The Fresh Market Triple Chocolate Truffle Cake Review
Author’s note: I wasn’t paid to write this review. And, I bought this cake with my own scrawny money. I have no affiliation with The Fresh Market.
It could have been beautiful.
I’ve been wanting to try this Triple Chocolate Truffle Cake from The Fresh Market for a while. In fact, I’ve been ogling this cake for nearly two years. It’s a petite dessert, but costs an eye-watering $20. Yeeesh. It took me a while to pull the trigger.
Anyway. This truffle cake looks stunning in the store display case. In fact, all the Fresh Market desserts could be beauty pageant contestants. Look at them.
But. Sadly, my cake didn’t arrive home unscathed, despite my precautions. The top and side was bashed in and smeared around in a totally undignified manner.
The culprit is the packaging. The cake box is rather flimsy cardboard and has a super thin, wobbly (and oddly baggy) clear window, which flexed itself onto my cake top and squished it on the ride home. Rude!
Also, the gold cardboard circle under the cake doesn’t extend far enough past the edges of the cake to prevent the dessert from sliding up against the inner box edge when transporting.
The squishery! The cruel, cruel squishery!
What does it taste like?
Anyway. This cake rocked my world. It really did. I babbled about it to my friends, because it was so toe-curling-ly delicious. It’s lush, rich, and bursting with deep cocoa flavor. This is a dinner-party-worthy dessert. Even with the squishery.
In particular, I appreciated the texture contrasts in this cake. There are three distinct layers, each with a different mouth-feel and flavor:
The truffle layer
The largest layer is the “truffle” itself. This is much lighter and airier than I expected. In fact, it’s a bit more like mousse than a truffle. Compared to the Publix Chocolate Truffle Torte Cake, The Fresh Market’s version is silky, fluffy, and delicate.
The truffle does have a rich, luscious real cream taste. In fact, cream is the first ingredient in this dessert! It’s not a cheap or tacky tasting mousse, but has depth and sophistication. It’s very, very rich. Like, billionaire-rich. Elon-Musk-rich. So rich, I could only eat a small amount at a time. Although a lighter color, the mousse delights with a sinful, tangy, deep cocoa flavor.
The “cake” layer
The bottom 1/3 is a deep, dark chocolate cake. This surprised me — I expected the entire dessert to be the “truffle” material. This “cake-cake” has a pleasant sturdiness that tastes closer to a homemade cake (and a little more like the Costco Tuxedo Cake, but perhaps a bit softer). Although it features a dense, structural crumb, this cake is uber moist and tender. This is about as tender as a cake can be without becoming mush.
The ganache layer
The top of this truffle cake is a glossy, slippery, thin layer of ganache-like confection. It’s such a thin layer, I have to pay attention while eating to consciously experience it. The taste is ultra-rich dark cocoa with a pleasantly restrained sweetness. Mine had a little bit of texture in it that reminded me of ground coffee beans. But I’m not certain it was intentional.
The ganache is sticky like warm icing, but a tiny bit syrupy, too. Sadly, it’s made with soybean oil. More about the ingredients later.
The garnish
I love the chocolate curls on the sides of the truffle cake. They’re thick enough to be gently crunchy, which provides a satisfying texture change from the rest of the confection. The dark chocolate is reasonably good quality, with a moderately dark taste.
Other than the chocolate curls, there aren’t any crunchy or crisp parts in this cake. And there’s no crust on the bottom. It’s all soft layers and slippery smoothness.
Serving the truffle cake
This is a six-inch cake. When sliced, the servings are very hobbit-like. Barely bigger than a post-it note. A 6-inch cake makes 3-inch slices. They look rather forlorn on a normal-sized dessert plate. Even so, I found these small slices so rich that I did not want more!
To counter-balance the tiny footprint, I might opt to serve these cake slices with an artistic drizzle of chocolate syrup, and a flourish of whipped cream. Maybe a few fresh raspberries and a dusting of cocoa powder. You know. Just something to fill the space. Especially if I have guests to impress. Otherwise, the plate looks empty and strange.
(The tiny size of these slices is similar to The Fresh Market Pumpkin Cheesecake — you can read my review of it here.)
Ingredients in The Fresh Market Triple Chocolate Truffle Cake
Here are the ingredients from the label:
- Cream (Cream, Milk, Microcrystalline Cellulose, Carrageenan, Cellulose Gum)
- Sugar
- Unsweetened Chocolate
- Chocolate Flavored Confectionary (Sugar, Soybean Oil, Cocoa Powder with Alkali, Palm Oil, Soy Lecithin, Natural Vanilla Extract)
- Water
- Canola and/or Soybean Oil
- Chocolate Curls (Sugar, Unsweetened Chocolate, Cocoa Butter, Soy Lecithin, Natural Vanilla Flavor)
- Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Folic Acid, Riboflavin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Niacin, Chlorine Benzoyl Peroxide)
- Cocoa Powder Processed with Alkalai
- Eggs
- Modified Corn Starch
- Natural Vanilla Flavor
- Skim Milk Powder
- Leavening (Calcium Acid Pyrophosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate, Corn Starch, Monocalcium Phosphate Monohydrate, Calcium Sulphate)
- Cocoa Butter
- Salt
- Cellulose Gum
- Soy Lecithin
The first ingredient is cream! Yaaass!
Unfortunately, soybean oil appears more than once. You all know how I feel about soybean oil. Ew.
Minor disappointments are the flour bleached with Chlorine Benzoyl Peroxide, and the added, unnecessary ingredients in the cream, like Carrageenan and various Celluloses. Leave the poor cream alone!
Nutrition Facts
If you read my review of The Fresh Market Peanut Butter Cups, then you know I jumped through some hoops to get nutritional information from the corporate office. I was able to request nutrition facts for this truffle cake at the same time. And here it is!
Yes, The Fresh Market sent me the nutrition information as a long, narrow line, so I’m typing it below for easy reading:
Triple Chocolate Truffle Cake 6 inch
- Serving Size: 100 grams
- Calories: 390
- Total Fat: 31 grams
- Saturated Fat: 14 grams
- Trans Fat: 0 grams
- Cholesterol: 65 mg
- Sodium: 135 mg
- Carbs: 32 grams
- Dietary Fiber: 3 grams
- Sugars: 23 grams
- Added Sugars: 21 grams
- Protein: 4 grams
Price and Servings in The Fresh Market Triple Chocolate Truffle Cake
Because the truffle cake is so rich, I’d hazard there are at least 8 servings in this small circle. Although the label says 1 pound 12 ounces, I weighed mine at just shy of 2 pounds. Divided into eight servings, that would be between 3.5 ounces to 4 ounces per serving.
Price-wise, this is a spendy little morsel, although dividing $20 by eight servings makes each slice only $2.50. This is cheaper than a Publix bakery cake, per serving. So there’s that.
(You can read my cost analysis of two Publix bakery cakes here: Publix Strawberry Peach Sensation Cake and Publix Tiramisu Delight Cake.)
Shelf Life
This cake was so rich and so decadent, it took me about 10 days to eat it all. I stored it in my refrigerator, with a mixing bowl inverted over the top to keep it fresh. There was no significant change in the taste or texture over that 10 day period, other than the truffle becoming slightly denser and more concentrated (in a good way). The cake material stayed remarkably moist and fresh-tasting, and the ganache did not melt. I’d say you can confidently buy this a few days before your event without worrying about freshness.
That being said, I am fairly certain — based on conversations with The Fresh Market bakery staff — that the cakes arrive in the store previously frozen. So, since this dessert has (probably) already been frozen (and thawed), I would not recommend re-freezing it.
Dramatic Conclusion
This was one of the best chocolate mousse-type desserts I’ve ever had. Even though it is fairly expensive, I would buy it again. It’s the kind of sophisticated cake I would serve at a dinner party or celebration.
To me, it tastes more like “mousse” than “truffle.” I would rename this cake something more intriguingly ridiculous like, “Midnight Cocoa Dream Cake.”
The End.
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