The Cake Konditorei

There is really not a lot to do in Salem, the capital of Oregon.

There are some ebbs of color that allow the area to redeem itself, mostly in the form of food, a few good festivals, the capitol building area and the yearly state fair.

One of the places I enjoy is  Gerry Frank’s Konditorei, a restaurant from a German family that makes  “extravagant cakes et cetera.”

This last time that I went, I decided to get two cake flavors: Mounds and Champagne raspberry.

Mounds is just like the candy bar with thick, gooey, sugared coconut and  almonds on top.

I was having trouble deciding between dark chocolate cake and coconut cake and this was a great compromise.

I also liked the choice of dark chocolate cake, because there was a contrasting bittersweet flavor with the milk chocolate ganache.

The raspberry champagne became my new favorite. I’ve had the champagne cake before, but the fruity raspberry reminded me of drinking champagne with fruit. The frosting is very special, fluffy and with a texture almost like the fizz of champagne.

I’m not sure how they do it, but there were sugar crystals that alluded to the texture of carbonation.

I was introduced to this cake place because Gerry Frank is a reoccurring vendor at the annual Bite of Oregon, an August Portland Food festival.

My favorite foodie friend and I would go with his mum, and we bought a total of  two slices of cake, each of different kind.

And even though there were different desserts every year, we always chose cake from the Konditorei for dessert.

I have this nice memory of being drunk, after countless wine and beer tastes from vendors and finished with savory food for the day, about six of us, including a friend of ours from China, each picked out a different flavor of cake to eat.

I think the flavors were: champagne, Barney’s blackout, chocolate fudge truffle, German chocolate and poppy seed cake.

I picked out their raspberry lemonade cakes, which sounds weird, but actually is pretty good and refreshing.

Here is the full cake selection at the Konditorei:

http://gerryfrankskonditorei.com/cake-gallery/

I remember hopping around with my friends in some live music audience, still holding our cakes up on a paper plate and stealing bites of each others flavors as we danced and enjoyed our drunkenness.