Ganache Bakery, Greensboro, NC

Located downtown Greensboro, at least for right now, Ganache Bakery is in a beautiful, very modern restaurant style shop.  In fact, it used to be a restaurant.  Ganache previously served lunch but decided to concentrate only on baked goods.  They recently hired Robert Coates, Executive Pastry Chef under Corey Lingerfelt's direction as the Manager.  They told me that the Chocolate Madness cake is the best seller in this bakery.  One customer came in before a meeting with her personal trainer and ordered a Chocolate All-American cake, which I thought was hilarious.

The free sample trays this team put together was so large that I had to actually take some home with me to critique as my tummy couldn't handle the amount of sugar just from taking small bites, and I feared my critique would not be fair if I did not do it that way.  The second tray was critiqued within a 3 hour time frame to give my mouth a rest in between flavors out of fairness.

The first tray that came out included:

• White Raspberry Cake:  Very good.  The raspberries were sweet, cake moist.  The icing was incredible--melt in my mouth and very creamy.  This is a keeper for sure!
• Strawberry Shortcake:  Whipped topping to die for, this cake would pair beautifully with a glass of cold champagne.  Perfect for a romantic date with that someone special.
• Red Velvet:  This cake had no particular flavor and was a tad on the dry side.  Not my favorite.
• Carrot Cake:  The cake was ok, but not enough carrot flavor came through to me.  Although it was not a bad cake, it wasn't anything to rave about.
• Strawberry Amaretto:  Made with locally grown strawberries, this chiffon cake with buttercream is sweeter than the shortcake version and quite delicious.  This is a cake that I would serve the in-laws for dessert and not worry about their opinion.  It's good.
• Lemon Cream:  This is a yellow cake with excellent buttercream frosting.  It is perfectly mellow and creamy even with the lemon curd.  This cake would be great for a wedding.

This platter I had to take home with me so the actual critique was performed from my home later that afternoon:

• Peanut Butter All American Cake:  Deep peanut butter flavor with peanut butter buttercream and topped with ganache.  If you like peanut butter then this is the cake for you.  It is very rich and only a small slice is needed with a tall glass of cold milk.  Perfect for a fall or winter night.
• Caramel Oreo Dream:  This cake was on the dry side but the flavor was overall good.  The cake itself was disappointing though so I did not try more than 2 bites.
• Black Cow:  This is a red velvet cake but with no red dye.  It's not bad at all.  The icing was good and the cake was moist.
• Bailey's Caramel Crunch:  They use real Bailey's Irish Cream in this cake and you can tell.  YUM!  The cake is super rich and moist with a Bailey's buttercream and ganache.  The aftertaste on this cake is all Bailey's.
• Chocolate All American:  Another dry cake that was not impressive to me in any way.
• Chocolate Madness:  Devils food cake with chocolate mousse, semi-ganache and buttercream.  It was dry, which was disappointing.

Lingerfelt told me that Ganache Bakery will be moving to another location.  I would like to go back to review some of their new recipes, as that was part of their plan to update not only the store but the flavors, too.