Yeah, Domino’s? Let me get a large peperoni and a gateau au chocolat with gold leaf for delivery.
After a hard day of work, we here at SoraNews24 sometimes like to reward ourselves with something tasty. And if we’ve been working especially hard? Then something both tasty and fancy is in order.
So as we felt like we’d earned ourselves a dessert luxurious enough to warrant four descriptors and a French name, we looked over our options and decided on a Double Mousse Chocolate and Caramel Gateau. We didn’t get the cake from a cafe or patisserie, though, but from Domino’s Pizza.
We were as surprised as anyone to find such a gourmet-sounding treat on the menu of the wallet-friendly pizza delivery outfit, but it’s right there on the Domino’s Pizza Japan app’s list of items you can order either for pick-up or delivery. At 1,766 yen (US$12.70) it’s not exactly a cheap dessert, but we know when our unique brand of journalistic duty calls, and so we ordered one to try for ourselves.
The Double Mousse Chocolate and Caramel Gateau comes in an elegant box befitting its name, with stately brown-and-gold patterning vaguely reminiscent of Louis Vuitton. Opening up the lid, though, this seems to be less an attempt to ape the style of the French bag maker and more a preview of the color scheme that awaits you inside.
Yep, that’s gold leaf sprinkled atop a dessert delivered by a chain whose toppings usually run closer to pepperoni and olives. The shine of the gold makes for quite a nice contrast with the dark, almost black top layer of the cake.
The Double Mousse Chocolate and Caramel Gateau isn’t huge, with a footprint about the same size as a large smartphone.
It does boast a multitude of layers, though, as you can see when checking out the enticing side view.
Starting at the top, you’ve got dark chocolate with just the right amount of sophisticatedly bitter notes to it.
You won’t find any bitterness underneath that, though, with a deliciously light and airy chocolate mousse that’s content to provide you with straightforward sweet satisfaction.
Then comes the caramel mousse. In comparison to the top-layer chocolate and chocolate mousse, its flavor is far more subtle, but it makes a great contribution to the dessert’s aroma.
And, finally, at the bottom you’ve got chocolate sponge cake providing a foundation both in terms of structure and taste.
Dig deep enough with your dessert fork or spoon to get all those layers in a single mouthful, and you’ll be given a very tasty reward. The bitter chocolate makes its presence felt the whole way through but doesn’t overpower any of the other ingredients. The overall texture is light and fluffy, but the presence of crushed almond bits in the mousse gives some stimulating crunchy punctuation as you chew, with the scent of caramel lingering long enough to serve as a very convincing invitation to another bite.
All in all, this is a very good cake, higher quality than what you’d find at the convenience store (that’s not a backhanded compliment, either, as Japanese convenience store sweets are delicious in their own right) and on par with what you could expect from a dedicated patisserie. That actually makes a lot of sense when you consider that Domino’s reached out to Nitto Cone Arm, a confectioner based in Tochigi Prefecture, to produce the Double Mousse Chocolate and Caramel Gateau for the chain.
Really, the only fault we could find is that the Double Mousse Chocolate and Caramel Gateau feels a little small for its price. Of course, it’s possible that’s a side effect of us mentally associating Domino’s with nights of stuffing ourselves silly with pizza, and by Japanese cake specialty shop standards, the price doesn’t seem so bad. We may not have room to add a gold-topped dessert to our Domino’s order every time, but that’s probably not going to be an option anyway since the cake was recently added to the menu as a special Christmas item, so it’s probably only going to be sticking around for a limited time. But if you’re getting a couple of pizzas for a Christmas party and want a special dessert to cap the meal with, you can take care of both at the same place thanks to the Double Mousse Chocolate and Caramel Gateau.
Photos ©SoraNews24
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