this cool idea to us."

Fast-forward several months, just a couple weeks before the wedding, I get a call from the bakery asking me if it's okay if they film the making of a cake for a Food Network special, and also would we like to be in the show extolling the glory of our cake on camera in all of our wedding glory. The answer to the first question was, "of course!" But we respectfully declined the offer to be on camera on our wedding day. No thank you.

The cake was tremendous. We opted for a cherry-almond cake with a basic buttercream frosting. In between each layer of cake was a filling of
fresh cherry chunks. It was amazing. Because I didn't get the chance to
actually have a full piece during the wedding, I shamelessly dug into
the top tier later that night. Come on, how could you expect AK and AC
to keep food in our freezer for a whole year!?

Three months after the fact, we have learned that our cake did not end up on the proverbial cutting room floor, as our wedding creation will indeed be featured on tonight's episode of "Ace of Cakes," the new show devoted to the innovation and madness of Duff Goldman and his crew. Check it out at 10:30 Eastern/9:30 Central on the Food Network.

Cake photo by Jay Wilson.

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—AK

A Deconstructed Malted

I used to loathe malted anything. When ravaging my annual Halloween haul, I always left the packs of Whoppers malted milk balls lingering among the debris field of Mary Janes, Clark Bars, Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews, and other unloved candies at the bottom of my trick-or-treat bag.

But in my last year or two in New York, I developed a powerful taste for malteds. Incidentally, AK’s dad recently mentioned that he could tell she had once been a real New Yorker because she called a malt by its rightful “malted” designation.

It all started with an obligatory pilgrimage to the Lexington Candy Shop, an old school diner and soda fountain that made a brief cameo at the beginning of the classic 70s paranoia flick Three Days of the Condor. If you live in New York and haven’t been to the Lexington Candy Shop, you’re missing out on a classic slice of old New York. They have amazing malteds, extra sour cherry lime rickeys, and they get bonus points for continuing to offer the lost American breakfast classic that is the grape jelly omelet. And yes, we’ve had the grape jelly omelet because we’re that trashy.

A subsequent trip to the Bespeckled Trout, a cluttered shop of antique curiosities flanked by an old fashioned soda fountain, revealed the extent to which soda jerkistry could be an art form. The impassioned proprietor apparently makes his own syrups and even imports raw malt pellets from Wisconsin.

Unfortunately, we’ve not yet discovered a classic malted in the D.C. area. But we’ve managed to content ourselves with a quality substitute: the Dusty Road sundae at the Dairy Godmother, Del Ray’s much celebrated Wisconsin-style custard shop.





The Dusty Road is basically a deconstructed malted. Their creamy vanilla custard comes topped with hot fudge and malt powder, and though we skip the whipped cream and nuts, we can’t not get the maraschino cherry.

The genius of the dusty road is that it allows you to decide how to moderate your malted with each spoonful- from granular malt powder overkill to smooth blend of custard, malt, and hot fudge.

Although we had always thought that the Dusty Road was owner Liz Davis’ singular creation, she informed us that this sundae format is a standard offering in the midwest. But she assured us that our other favorite, the Door County Sour, which pairs marshmallow creme and sour cherries specially imported from Door County, Wisconsin, is a Dairy Godmother original. I replied that the Door County Sour is her great contribution to sundae culture. I think, however, that this C.I.A. trained former pastry chef might have greater aspirations than that.

Sate your frozen treat jones at the Dairy Godmother:

2310 Mount Vernon Avenue
Alexandria, VA
(703) 683-7767

—AC

Donut Disturbed

Last weekend, AC and I went on a donut binge to three purveyors of weekend-only donut specials. DCist ran my piece on our excursion today, but we wish to share with you some extra photographic evidence of this truly gluttonous experience. Folks, we ate 11 donuts in two days. And they were all terrific.



Colorado Kitchen does a fancy schmancy twist on the cake donut (AC usually loves cake donuts, me, not so much, but these were a different story). A trio of made-to-order piping hot assorted consists of one of each of the three varieties: powdered sugar, honey and toasted almonds, and chocolate glaze (homemade with Callebaut cocoa powder). These are served Saturdays and Sundays for brunch.

We washed our brunch down with vintage-style bottles of Cheerwine (mute the volume before checking out this insane Cheerwine tribute site), an old-school cherry soda from North Carolina. We were shocked to see that this faraway diner was selling such an obscure soda relic from a bygone era. But of course, we were pleased.

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The Tabard Inn is rather generous with their brunch donuts, serving up six airy, porous donuts dusted with cinnamon sugar, accompanied by a small bowl of totally extraneous vanilla whipped cream. These are served during brunch on Saturdays and Sundays.






We paired these fried dough rings with a couple of pulpy, delicious mimosas and one of Tabard Inn's proprietary brunch creations, the Cherry Thyme Fizz, a potent mixture of cherry brandy, rosewater syrup, champagne, and a sprig of thyme. Highly recommended.

At 2 Amys, a tray of large, brown, sugary donuts is the first thing Sunday guests see upon entering. This tray represents a finite donut supply; when they’re gone, they’re gone. So get them early and eat them quickly.




Despite the fact that these were the only donuts in our survey that were not made to order, they turned out to be our favorite. The extra eggy, cinnamony, and slightly lemony dough was terrific. And they were dusted liberally with cinnamon sugar and accompanied by a similarly treated donut hole.






Get some donuts for brunch at the following three places:



Colorado Kitchen

5515 Colorado Ave. NW

Washington, DC

(202) 545-8280



2Amys

3715 Macomb Street NW

Washington, DC

(202) 885-5700



Tabard Inn

1739 N Street NW

Washington, DC

(202) 785-1277

—AC & AK

Nighthawks at the Candystick

After our Saturday in Frederick, Maryland, I couldn’t believe that more people in the D.C. area don’t talk up Frederick as a day trip. Frederick takes the quaint small town feel of Old Town, Alexandria and mixes it up with some of the stalled in time shabbiness of Baltimore.

Take, for instance, The Old Log Wash House Laundromat pictured at right. The sign has the requisite old fashioned ad placements for Coca-Cola, although I’m not entirely sure what a spin cycle has to do with “The Pause that Refreshes.” Nevertheless, if I lived in Frederick I would do all my laundry here just to bask in its antiquated glory. Okay, maybe not.

Frederick also has a capital selection of antique stores, particularly Emporium Antiques, a conglomeration of dozens upon dozens of antiques dealers in one enormous space. The breadth of their wares encompasses just about everything from a 19th Century Swedish grandfather clock to an antique stove to a basket-woven shoulder bag housing old artillery shells. They have a few vintage clothing displays, as well.

But thrift and vintage clothing junkies should absolutely check out Venus on the Half Shell. Its collection of clothing is not especially vast, but each piece of clothing has clearly been carefully selected, as the tag affixed to each item has a pithy remark about its origin.

But no trip to Frederick is complete without stepping into the time warp that is the Barbara Fritchie Candystick Restaurant. Interestingly, the actual Barbara Fritchie had nothing to do with roadside diners. Instead, she was a Maryland folk hero from the Civil War, who purportedly flew the stars and stripes as a gesture of defiance to advancing Confederates.

Though the sign boasts “Fine Foods”, it’s probably best to steer clear of just about everything but their pies, unless you have a craving for dumpy diner food. And though their soda fountain boasts an old school Hamilton Beach triple head milkshake mixer, their insistence upon serving Hershey’s Ice Cream means that soda fountain bliss is unlikely.

The atmosphere is decidedly Nighthawks at the Diner, but only if the original Nighthawks in the Edward Hopper painting were still hanging out there fifty years later. Aside from the countergirl, we were the youngest patrons by about forty years.

Though the diner maintains these boss light fixtures, the proprietors have done away with other vestiges of a bygone era, such as the penny candy concession.

The Candystick offers about a dozen different pies made from scratch, as well as their apple dumpling.

The menu lists the apple dumpling with the standard a la mode format, as well as something I had never heard of before- “with milk.” After the countergirl confirmed that she had, in fact, enjoyed the dumpling in this manner, I decided that I would follow suit. The golden shell of the dumpling is thin and not too buttery and encloses a generous helping of apples and cinnamon. While ice cream might have been a greater enhancement to the dumpling, the milk bath did offer an element of wholesomeness that dessert usually lacks.

The countergirl touted the chocolate pie as her favorite, but we decided to see what they could do with the banana cream pie. The pudding layer offered fresh slices of banana and that was topped off with a layer of foamy meringue instead of the usual whipped cream. AK didn’t care for this variation, characterizing it as "otherworldly", but I found the mix of fresh bananas and meringue to be refreshing.

Although neither the pies nor the dumpling blew us away, their overall quality is arguably well above typical diner fare. Besides you need an activity to occupy yourself while soaking up all that classic diner ambience, and it might as well be pie.

Take a day trip to Frederick and check out Barbara Fritchie Candystick Restaurant on your way back at:

1513 W. Patrick St.
Frederick, MD
(301) 662-2500

—AC

Ye Olde Chocolate Covered Potato Chippe

Between Kingsbury Chocolates and the more recent arrival of HazelSnooks, Old Town, Alexandria finally enjoys a full range of confectionary stylings- from old fashioned candy shoppe to haute chocolatier. Kingsbury Chocolates has received no shortage of attention, and deservedly so, but HazelSnooks deserves more attention than just an obligatory blurb in the Alexandria Gazette Packet.

Like Kingsbury Chocolates, HazelSnooks is family owned and operated, and many of its wares are made on the premises. In addition to its homemade items, it also offers a number of vintage candy favorites, such as Sugar Daddies, Pixie Stix, Mary Janes, and, best of all, Wax Lips.

And though they initially intended their Sno-Cones as a seasonal offering, a flurry of wintertime demand means that HazelSnooks now offers this syrup and ice delicacy year-round. In fact, the proprietor told us that one gentleman stops by after lunch every day for a double Sno-Cone digestif. They have an impressive array of Sno-Cone syrups from mystery flavors like Skylite to questionable flavors like Egg Custard to old standards such as cherry, lime, and lemon, among others. And the friendly proprietor will gladly offer a sample taste of the syrup in case you’re feeling adventurous, but don’t want to commit to something that turns out to be heinous.

HazelSnooks' cinammon glazed almonds and pecans have the potential for dangerous snacking. And they periodically offer sour cream pecans, which may sound peculiar, but the sugary sour cream glaze will have you wondering what other sweets sour cream might enliven.

The peppermint bark is more like a slab, its chocolate half and creamy peppermint candy half merge so succesfully that it makes a mockery of the York Peppermint Patty. And the non-chocolate side of the butter pecan bark is still slick with buttery baked essence, reminding you that it’s probably a good idea to share the gloriousness of fat calories with others.

Their fluffy, homemade marshmallows are skewered, coated in chocolate, and sprinkled with all manner of toppings from graham cracker crumbles for a S’mores effect to sprinkles to peanut butter chips. I found that while these can be enjoyed at room temperature, ten or so seconds in the microwave and the resulting gooey, chocolatey mass is heavenly. I tried the S’mores, which was irresistable after a brief nuking, although the graham cracker crumbles’ insubstantial presence could not stand up to the chocolate and marshmellow overload.

HazelSnooks' devotion to exploring the intersection of salty and sweet is what differentiates it from your typical “Ye Olde Candy Shoppe.” At first, the milk chocolate covered potato chips seem to be an unsuccessful experiment. Sure, the salt and chocolate commingle in a friendly manner, but the starchy potato flavor is an offputting pairing for the chocolate. But then you have a second chocolate covered chip to confirm your feelings about the first, and then another until you finally realize that they are downright addictive.

Pretzel sticks are deployed two at a time, covered in chocolate and then coated in everything from chunks of Heath Bar to M&Ms. The chocolate and Heath Bar coated pretzel sticks are especially decadent.

Check out HazelSnooks at:

111 South Alfred St.
Alexandria, VA
(703) 683-8343

—AC

Persian Immersion

So after lamenting the lack of gelaterias in the D.C. area, I decided to tap the collective wisdom of the folks on Chowhound to see if there were other gelato options beyond Dolcezza.

And it turns out that there is a gelateria in a very unlikely setting- a Persian market in Rockville called Sam’s Cafe and Market. According to one of the folks on Chowhound:

(Sam) actually was trained and started making gelato while he lived in Italy. He then brought the equipment with him when he came to US. He will make flavors (in season) to order if you make arrangements ahead - ask for a batch of bosc pear (or fig) when the season hits.

So after hitting Bob’s Noodle 66 and Aji Ichiban, we headed over to the shopping center to see if Sam’s could fill our gelato void.

Sam’s offers nearly 30 flavors at any one time out of a total roster of 85 or so. But as soon as I was able to survey the gelato case, I knew that Sam’s would fall short of the high standard to which we were accustomed at places like St. Ambroeus and Il Gelatone back in New York. The colors are the dead giveaway. Some of the flavors were colored in shades of neon that simply do not occur in nature. For instance, the pistachio was a bright green instead of the dull, brownish green of the pistachio gelato that I used to get at Il gelatone.

Nevertheless, we decided to try a cup with half Persian Vanilla and half French Custard. The texture of Sam’s gelato is actually somewhere between gelato and regular ice cream. It’s much thicker and far less creamy than just about anything claiming to be gelato that we’ve ever had.

The French Custard had a pleasing buttery caramel taste. And the Persian Vanilla, colored with saffron and flavored with rosewater, was almost worth the additional schlep out there. AK, however, thought the rosewater was added with a heavy hand, and it did seem to err a bit on the side of perfumey. Still, it's fascinating to have the opportunity to try an Italian culinary artform like gelato that's been filtered through a Persian sensibility.

We did poke around the Persian market, and the range of wares they managed to stuff into their tiny space was amazing.


They have a capital selection of roasted nuts and dried fruits.


But we were captivated by this plate of dried persimmons. We've never seen dried persimmons before, and though I'm not a big fan of persimmons, I regret not walking off with a few of them.


This vat of olives soaking in brine along with halves of preserved lemon and a few stray chili peppers was awfully tempting.


Sam's also has a whole shelf displaying various brands of rosewater, and another shelf with oddities such as borage water, willow water, and cumin seeds water.


And I was absolutely charmed by the packaging for this dried apricot paste.


Across the parking lot from Sam’s is a Persian bakery called Yasaman Bakery. We scored a number of treats that were visually appealing, but found most of them to be unremarkable: overly drenched in rosewater and cloyingly sweet.

But the fact that this place was absolutely mobbed by the local Persian community suggests that either we lack the taste for Persian sweets or we just weren’t hitting their strong points.

Check out Sam's Cafe and Market at:
765 Rockville Pike
Rockville, MD
(301) 424-1600

Check out Yasaman Bakery at:
785J Rockville Pike
Rockville, MD
(301) 762-5416

—AC

Munchies Paradise

It’s amazing how little coverage Aji Ichiban has received in the local food media. The Rockville location of this Hong Kong based chain of snack emporiums is just two doors down from Bob’s Noodle 66, and according to the cashier, it’s been there for about three years already. Aji Ichiban used to figure prominently in our Chinatown jaunts back when we lived in New York, as this self proclaimed “Munchies Paradise” offers dozens of bins of Chinese-style high weirdness. So if you’ve been putting off that schlep out to Bob’s Noodle 66, Aji Ichiban’s proximity to Bob's easily transforms your expedition into a twofer.

While some of their candied and pickled fruit oddities can be found at Chinese supermarkets like Kam Sam, Aji Ichiban not only has the most extensive array of such snacks, but also offers samples of just about everything. And that’s extremely helpful since much of their bounty, though interesting in concept, is likely repulsive to the Western palate. Nevertheless, if you’re interested in experiencing the extremes of sweet, sour, and salty, then a little bag of goodies goes a long way. I once bought a small bag of their preserved ginger root that had been candied and pickled, and the intense spice of the ginger was so powerful that it took me about 6 months to finish gnawing away at a mere handful of roots.


Of course, Aji Ichiban does offer a number of gummies and other less off-putting candies that are appealing to the Western palate.



Directly opposite these appealing and colorfully wrapped candies, however, is a veritable oceanic atrocity exhbition featuring bins of Hokkaido shredded squid, dried Isoyaki eel, and crispy spicy codfish, among others. That’s just in case you forgot where you were for a moment.

Among Aji Ichiban’s less daunting treats, we’re big fans of their answer to the Peanut M&M: chocolate covered sunflower seeds in colorful candy shells just like Mars’ finest.

The strawberry plum is a dried plum that has somehow been so fused with the essence of strawberry, that I actually had to pull it apart to determine that it was, in fact, a plum. It's easily the sweetest and juiciest of all of the dried fruit snacks that we tried.

The wrinkled skin of the sweet and sour peach yields to a tender interior with the perfect ratio of sweet to sour. Just be mindful of the pit.

Interestingly enough, though the olive is most often associated with Mediterranean cuisine, Aji Ichiban offers a half-dozen varieties of candied dried olives.

The jumbo-sized “preserved spicy olives” are a deep chili red with a crunchy interior that has a nice bit of sweetness and mellow heat.

The licorice olives are greenish brown and smaller. The licorice and the olive taste combine more for a sweet and sour effect than anything approaching licorice.

By now, you can probably tell that the genius of Chinese snack makers is their ability to start with a standard item like a peach or a plum and somehow transmogrify it into something that offers almost no hint of its original state.

And lest you think that Aji Ichiban’s oddities only appeal to a narrow swath of humanity, their website proclaims:

Aji Ichiban is also recognized by many political leaders as one of the best munchies paradise. Their honored visits to our retail stores is yet another proof of our popularity.

Check out Aji Ichiban at:

309 N. Washington St.

Rockville, MD

(301) 610-7798

—AC

An Argentine Bakery Binge

Along with dulce de leche, choripan has to be considered one of Argentina’s great contributions to world cuisine: grilled chorizo on a grilled baguette. It just doesn’t get any more elemental than that. Unfortunately, our trip to El Patio, an Argentine bakery and cafe, came at the very end of our whirlwind tour of Rockville’s culinary delights. Since El Patio was our fifth destination that day, we opted to get a number of baked goods that we could take home to enjoy later, instead of made-to-order items like choripan.

El Patio offers a tempting array of empanadas, tartas (Argentina’s take on quiche), and tortillas (Spanish style omelettes usually eaten at room temperature).

In contrast to the meal-sized empanadas served at Julia’s Empanadas, El Patio’s empanadas are more akin to cocktail hour treats.

The carne empanada was pleasing enough, it’s flaky pasty concealing ground beef mixed with bits of hard-boiled egg, onions, and red peppers. Sadly, no olive seemed to be hidden amongst its contents.

We also tried the choclo empanada which was braided pastry purse stuffed with corn and onions in a light, barely discernable sauce. The menu promised bechamel sauce, so while I was disappointed at the choclo empanada’s relatively dry interior, El Patio deserves credit for offering an empanada variation that I’ve not seen anywhere else.

Among the savories, the espinaca tortillla was the clear stand-out. Each hefty slab is densely packed with spinach with only the barest amount of egg to hold everything together. We were actually grateful for the veggie interlude which included not just spinach, but also bits of tomato, green pepper, and onion. In addition to a few whole cloves of garlic, the tortilla had a strong spice presence that may have been cumin.

The pastries are understandably dulce de leche centric. Though the puff pastry looked a bit tired and dilapidated, we figured that a combination of dulce de leche and buttery pastry could overcome any physical shortcomings. But this pastry was every bit as unremarkable as it appears.

I was more excited about the shell-shaped meringues appealingly glued together with dulce de leche and topped off with a cherry. But it’s exceedingly difficult to handle this meringue sandwich without getting it all over the place. In fact, I assumed my hunched piglet stance over our kitchen sink, the better to catch the errant bits of meringue shrapnel flying off from my dessert induced frenzy. It seems that I do some of my best eating over our kitchen sink. Although I wanted it to work, the meringue was a bit bland, and its porous texture seemed to have absorbed the faintest essence of other items in the refrigerated case.

Despite the fact that most of our selections were underwhelming, we still only tried a small sampling of El Patio’s bounty. In addition to their rendition of choripan, I remain curious about their sandwiches de miga, described as “tea sandwiches made with Argentine specialty crumb bread.”

—AC

Our Kind of Excess

Despite the fact that the D.C. area abounds with international culinary riches, its status as an international city is seriously undermined by its dearth of gelaterias. Fortunately, the proprietors of Dolcezza (formerly Isee Icy) are doing their part to fill this void. Dolcezza specializes in Argentine gelato, which differentiates itself from Italian gelato in that it uses no eggs and more cream. That means that their gelato is lighter and less substantive than the denser version with which most folks are familiar.

But while Argentine gelato may not quite sate our gelato jones in the same way the Italian version does, they make up for it with their adventurous palate and extensive use of dulce de leche.

In fact, if you find yourself unable to choose among their twentysomething flavors, you can’t go wrong by opting for one of the usually several flavors that are generously ribboned with dulce de leche. In fact, our favorite flavor, “Banana Split,” is banana gelato with a swirl of  dulce de leche. I’m usually repulsed by anything banana-flavored, since that often means an artificial flavor that’s one step removed from a stick of Juicy Fruit. But Dolcezza’s banana split has the cleanest, most refreshingly natural banana flavor of any ice cream or gelato that I’ve ever had. And the inclusion of dulce de leche takes it from merely wonderful to heavenly.

Dolcezza’s “Mascarpone” flavor is similarly ambrosial, the gelato equivalent of the lightest, airiest raspberry cheesecake. And Dolcezza earns extra points with us for being fearless in its experimentation. “Olive Oil” sounds like a miserable flavor for gelato, but, in fact, they’ve managed to accentuate the natural fruitiness of olive oil, while stripping away all bitterness.

Unfortunately, their mix of passionfruit and milk chocolate doesn’t quite gel, but we’re glad that they're willing to let the public in on some of their more unusual experiments. In fact, they publish a blog that offers the backstory behind some of the more noteworthy flavors in their ever evolving repertoire.

And if you’re not tempted by their gelato, there’s always the prominent display of dulce de leche filled churros near the cash register. They’ll quickly heat them up for you, so that they’re still nicely warmed by the time you sit down. The churros are perfectly crunchy on the outside, while the inside is soft and eggy with a decadent vein of dulce de leche running down the middle. It may be excessive to fill fried dough with dulce de leche, but it’s our kind of excess.

Check out Dolcezza in Georgetown at:
1560 Wisconsin Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C.
(202) 333-4646

—AC