Last week I had to go to Borders in the Time Warner center which was a perfect excuse to stop by Bouchon to see if they had anything new and interesting.
Honestly, I’m not sure if the chocolate brioche was new or not but the flour-less chocolate cake definitely was for this season at least since the woman behind the counter told me they just started baking these again and she wasn’t even sure of the assortment of fruit on top.
The chocolate brioche is surprisingly un-sweet and it’s not overloaded with chocolate bits either. In fact, there aren’t many chocolate bits inside it at all which is a good thing. The bread is chocolate flavored much in the manner of the famous Balthazar chocolate bread- not too chocolaty but enough so you know there’s chocolate in it. The top is slightly crusty and perfectly baked. You will enjoy this brioche if you think you would like a freshly baked challah bread with some cocoa thrown in along with some chocolate chips and a nice crusty top.
The Bouchon Bakery flourless chocolate cake was a whole order of magnitude more involved than the brioche. There were quite a few things thrown on top: a dried and candied apricot, a piece of dried apple, a pruce, some cranberries, a dollop of raspberry jam and a bit of milk chocolate ganache-like paste. I liked having the fruit to break up eating all the chocolate cake. The cake itself was not that dark and bitter like some flourless cakes can be. This cake was definitely in the “sweet-like-a-brownie” category of flour-less chocolate cake. In this case a very good, rich, chocolate brownie. The cake was also very dense as if the they took a cake twice as tall as this one and compressed it. I would only tell people who really like their flourless chocolate cake bitter and super-dark to avoid this since it leaned a bit more to the sweet side. However, I like super dark but all the fruit that you get to eat along with the cake made the dessert for me.
Recommended: Chocolate brioche and flourless chocolate cake with seasonal fruit on top
Bouchon in New York City is located on the 3rd floor of the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle.
I went there last week end too and I had a chocolate bouchon that was pretty good for chocolate-addict as I am ! But the hot chocolate was awful…
Left by Foodista on April 2nd, 2010