As I mentioned in the previous post, I stopped at Extraordinary Desserts by Balboa Park in San Diego. It has a very good reputation, and as someone who loves dessert, it’s nice to see a place succeed that specializes in it. So often restaurants just drop the ball on their dessert menu, opting for boring favorites – creme brulee, chocolate cake, icecream, and either a brownie or bread pudding. I’d love to see more variation there, like flavored panna cotta, fruit-based desserts, maybe meringues or spice cakes or gingerbread or poached pears with cream. There’s so much out there!

Chocolate streusel from Extraordinary Desserts

I got this chocolate streusel because I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before.  Yes, that’s really all it takes to get something into my mouth. Novelty. I liked how it is an atypical dessert in general, because streusels are usually breakfast items.

Chocolate streusel topped with flowers, gold, and chocolate

As usual, it was topped with flowers, chocolate, a squirt of chocolate ganache, gold, and powdered sugar. That’s five toppings, six if you count the fact there were two different types of flowers – rose petals and a daisy. I wonder how much these accoutrements account for the price. I have to say, I wasn’t wild about this dessert. Streusel is dense and dry in general – it’s pastry, not cake. The chocolate insides were rich and moist, in contrast, but they were too one-note. It was just chocolate, no hint of anything interesting, like spices or fruit. It wasn’t very sweet, either, so it was just simply boring.

It’s a little unfair because this kind of dessert doesn’t fit my flavor profile at all. I know what I like – creamy textures, complexity, sweetness, novelty. This was novel in concept, but not novel in taste, and I really don’t like pastry that much. Croissants, turnovers, pie crust – I’m not a fan. The streusel didn’t really have a chance, so definitely take my review with a grain of salt.

Chocolate streusel, sideview

Apologies, again, for the poor lighting. I had to use flash for these photos due to poor indoor lighting.

How not to use gold

I complained in my last post about the use of gold leaf in the desserts. It was randomly smeared onto a pecan in the chocolate pecan tart. Here, they seem to have dropped it on a flower with no regard for where it stuck. Look, I don’t have a lot of room to talk because I’m not a great styler myself. My sole contribution to the display of this photo was the fork in cocoa powder, which I hacked together using a Swiss Miss packet.  It just seems so strange to me that you would introduce gold leaf, which instantly reeks of pretention, and throw it on a flower, on a dessert, with no care at all exhibited. It really reinforces the idea that it’s there just to look expensive, and I hate things like that. Don’t make it look expensive so it looks expensive and you can charge more. Make it high-quality.