Today, I had a free drink reward burning a hole in my Starbucks card, so I decided to take one for the team and drink a delicious chocolaty beverage. The things I suffer through for you guys--but hey, I'm willing to step up and do it.
The limited-time flavor for this particular time of the year is "Molten Chocolate," which evokes all kind of images without actually saying anything. I think of volcanoes fashioned from bundt cakes, spewing forth chocolate lava, and wow now I am hungry.
According to the Starbucks website, the Molten Chocolate beverages come in three speeds: latte, hot chocolate, and Frappuccino. I have no idea who would make a Frappuccino in sub-freezing weather, and the hot chocolate version sounded like diabetes in a cup, so I opted for Door #1.
The drink itself doesn't look that special, but it's topped with "mocha-espresso" whipped cream and sauce, so it looks pretty snazzy. I wanted to take a picture, but I forgot that when you order a drink like this and don't get around to drinking it until 15 minutes later, the pretty whipped cream melts into the drink. So next time, I've gotta be that one jerk who plops their drink down on a random Starbucks table and starts taking photos of a beverage.
The taste, though, is pretty good. Starbucks describes the secret recipe used to craft this as "rich chocolatey chips melted with espresso" and blended with "mocha-infused milk," so you would think you're getting a Super Mocha. But the taste is a lot smoother than that, and surprisingly the espresso isn't overpowering. It's more balanced than one would think.
But enough about the drink; let's talk about this Double Chocolate loaf cake. Because I think I've found my Kryptonite. This sucker lays on its little plate in the display case, all unassuming. But once you pick it up, BAM. It's a choco-palooza, a veritable cornucopia of sugary goodness. To begin with, this is iced on top with chocolate ganache. WIN. FOREVER.
It doesn't stop there. The cake itself is a dense and rich chocolate cake; the flavor matches pretty much every "double chocolate" flavored cake I've had, so if you were hoping for something fudgy, you're out of luck. But Starbucks tosses in chocolate chunks, which I'm kind of undecided about. I get wanting to toss in lots of chocolate...and the cake is dense enough to support the chocolate chunks...but it almost breaks up the mouthfeel of eating the cake, if you get what I mean. I suppose it probably comes down to what your personal preferences are.
In any case, the flavor is out of this world and the icing is fantastic, so I'm giving this cake as many thumbs up as I can, even though I have long given up on trying to assign point values and ratings to food unless they're terrible.
Miss Scarlett, signing out!
