Icing Capades
By Camille Jackson, the New Haven Advocate (June 2001)

It all started with the Plan. An after-winter-eat-healthy-start-moving-so-I-can-feel-better Personal Plan. Some people prefer to call it a diet. It's just a gentle, forgiving Plan, a way to feel good and look better with no guilt, no weigh-ins and no Herculean will power. It's not totally about food. It's about living a balanced life.

Adjusting the food I ate was no problem since the motivation has been great, but salads get old quick, and as hard as I tried I couldn't convince myself that a banana and a dollop of low-fat Cool Whip was a special treat. I began dreaming of cake: ice cream, red velvet, pineapple upside down, coconut, even pound cake, dripped in googobs of pink, orange, yellow and purple frosting. When the recurring dream about swimming in a vat of Claire's butter cream frosting came back, I knew this was serious.

Like a junkie needing a fix, I hightailed it up to Take the Cake, a small bakery nestled in the woods off Route 1 in Guilford. The scent of butter and sugar immediately hit me. I knew I'd have to take it slow and easy at first. A glass case to the right displayed at least 20 prepared cakes of varying sizes and flavors. They were blank, waiting for an occasion to present itself so a baker can write "Get Well Soon" in colorful cursive butter cream. I chose a 6-inch white chocolate mousse cake--moist chocolate cake sandwiched between fluffy layers of white chocolate mousse and iced with vanilla butter cream. ("The perfect combination of chocolate and vanilla," says owner Nancy Purcell.) I didn't need writing on the cake. The writing was on the wall. If I had my way, every day would be an occasion for cake.

Take the Cake's cakes are rich, gourmet and for people who like frosting. Each bite is a small symphony. The cakes aren't fluffy and airy. Most of them are adult cakes, served in slivers too sophisticated for kids used to getting chunky squares. But really, who wants to share with the children?

One of the newest takes to join the fold, the Memphis Torte--a walnut cake layered with seedless raspberry preserves and Grand Marnier cream and iced in caramel butter cream--is increasingly becoming the most popular, with, in my opinion, Grandma's peanut butter cake running a close second. Purcell introduced this cake and the mint chocolate chip (chocolate cake filled with cool mint chocolate chip mousse) to appeal to the younger set. The cupcakes are also part of her effort to resurrect Hostess memories, They are chocolate filled with white chocolate mousse, topped with ganache and a swirl on top.

Purcell, who started the business in 1986 after spending time in culinary school, says most of her cakes are ordered by restaurants for weddings, showers and other affairs to remember. All are made on the premises from whole ingredients, no mixes, no artificial flavors. Chocolate lovers will appreciate that, except for the vanilla pound cake (filled and iced with apricot butter cream), carrot cake and cheesecake, all of the cakes are chocolate the Cake also offers a selection of tarts, from black raspberry mousse and espresso to lemon and fresh fruit. Purcell also makes brownies, breads, scones and cookies.

The cookies were the surprise hit. Some like their cookies hard and crispy with crumbs and don't mind licking a finger to collect the bits one by one. The cookies at Take the Cake are moist and chewy with hardly any crumbles. A friend is particularly fond of the wheat-free, dairy-free, sugar-free sesame tahini cookies, which tasted like all the ingredients (including soy margarine and brown rice flour) came from the health food store. He says that if you don't like your sweets sweet, this is the cookie for you. Those people allergic to gluten, which is in flour, which is in everything, can dig it too.

Unlike him, I've been blessed with a sweet tooth and no allergies. The peanut butter cookie is so thick, sweet and compact that I had to let it melt in my mouth. The divine combination of butter, milk and creamy peanut butter pushed this miles ahead of any other peanut butter cookie I've had. What's more, there is real fresh ginger in the ginger cookies. The spicy burn lingered long after I had devoured the dark reddish-brown, lightly sugared cookie. These cookies would be perfect for dunking in a steaming hot cup of coffee or tea or a cool glass of soy milk.

All that sugar gave me the energy to zip through an exciting day of work and still be the life of the party. According to the Plan, my relapse is forgiven. Nothing a Saturday afternoon on the elliptical trainer can't set right again. No guilt. Really...

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