Nothing Bundt Cakes

Yeah, so it's been a year and a half.  Even longer since I've put out anything meaningful. 

Ah well.  It happens that way sometimes when you've been dabbling in the dark arts of chocolate chip cookies and molasses spice crisps, or working your way toward a new truth in homemade pizza margherita.  One simply loses track of time.

The truth is, I've had little intention of coming back here.  But here I am, drawn back in almost on a dare. 

I was contented enough this evening at a chili cookoff and pinewood derby for the Boy Scouts.  The company at my table was mostly pleasant, 'til the topic turned to cupcakes. 

The women across from me, respectable in every way, seemed to have lost their minds.  Somehow, someway, they scoffed at my affinity for Sprinkles cupcakes, claiming they could name a handful of superior cake/cupcake shops in San Diego.  Maybe.  Yeah, maybe.  I left open the possibility.

So on the way home tonight, we tried one: Nothing Bundt Cakes.   We bought two "bundlets" -- marble cake (particularly recommended), and pecan prailine, totaling nearly $9.

As with the donut tastes we've done in the past, Michelle divided up the bundtlets between the five of us.  My review needs only a few lines:  the cream cheese icing was completely unremarkable.  But I'd been warned of this -- it's the cake itself that was supposed to be amazing.*  And the cake was moist.  But my praise ends there.  Both the marble and pecan praline cakes were fine, but nothing much better than fine.  And nothing, really, that I couldn't have had at home.  So I paid $9 for two small, moist cakes -- with mediocre icing -- that I could've had at home at a fraction of the cost.

Ah well.  After putting the kids to bed, I made a quick trip to Sprinkles (fantastic strawberry and dark chocolate frosting, even if some of the chocolate cake was a little dry).  Yeah, those women, otherwise perfectly respectable, were out of their minds.



*I take issue with this concept generally.  The right kind of cake without frosting can be fine.  More than fine even (I'm thinking of a friend's chocolate hazelnut cake).  But a cake is not meant to outshine its frosting.  It's just not.  It sets up the frosting and creates an atmosphere in which the frosting can shine.  Deserved or not, when you frost a cake, you set up the frosting to be the star.  When this works properly, life is bliss, and all is right in the world.  But it's against the laws of nature to frost a cake and expect that cake to shine any more than it's frosting allows it.