Sachertorte

I crave sweets all. The. TIME. Always. Not kidding. You could wake me up in the middle of the night and stick a doughnut in my face, and I wouldn’t turn it down.

“Huh? What is this?” I woud say groggily, at least one of my eyes still closed. “Oh. A doughnut? Yea ok, gimme.” And then I would roll over.

But my boyfriend? He doesn’t have that same passion for sweets. He’s one of those people that is content with eating one Oreo. One of those that can actually stop after just a few M&Ms. One of those whose face puckers when he’s had too much ice cream or pie or frosting or sugar in general.

But if there’s one sweet treat I can count on to make his eyes sparkle, it’s sachertorte. (I know, right? Sachertorte. Way to be difficult… and European.) Sachertorte, FYI, is a Viennese chocolate cake layered with apricot jelly, and annoyingly enough, not found as easily as say, red velvet cake or fudge brownies.

But it being New York, some place was bound to have it and that place was  Café Sabarsky, the fancy, somewhat cold eatery at the Neue Galerie on the Upper East Side. I was there with coworkers recently and so picked up a slice of the Viennese cake to take home to my sachertorte-loving beau. Well, and I had one too.  (You didn’t think I could wait till I got home to taste his, did you? C’mon. )

While it’s not my absolute favorite dessert, it wasn’t bad. It could have used a little more apricot jam between the layers of chocolate cake, and the cake itself could have been a touch more moist. Like Cafe Sabarsky, this sachertorte was nice but felt a little too serious, a bit too uptight for my taste. 

But it made Flaneur happy and that was sweet enough for me.