Most chocolate cakes in Singapore are sweet first and chocolatey second. We built ours the other way around.
A question we get occasionally, usually from someone who's just had their first slice of our chocolate cake, commenting "It's not as sweet as I expected. Is that intentional?"
Yes, it is. Definitely so.
The problem with most chocolate cakes
If you've ever ordered a chocolate cake for a birthday or an office celebration and felt vaguely disappointed because it's mostly just sweet with a hint of chocolate flavour, you're not imagining it. A lot of cakes are built around buttercream, which means that the flavour comes mainly from the frosting. The sponge beneath is often lighter and airier because it's meant to be a vehicle for the frosting.
There's nothing wrong with that if that's the type of cake you prefer. But it's a different thing from what we were trying to make.
What we wanted was a cake where the chocolate was the whole point. Where you could taste the actual flavour of the cocoa, the slight bitterness, the depth, the finish that lingers.
Why we don't use buttercream
Buttercream competes with chocolate.
It's high in sugar and fat, which means it coats your palate quickly and makes everything taste richer and sweeter than it actually is. When you pair it with a chocolate sponge, the buttercream tends to win. You end up tasting the frosting, not the cake.
Instead, we pair the chocolate sponge with a chocolate fudge. So instead of adding sweetness on top of the sponge, it adds more chocolatey flavour and the flavour goes deeper, not necessarily sweeter.
And that's what customers love about our chocolate cake, being "not so sweet".
The chocolate itself
The cocoa percentage matters here. Too low, and the chocolate flavour gets diluted by the extra sugar in the formula. Too high, and the bitterness becomes the dominant note rather than a background one. We've found a balance that makes our cake taste like chocolate, not just sweet.
It's not that we've reduced the sugar arbitrarily. It's that we've built the recipe around a specific chocolate (cocoa percentage), and everything else.
This cake is for people who actually like chocolate.
That sounds obvious, but it matters. A sweet cake is a crowd-pleaser in a particular way, and our cake asks a bit more of you. It wants you to be there for the chocolate.
If you're a chocolate lover, or someone who wants a cake that is sweet on the finish yet light enough even when you've had a full dinner, this is the cake. For the ones who want a cake that is easy enough for you to go back for a second slice, and maybe a third one too.
That Chocolate Cake is available for delivery and self-collection across Singapore. You can browse the full collection or place an order at the shop.