A life of travel, shameless gluttony, hedonism and occasional enslavement

Hot, sweaty, tired from walking all over the city visiting pastry and chocolate shops in a blistering Spanish summer heat, I was waiting all week for this. Oriol Balaguer’s much vaunted Paradigma del Chocolate, or as they say in Spain, mucha aclamada, for this is a variation on his famous 8 textures of chocolate, a masterpiece of a cake called Paradigma del Chocolate.

My bus to Paris was due in 2 hours and this cake would not have survived the trip, so, I sat down in the park near the boutique and proceeded to eat the WHOLE cake by myself. This cost 45 Euros, and damn me if ANY bit goes to waste, this was my lunch and dinner all in one.

The perfect mirror glaze had bits of cocoa nib nougatine surrounding it and the decor was just a distraction from what lay beneath!

This was previously known as ‘Ocho Texturas del Chocolate – The Cake’, and it must have evolved over time and components change, but I tried to identify the 8 textures, 9 actually, if you consider the gelatine based glaze. Here are what I think are the full components of this cake.

1. Foamy texture from the white chocolate foam (Duh!)
2. Crunch from the hollow, molded chocolate shell
3. Soft, jelly-like texture from the glaze
4. Kind of dense mousse from the 70% chocolate mousse.
5. Milk chocolate cream giving a silky, velvety quality
6. Milk chocolate ganache giving a bit of body and denseness in a way that lingers on the tongue, different from the mousse that just disintegrates
7. Chocolate sponge for a bit of spongey chewiness
8. Cocoa nib nougatine for crunch and chewiness
9. Chocolate/Almond Pate Sucree for a bit of crumbliness and flakiness and crunch

Conclusion

This cake is not a light cake by any means, its components and very nature of it is naturally heavy, rich and the best cure to a broken heart. However, this is gastronomic discourse will not discuss the finer arts of curing love-ache with chocolate, of which wanton indulgence in the best stuff would not be ill advice!

The flavour of this cake was overwhelmingly chocolate, as one could only suppose, and it is a very ‘European’ kind of cake in its denseness. Perhaps Asian palates prefer a lighter cake, and I do find myself shifting preference to this style of cake in the past few years.

The differences in textures as you went through the cake were intriguing as every bite and chew seemed to bring different sensations with it. The differences between the mousse, cremoso and ganache frankly were not as amazing as was their purpose to achieve balance in sweetness and flavour.

These chocolate components, when put togather and eaten at once sounds good on paper, but in practice, it just becomes one amalgamated chocolate orgy. Sure, you could feel the textures for a few moments, but thats because I was looking out for them.

All in all, a chocoholic’s dream with a great marketing tag on it. Will I try this cake again? Probably not, unless something intriguing is added to it. However, at the end of the day, its just a really really great chocolate cake………period! If there was one chocolate cake in the world to buy, this would be it.

Been there, bought that, ate it and liked it, not loved it, because thats not what I was looking for at the moment in time. Others will eat it and absolutely love it, and thats the great thing about our world, the differences in every person’s palate. Oriol Balaguer indeed is a rising star in Spanish pastry and I gotta say, everything of his has been eaten with extreme pleasure!

You can read about his chocolate bonbons or pieces in another post.