NYT piece today on red velvet cake

[cgchow]

Are Cake Man Raven loyalists as outraged as I am with Florence Fabricant's omission? Betty Bakery's red velvet cake is cited and praised, but I'm shocked that there's no mention of CMR. On that, has anyone tried Betty's cake, if so, how is it?

[jen kalb]

I havent had that many red velvet's but while CMR's is good, I dont think its necessarily the best - Ive had better at various places around the neighborhood including the defunct Mama Duke's, which I think had some jam in it/flavor in addition to its smoothness and sweetness.

[elecsheep9]

I used to quite like the Red Velvet cake from Mama Dukes as well. Too bad most everything else was fairly mediocre.

[kevin]

and for the record if a place has pretty good bbq sometimes it'll have pretty decent red velvet cake to boot too.

[kevin]

any address on cake man raven. and is it by the slice or only whole? thanks sounds awesome.

[bobjbkln]

http://www.cakemanraven.com/

[nyufoodie]

it has a website ...it's located on fulton st. in fort green, brooklyn. accessible by the C and G train. you have to order a whole cake in advance but, a slice is normally available. it's definitely just a bakeshop serving other southern type cakes.

[Get In My Belly]

be warned, that if you trek to the cakeman they may or may not have slices of red velvet available (i would say its available more often than not, but definitely not always). its not unusual to see 10-15 people waiting outside for cake to come out. one time, we were told there would be slices available in 15 minutes, and after a bunch of us waited 20, they decided that there would, in fact, not be any cake available that night.

[nyufoodie]

...I concur...CMR's Red Velvet is the best of it's class and worth the schelp.

[fudluvr]

Well, the article said it was a blind taste test. And I would be shocked if they didn't include CMR's version in the test. I guess it just means the ones they mentioned could be pretty good!

CMR has been receiving plenty of good press as of late..Anyways, if you think his is the best, keep getting it...I personally really like the version at Baked, and since it is in my neighborhood, that's where I am going to go when I want it...

[chowkitty]

It is indeed a shocking omission. I might actually write a letter to the paper, which I have never done before.

[surly]

couldn't agree with you more. what a joke, leaving out cake man raven. when i first had magnolia's version in the '90s i thought it was pretty good, but once i had the version at CMR i was converted.

i can't imagine that flofab would've totally forgotten about CMR, though - she mentioned in the article that they tried red velvet cakes from 19 different bakeries and narrowed their selection to the few listed. perhaps her taste really is that bad?