Enoteca Sociale is a real Italian Wine-Bar in the west end of Toronto.

posted on Dec 17th, 2011 in News Wintery treats

I have spent plenty of time over the last year with our Pastry Chef Allison. She happens to be one of my favourite people, in and out of the kitchen. I see her every morning, timers clipped to her chef’s jacket, a tart in the oven, mixer humming, sauces simmering. She is always here before anyone else so she can work in peace and dominate the ovens before our almost all-men kitchen team comes barrelling in at noon. The kitchen always smells delightful when Allison is around and her creativity and organization is inspiring.

Yesterday afternoon she came up to the bar where I was working, carrying a plate with one of her new creations a top. I could smell baking spices wafting up and the dish looked deliciously festive. I was offered up a taste (lucky me) of this delightful dish:

Ginger & molasses cake with stout toffee sauce, blood orange preserve and rosemary meringue.

This dessert is so deliciously wintery.

The molasses cake is warmly and generously spiced with ginger, clove, nutmeg and cinnamon. It is dense, fragrant and incredibly moist. Allison has a soft spot for these old school spice cakes and I can see why. There is something so homey and holiday spirited about them.

The blood orange preserve is a gorgeous deep apricot hue and has a silky smooth texture. It adds a bittersweet tang and welcome acidity that nicely offsets the richness of the cake. The preserve is made using the entire orange, juice and peels, which is a great way to utilize the entire fruit and as a result the preserve is intensely and deeply flavoured.

Texturally the dish is all soft and yielding until you bite into some of the crisp and gauzy meringue which just hints at the herbaceous essence of rosemary. Drizzled over top is a toffee sauce made with the Oatmeal Stout that we feature at the bar every winter, a deep chestnut brown and incredibly robust brew with an irony tang to it. Rich and decadent, the sauce adds a sticky goodness reminiscent of those steamed pudding cakes of Christmases past. There is something both antique and modern about this dessert at the same time. The way the rich molasses cake interacts with the rosemary meringue has a classic yet avant garde feel to it.

I have to be honest, I am eating this cake again for the second time as I write this- research, duty calls- and it is truly a taste of the season.

If you’re hankering for a holiday dessert that is miles away from your great aunts fruit cake but still festive enough to inspire thoughts of snow covered trees, come in and join us for Allison’s latest creation.

Enjoy!

Lesa LaPointe
Sommlier