Location: 807 Gerrard Street East, Toronto
Website: https://www.alicemarie.ca/

Alice Marie Bakery & Coffee serves a cake they call “Deep N’ Nostalgic,” which is their upscale take on McCain’s Deep’n Delicious chocolate cake.

It’s been many, many years, but I actually have a good amount of nostalgia for the Deep’n Delicious cake — probably because it came with a family-sized meal KFC sold back in the ’90s called the Mega Meal, which I used to regularly harass my parents about ordering until, once every few months, they’d cave and do it.  It was a pretty key part of my childhood.

The version at Alice Marie definitely nails the look, right down to the plastic-domed container it comes in.

They might have fancied it up a little too much, however (it had better be fancy, for twelve bucks for a relatively small piece); their website says they use Valrhona Satilia Noire 62% chocolate, which I’m going to go out on a limb and say is slightly nicer than the chocolate McCain uses.

It’s a tasty cake, with a rich chocolatey flavour and a restrained level of sweetness.  I don’t know how much it recalls an actual Deep’n Delicious cake, outside of the look, but it’s definitely a good quality dessert.

The biggest issue is the buttercream icing that it’s topped with.  They serve the cake fridge-cold, and the stuff is rock hard.  The smart thing to do would be to wait maybe like half an hour for the cake to come to room temperature and for the icing to soften.  But I regret to inform you that I absolutely, positively do not have that kind of patience or willpower.  If you want me to eat that cake at room temperature, you should serve it that way.  Put a tasty chocolate cake in front of me, and tell me it will get better if I wait a few minutes?  That cake is going down my gullet immediately.  Sorry.