Car cake is cake that you eat in the car

Last week I ate my first car cake while driving from the Hill Street on-ramp onto the 110 Freeway. I didn't get any crumbs in the seams of my leather seats. I didn't put any icing on the steering wheel. I didn't let myself be frightened because I didn't have a proper napkin.

I bit my teeth into the rectangular piece of black sesame cake as the traffic grew heavier. The sugar rush immediately triggered a dopamine rush. Nothing could spoil the car cake.

Car cake is cake that you eat in the car. While you could enjoy any piece of cake in the car, I'm specifically referring to the cake bars from Heather Wong's Flouring LA bakery in Chinatown. They're delicate rectangles of layered cake nestled in wrappers of white parchment paper to protect your fingers.

Black Sesame Cake Bar from Flouring LA

I believe that if more people accepted car cakes, road rage would decrease by at least 58%. Commuting home doesn't have to suck. I would be more open to dating someone who lives across the 405 Freeway.

According to Wong, the original idea behind eating cake in the car was to ease the stress and anxiety caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In spring 2020, Wong started a pop-up bakery called Flouring LA because she “needed to bake to fill my soul.” It also felt like the natural next step after working in various restaurant kitchens, including Bottega Louie, and creating dessert content for her personal baking blog. For a while she called herself Scootabaker and delivered her desserts on a 2007 Vespa LX 150 with spring-loaded racks.

“I thought it would be a good idea to put together a dessert box of things people could eat in their car,” Wong said on a recent call. “I created this cake bar wrapped in a little square of parchment and you could hold the cake and eat it in the car while driving. “Car cake.”

During the pandemic, she handed her desserts to customers waiting in their cars. In January, she opened her first brick-and-mortar location, a 500-square-foot bakery and store on Hill Street.

The cake bars of the day are presented in a glass display case that takes up a lot of space in a small space. You can buy individual bars or fill a lavender box with a selection: carrot cake, chocolate, ube and coconut, passion fruit, and whatever else Wong bakes.

“It's a lot of what I loved as a kid that I feel is missing or not found enough in bakeries,” Wong said. “Growing up, I loved King's Hawaiian passion fruit cake, but never felt like there was enough passion fruit, so my passion fruit cake bar was inspired by that.”

Passion fruit is a must in Wong's version. The fruit is brilliant and sharp, flooding your mouth with the tart, complex flavor of pure passion fruit. Wong soaks the cake in a passionfruit syrup, then adds as much syrup as possible to the Italian buttercream before it breaks apart.

“The black sesame comes from my love of Chinese mochi Tang Yuan,” she said. “I had to bake a cake out of it.”

Wong's Black Sesame Cake Bar might be my favorite cake in all of Los Angeles right now. It starts with a rich buttery cake speckled with enough toasted black sesame seeds to turn the dough gray. She spreads a generous amount of Rooted Fare's black sesame crunch butter on the cake, then adds an Italian buttercream frosting with ground toasted sesame seeds. Next comes another layer of cake and another layer of frosting.

The sesame drizzle dominates, anchoring the sweetness of the buttercream with an intense nuttiness that adds depth and a welcome bitterness. The real star is the sesame butter, which slips between the luxurious buttercream and the sponge cake in a delicious crunch.

I should note that Wong uses the ideal ratio of about a quarter inch of frosting to an inch of cake. Too much frosting bothers me, probably more than it should. The frosting won't scratch your car cake.

Peach Cobbler Cheesecake from Cali Love Pie

I first came across Cali Love Pie on Tiffany Hinton Jefferson's Instagram account @blackownedfoodla. The store at the corner of Western Avenue and Venice Boulevard celebrated its one-year anniversary on April 20.

Owner Amili Williams specializes in sweets that combine the flavors of classic cakes and desserts with his grandmother's signature cheesecake recipe. He bakes a pecan pie cheesecake, a banana pudding cheesecake, and a cheesecake with a top layer of sweet potato pie filling.

The Peach Cobbler Cheesecake Filling is studded with soft, supple peaches that you can mash with your fork. A caramel-colored ribbon of what tastes like cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar is swirled around the fruit and threaded throughout the cake. The graham cracker's crust is fine and densely filled with enough butter to signal true decadence. The top is covered with a layer of sweet cookie sprinkles.

The effect is similar to Cobbler à la Mode, with the velvety cheesecake reflecting the melting of ice cream over warm fruit. While the cheesecakes are served cold, I like to wait until my slice reaches room temperature for maximum deliciousness and softer peaches.

I haven't tried the banana pudding cheesecake yet, but I'm not sure anything can deter my cobbler passion. Maybe the cheesecake milkshake mixed with a whole piece of cheesecake. Yes, there are those too.