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THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Gretchen Ertl

Yaffe

Janet Cann wrote:

“We recently dined at Garden Grille in Pawtucket, and once again their chocolate cake blew me away. I believe the cake is vegan, which strikes me even more, because I consider myself a chocolate cake snob. I bake also, and know the challenges of baking mainstream, vegetarian and vegan. What I love about the cake is that the true flavors of the cake and the frosting come out without being too chocolatey and too sweet. How do they do it? I hope they share the recipe, for I haven’t found any like it on my own.”

Rob Yaffe’s Garden Grille restaurant is amazing in so many ways with its vegetarian menu; I’m not surprised his team has mastered chocolate cake as well as main dishes, soups and appetizers. The cake is indeed vegan and made with no eggs or dairy. Even the chocolate bits are nondairy.

Yaffe said the cake uses ingredients that are easily found at Eastside Marketplace, Whole Foods, some Shaw’s markets such as the one in Barrington with a large natural food section, and some Super Stop & Shop stores.

He offered a guide through some unfamiliar ingredients, including Florida crystals, which is basically sugar made from evaporated cane juice.

“It’s basically a step up from turbinado,” he said. “So you could replace it with that.”

Turbinado sugar is a raw sugar, crystallized from the initial pressing of sugar cane.

At Garden Grille they like to use as pure a product as they can for every ingredient, so they chose the evaporated cane juice.

Nayonnaise is a nondairy soy mayonnaise product from Nasoya. You can also select any vegan mayonnaise as an alternative.

And you’ll need vegan chocolate chips if you want to eliminate the milk products in some chocolates.

Yaffe credits John Dille, a former chef at Garden Grille, with creating the chocolate layer cake recipe. The two are currently working on a cookbook together.

Yaffe opened Garden Grille, 727 East St., Pawtucket, just over the Providence line, 11 years ago in January.

CHOCOLATE CAKE

CHOCOLATE GANACHE FROSTING