Over the past few days, I have been seeing a number of people posting in social networks about a particular cake from The Muffin House… So, since I happened to visit the Mall of Travancore today, I decided to try the same if available…
The place is located close to the Carnival Cinemas over there at the corner as you come up thru escalators near the McDonalds… Its a small shop with a few tables and what I felt to be quite unique and interesting how they use this toy train to bring the food and drinks to the customers as can be seen in the video below… This train was heading to one of the tables behind me… 🙂
So, the reason I visited the place is basically to try this cake I had been seeing being talked about in social networks and the cake is called as the Rainbow Cake… Along with the cake, I went for their Classic Sharjah Shake and both of them were served by the waiter (since the train happened to be busy at the time) as shown in the pic below…
First, lets talk about the Rainbow cake… From what I heard in social networks, its a fruity multi-layered sponge cake which altogether looks like a rainbow… So, based on how it looks, which I think is the best looking Rainbow cake I have ever seen till date, I guessed that the layers are from bottom to top – Black Currant, Blue Curacao, Kiwi, Pineapple, Mango and Strawberry favoured based on the colours of the layers as can be seen in the pic below… What caught me off-guard is of-course the size of the piece… I mean it really felt too big for a person… I mean its ok if that person is having it as a meal but as a dessert, quite frankly, I think its too big even for two…
Now coming to the taste, I felt one problem right off the bat… It was too sweet for me… So sweet that the sweetness ends up masking some of the flavours… Eg: I couldn’t tell if that green layer was Kiwi at all… But I did feel that my guesses on flavours were right for most of the layers… The frosting on top was a sticky one which felt like Marshmallow based and all I could taste from that frosting was the sweetness of sugar… Typically bakers tend to use Vanilla but I think the severe intensity of the sweetness didn’t allow me to detect that… However, thats just me… If you are someone who loves that high level of sweetness in your desserts, you will absolutely love this cake… I think the fruity flavours were spot on and to me personally, I think this cake would’ve been amazing if the sugar usage is reduced… I think the cake is twice as sweet as how it should’ve been to my taste…
Next we’ll talk about the Classic Sharjah Shake… The Sharjah shake is basically a high energy malty thick milk shake made using Frozen Milk, Nuts (mostly Cashews though some use Peanuts as a cheaper alternative) and Banana along with a malt component, which here in Kerala we see the Horlicks powder being used… This is a drink which is claimed to have been invented in a juice shop in Kozhikode in the 80s, started appearing here in Trivandrum and pretty much the rest of Kerala towards the later half of the 90s and became very popular among the young generation as not only an incredibly tasty drink but also as a quick energy boost source… Although it started with the use of Horlicks power, versions using other popular energy drink products like Bournvita, Milo, Maltova, Boost and even Complan powders have come up over the years… Because of this, the calories you get from a glass of this drink tends to be more than enough for a day and because of the way its made with Frozen milk, its the most popular drink in Kerala during the Summer… Now, here, since the name is “Classic Sharjah”, my hope was to get the original taste of the same as it used to be back during my school days 🙂
Coming to the taste, first of all, this version has to be thickest form of the Sharjah Shake that I ever had and one sip from it did indeed take me back to my school days in the 90s when I first had the Sharjah Shake from a place in Pattom (forgot the name) where my dad took me to back then for Pizzas (very first pizza makers in Trivandrum if I remember correctly from before the time Ambrosia Bakehouse came and made them popular in the city)… This shake had a bit of Chocolate flavour to it as well in addition to the Chocolate sauce at the bottom… It was also incredibly rich with the nuts blended into it and based on the texture, its most certainly a very generous portion of the same… Drinking thru that straw ended up causing my jaw muscles to fatigue rather quickly and so I ended up asking for a spoon and used it to drink… I can say that its definitely the best Sharjah Shake option that I have ever had in Trivandrum and while that being said, I do have one complaint, which is again about the level of sweetness which felt exactly at the same level as the Rainbow Cake that I talked about above… So, overall I think this place is a bit too generous/liberal with their use of Sugar and it is my request that something be done about it asap…
Thats it for now… Other than being almost in a sugar induced coma, I did love both the Rainbow Cake and the Classic Sharjah… I saw that they have quite a number of savoury food items in the menu like any other Cafe… So, hoping to try some of them next time 🙂
