At my office, we always celebrate birthdays with a cake of that person’s choosing, and I usually bake it the night before to bring in the next day. This past Monday was my birthday, and since I’m the only one out of my colleagues who bakes, they let me choose a bakery to purchase a cake from. Of course, I went with one of my all-time favorite pastry chefs in the city, Dominique Ansel. I’ve been a loyal customer since 2012, when I first moved to NYC. He’s always inventing, and always brainstorming the next big thing, that you never know what to expect next. I had been dying to try a few of the items on the new summer menu, and my workmate who went to get the cake, did the best thing possible: instead of buying one full-size cake, she got 4 individual servings so we could sample different things. (Thank you Gail).
The moment I saw the Coconut Guava Cake on Dominique Ansel’s Instagram page, I was so excited to taste it. Coconut and guava are two of my favorite things and this cake was like heaven on your tastebuds. It has a coconut lime mousse, fragrant pink guava gelée, on a base of soft coconut almond dacquoise, with a dusting of coconut on top. I think I want to order the full size cake and keep it all to myself, it was that good.
The second dessert we tried was an interactive one: the Lime Me Up Tart. Juniper-lime curd fills a vanilla sablé tart shell and has a soft lime mousse on top. Before eating, you sprinkle the juniper brown sugar mixture onto the lime mousse and then squeeze the juice from the lime wedge over the top, to form an instant caramel. Lime perfection!
The third creation was the Matcha Passion Fruit Mousse Cake. Upon slicing into this cake, you will see the bright yellow passion fruit curd, which sits atop a moist almond biscuit. Green tea mousse completes this unique cake, which is inspired by Zen.
The fourth and final masterpiece was the Mango Tart. But these are not ordinary mangoes. They are ripe Champagne mangoes. Mango cream, rose lokum (think Turkish delight) and rose jam fill the vanilla sablé tart shell, which also has almond frangipane. I was truly in dessert heaven that afternoon in the office, eating all of these amazing creations.
Thank you so much to my lovely colleagues for helping to make my birthday extra special. I’m so lucky so work with such a wonderful team!
Dominique Ansel Bakery: 189 Spring St, New York, NY 10012
I’m visiting New York for the first time in July and I’m so excited to check this place out!
You’re going to love it! Dominique Ansel is so creative! You should get in touch when you’re in NYC, I’d be happy to show you a few places 🙂