Cafe Ysabel’s Sans Rival

In my carrot cake entry, I wrote about how I discovered chef Gene Gonzalez’s cakes and how my whole family eventually fell in love with them. I also wrote about how rarely we got to enjoy his cakes after we moved to the suburbs. Gene Gonzalez is the man behind Cafe Ysabel and, to our delight, we discovered Cafe Ysabel’s Sans Rival in the freezer section of the local supermarket. My husband was especially delighted–ask him what his favorite cake is and he’ll tell you it’s Sans Rival. Except that it isn’t exactly a cake but more of a pastry the size of a cake.

Sans Rival is made with several layers of nut meringue stacked one on top of the other with butter icing in between, on top and on the sides. The meringue is made with crushed cashew nuts and beaten egg whites and sugar, baked until crisp. Sans Rival is best eaten within a few hours from assembly before the meringue starts to get soggy. Which is why we were disappointed with Cafe Ysabel’s frozen Sans Rival–the meringue was no longer crisp. Okay, maybe we expected too much. There really was no way that they’d stay crisp after being frozen. The uncrisp meringue aside, it was still satisfying though. Not numero uno but good enough to satisfy a craving.

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