Cafe Blossom Vegan Chocolate Shake

I went back to Blossom for another amazing vegan cheeseburger.  This time I got a chocolate shake:

It was pretty good.  Definitely good for vegan.  But you could tell it was vegan -- it had that sort of mediciney taste... which is not as bad as it sounds, but if you've had enough of these things, you know what I mean.

Bottom Line:  I'm not really sure if there are much better vegan chocolate milkshakes around, but this did not blow me away.

Jean-Georges' Warm Chocolate Cake

Yes, everyone serves one of these now.  But you have to give Jean-Georges credit for popularizing it.  And his is probably still the best.

Don't make a beginner's mistake: always substitute out the vanilla ice cream for chocolate

The molten center gets me every time.

Bottom Line: There might be more original, or even better, chocolate cakes in existence now, but this is an indisputable classic.

Epicerie Boulud Flourless Chocolate Cookies

Angel brought me some cookies from Epicerie Boulud, which is, as far as I can tell, not an epicerie at all, but rather a bakery.  That said, "flourless chocolate cookies" sounds up my alley.

The cookies, though, weren't for me.  They look fudgey, but they are actually too crispy, and they have bits of hazelnut in them.  The real problem is that Epicerie Boulud is so close to Levain that there is really no reason to go there for cookies.  There are plenty of reasons to go to Epicerie Boulud -- it's a very good bakery -- but if you are in a cookie mood, take the walk to Levain.

Bottom Line: Didn't get anything quite right with this item.

Peacefoods

Peacefoods is a well-respected vegan restaurant and bakery on the Upper West Side.  It's just a block down from Flor De Mayo -- maybe my favorite restaurant in the city -- so I often find myself here for dessert.

On a recent trip I picked up a chocolate chocolate chip cookie in addition to the brownie that I usually get.  The cookie honestly was not all that impressive, but the brownie is wonderful.  It's a great size -- about two or three bites -- and priced accordingly (less than $2).  Plus, if it wasn't obvious, it's vegan.

Bottom Line:  I honestly cannot think of a single reason to pass by Peacefoods without stopping in to grab a brownie.  I mean, even if you're being chased by the cops, maybe you can lose them by ducking in?

Milk Bar Mea Culpa

I had previously stated that Milk Bar was not good at chocolate.  It seems that in my absence they have been righting some wrongs.

First of all, this:

It's a "5-Borough Cookie" or something like that.  The first ingredient?  Cocoa powder.  It's even chametz-free, for all those of you observing passover (Sephards-only!  It has a little cornstarch.  Also I guess this advice is coming a little bit late.  Next year?)

It's also extremely delicious.

Next up, the chocolate malt cake truffles are back, and delicious as ever:

Also, they had a "chocolate swirl," which seemed like it was just a chocolate croissant shaped like a cinnamon roll, but I didn't try it, so I can't tell you for sure.

Finally, I got some of the birthday cake truffles, which are one of my favorite non-chocolate desserts in NYC, and I made an amazing discovery.  The third ingredient is white chocolate!  This explains why I love them, and why Leila does not.

Bottom Line: Milk bar is known for a somewhat rotating menu, so let's wait to see whether this effort is sustained, but this is a promising development!

Chocolate Cake at Cafe Blossom

Cafe Blossom is a surprisingly delicious vegan, kosher restaurant, with multiple related but slightly different chains around the city.  The one on the Upper West Side, at least, has chocolate cake:

So we talked about problems with kosher chocolates, but there was some follow-up discussion that yielded a conclusion that the problem wasn't necessarily either the kosher stuff or the dairy-free stuff but rather the combination.  But the conclusion was based on the idea that we Jews have not done as good a job as vegans have in making chocolatey, dairy-free desserts.  But in this cake, we have not a dairy-free product made by people who keep kosher but rather kosher products made by vegans.  This turns out much better.

So the floury cake part is going to be a problem.  It's delicious but a little dry.  But vegan chocolate mousse made by vegans is much better than regular kosher parve chocolate mousse.  Cafe Blossom has done a great job using the mousse to mask a slightly dry cake, and the end product actually winds up totally great.

Bottom Line:  For vegan food and vegan chocolate dessert to follow, Cafe Blossom is a really excellent option.

Grom

After an evening of dancing to satanic ska on a boat, sometimes you just need to cool down with a nice cone of chocolate gelato.

Until my recent discovery of Fresco, Grom was easily my favorite gelato shop in the city, and it still might be, if only for the extradark chocolate sorbet.  Grom is a chain that comes from Italy, but my friends who spent time in Italy before Grom came to NYC reported living off the stuff there.  And for good reason.  While even the chocolate sorbet is not vegan (they started adding a small amount of egg for unclear reasons -- I couldn't tell the difference after the change), the taste is just unbeatable.

I often say that the point of dessert is to take the taste of chocolate and put it into different textures.  No one in the city understands this better than Grom.  This sorbet really does taste like a dark chocolate bar (~70-80% -- not too sweet) in ice cream form.  And just to remind you of it, they throw in dark chocolate chips.  Really superb.

Grom also has a dark chocolate gelato (Venezuelan origin as opposed to the extradark's Colombian origin).  It's good enough to be one of the best in the city, but I never wind up getting it, because the extradark is there.

The other notable item at Grom is the hot chocolate.  It is thick.  Unbelievably thick.  Basically melted chocolate -- the same Venezuelan chocolate as in the gelato.  Some of the best hot chocolate in the city, in my opinion.  But better yet is throwing a scoop of the extradark chocolate sorbet in the hot chocolate.  It's an amazing dessert for any weather situation.

Despite all this, though, my standard order is still usually just the extradark chocolate sorbet, straight up.

Bottom Line: The best taste in the world (a dark chocolate bar) in one of the best textures in the world (ice cream).  Unbeatable.

Levain Bakery

Whenever I say to a New Yorker, “I have discovered my favorite cookie in New York,” they say, “It’s Levain, right?”

Levain Bakery makes the best cookies in New York. Possibly in America. There is broad consensus about this. They have four and a half stars on Yelp, with 1662 ratings.

They sell exactly four types of cookies, every day. Your options are as follows:

“Four dollars?” you might be saying. “For a single cookie?”

No. Four dollars for your LIFE TO CHANGE.

These cookies each weigh six ounces. They are the size of a kitten. But don’t eat a kitten, please—they are not chocolate. Eat one of these cookies instead.

So far I’ve tried the chocolate chip walnut and the dark chocolate chocolate chip. I don’t know which I prefer. They are both amazingly dense and moist, and somehow the chocolate chips in them always stay melty, even if it’s two days later, and you are still working your way through six ounces of cookie. I can’t think of any parallels to Levain cookies. They make me want to go to the Upper West Side. I didn’t think that was possible.

BOTTOM LINE: Possibly the best chocolate chip cookie in New York City.

Sugar & Plumm

Last weekend, Angel (a friend of the blog, whom we are trying to coax into guest posting) and I went on a serious quest, the first stop of which was Sugar and Plumm.  Honestly speaking, it was a disappointment.

The thing is, the place looks beautiful.  The desserts look great.  And there are adorable children as far as the eye can see.  But the food was not as delicious as it looked, and the children were the wrong kind of children -- loud and out of control.

But to the chocolate: we had chocolate-caramel sorbet, milk chocolate ice cream, a chocolate macaron, a dark chocolate bon-bon, and a chocolate cake (which was actually the reason for our trip).

Our haul.

The ice cream and sorbet were, like the whole experience, disappointing.  The chocolate-caramel sorbet, while it looked dark and rich, was actually sweet, unchocolatey, and kind of weird tasting.  The milk chocolate ice cream was surprisingly far better, but I don't think I'd rate it any more highly than "okay."

The chocolate cake, too, was disappointing.  As dense as it looks, it was not chocolatey enough, and it was a bit dry.  (Angel even went so far as to say that the cake tasted prepackaged.)  I did enjoy the glitter on top, though.  And I managed to upgrade the situation by dunking the cake in the milk chocolate ice cream.  That elevated it to the level of "enjoyable."

The cake is as pretty as the shop.

The macaron was serviceable, but not really worth elaboration.

Surprisingly, the standout was the bon-bon.  It was actually excellent -- on par with many of the top NYC chocolatiers.

It doesn't even look that dark, but it is!

Bottom Line:  If you are walking past, pick up a dark chocolate bon-bon on your way to somewhere with a higher chocolatey desserts to screaming children ratio.

Momofuku Milk Bar

The first time I walked into Milk Bar, I asked if they had anything that was chocolate.  They said no.  I walked out, and I didn't return for about two years.

The thing, though, is that it is on my block.  I mean, literally.  So when it's 11pm, and most places are closed, it gets pretty tempting, even if they are insultingly light on chocolate.

So they do a lot of things at Milk Bar, many of them well and many of them not-so-well.  I generally find their soft serves to be too salty.  Their cereal milk is perfectly good, but I have it in my cereal every day, so I do not usually feel the need to purchase it.

Now there is one thing they do very well, which they are famous for -- cake truffles.  Basically, bite-sized, round pieces of cake, easy to eat with your hands.  Smart.  They used to have a chocolate malt flavor that was great.  I am generally embarrassed to admit to eating non-chocolate desserts, but I will sheepishly endorse their birthday cake truffles as being off the proverbial hook.

In my most recent trip, in addition to the birthday cake truffles, I purchased some chocolate chip truffles.  Now, objectively, they were good.  But they were nonetheless disappointing.  I am a huge opponent of the fruit+chocolate combination, and I was shocked that it came into play here -- they put orange juice in this!  And you can really taste it!

Fortunately, I was prepared for disappointment, as one look at these puppies told me they wouldn't be chocolatey enough, regardless of other flavor situations.  Accordingly, I purchased a chocolate croissant.

Yes, it sort of looks like a quiche or at least something savory.  But it was actually quite good.  It had nice texture, and it was more chocolatey than most.  That said, as is usually the case, it could still have done with more chocolate.

Bottom Line: While Milk Bar has much merit, it is not a place for chocolate purists.