You Need To Try Some of This Perfect Chocolate Cake on East Hastings

You Need To Try This is a running archive of all the awesome drinks and dishes we’ve come across over the course of our professional and private lives — or at least the ones that we have the presence of mind and patience to photograph before they get in our bellies.

Try tracing the icing swirl with your eyes from left to right | Photo: Michelle Sproule

One can spend months, even years, between perfect chocolate cake experiences. They’re like the comets of the dessert world. (You’d think by the volume of words spoken of them that they’d abound, but really they are quite rare.) So when one arrives on your radar, it’s best to pounce upon it immediately with a determined fork.

You can snag one right now at Aer Cafe in Hastings-Sunrise. Its chocolatey innards strike the ideal balance between fluffy and dense and the top is crowned with a creamy icing that miraculously seems to cover more ground than is allotted to it. Instead of being a one-edged slice, it’s a whole rectangular cake done in miniature, so you get to enjoy each of the four corners.

In addition to the superb little cakes (cheesecakes equally divine but five times prettier), the small cafe/bakery also makes the excellent crusty bread used in their simple but delicious sandwiches. And for coffee lovers, they have a sweet pour-over set-up and pull better than average shots of espresso. Dig in if you haven’t before.