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Daily Dish

Diminutive cakes

By Betty HallockDeputy Food Editor 
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I’m having a small-cake moment. In the past couple of days I’ve had a lot of little cakes, like the individual cakes that pastry chef Elizabeth Belkind (formerly of Grace and Campanile) has created for Cake Monkey, the bakery she launched with her partner, Lisa Olin, from a commercial kitchen (they’re currently looking for a retail space).

Belkind makes individual layer cakes -- dense, moist cake (there’s brown butter and buttermilk in the batter) with, for the most part, plenty of buttercream frosting. But the favorite around here is her lemon custard cake with huckleberries that’s frosted with an Italian meringue (or ‘toasted marshmallow frosting’). The texture of the meringue is fantastic -- light and smooth and creamy -- and the combination of lemon and huckleberries is dreamy.

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And then there are the petit fours from Valerie. Again, the lemon cake is a winner: four layers of lemon cake with layers of tart lemon ganache in between, finished with white chocolate.

Cake Monkey, see website; Valerie, 3360 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, (888) 706-1408.

-- Betty Hallock

Photos by Betty Hallock

Daily Dish
Betty Hallock

Betty Hallock is deputy Food editor at the Los Angeles Times. She has co-written four cookbooks, including “Bäco: Vivid Recipes from the Heart of Los Angeles,” “Amá: A Modern Tex-Mex Kitchen” and “Baking at République.” She started her journalism career at the Wall Street Journal and Scientific American in New York, worked on the L.A. Times’ Business desk, and was interim food editor at Los Angeles Magazine. Hallock also helped launch a food and nutrition vertical for wellness app RoundGlass. She’s a graduate of UCLA and New York University.

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