What: Honey cake (medovik)
Where: Family Bakery, 73910 Highway 111, Unit I, Palm Desert
How much: $5.80 for a slice
Contact: 760-404-0481
Why: It’s delicious without being too sweet.
The best dessert I’ve in recent months didn’t come from a fancy restaurant or an upscale bakery. Instead, it came from a non-descript hole-in-the-wall, located in the sea of strip malls along the frontage road on the north side of Highway 111 in Palm Desert.
It’s called honey cake—and if you’ve never tried it, I strongly recommend heading to Family Bakery to try a slice for yourself.
Family Bakery is a small, mostly-takeout Armenian restaurant that’s been open for not quite a year and a half. On the savory side, you’ll find chicken and beef kebabs, chicken shawarma, breakfast sandwiches, hummus, meat- and potato-filled perashkis, cheese borek and a few other Mediterranean-style options. On the bakery/savory side, the options include puri bread, baklava, napoleons, eclairs, cream puffs, Mikado cake (another Armenian dessert, with creamy custard and chocolate glaze) and some other tasty treats.
But really, you should be getting the honey cake on your initial visit to Family Bakery. It consists of very thin layers of honey sponge cake, with each layer separated by a slightly tart cream filling. The predominant flavor is like a caramelized honey—but the cake is not actually all that sweet, and the texture is wonderfully soft without being at all mushy. It’s truly unlike any other slice of cake I’ve ever had.
It’s common today for restaurants and high-end bakeries to charge well more than $10 for desserts; I’ve even seen a few places where some desserts are $20-plus. Putting cost aside, I’d rather have a $5.80 piece of honey cake from Family Bakery than virtually any of those desserts. It’s that good.
