Andrea Zuill’s Blog

 PLEASE NOTE:  This post is from foggy childhood memories.  Mistakes on what may of actual occured may be present.

Growing up, like in most families, special times called for special cakes.

Unfortunately, a special cake for us was a store bought sheet cake.  Usually the cake part was not too bad.  But, the frosting was made out of some wierd sweet cement.

On family trips to the coast we would often pass a place called the Madonna Inn. As a child it was the most beautiful building I had ever seen. It was an all wood building painted white with sugary sweet pink trim. On one of these trips we actually stopped at the Inn.

 Let me stop now to go into a little detail about the Madonna Inn. It is legendary in California. It’s probably one of the number one places to stay on a honeymoon. Besides the grandeur of their buildings exterior, what the Madonna Inn is primarily known for is the fearless interior decor. Unlike most lodging establishments that play it safe with their decor, I believe the owners of the Madonna said, “Screw it, lets just go for it!”, and proceeded to decorate the hell out of the inns  interior.

 Please check out the Madonna Inn for yourselves: http://www.madonnainn.com/

 Here you can check out the outrageous decor of each of the Madonna Inns rooms: http://www.madonnainn.com/features.php – My favorite room is #206, the Old Mill room.

 The Madonna Inn is also known for its cakes. When my family entered the Inn’s bakery I beheld the most beautiful, huge cakes I had ever seen. I told my folks right then and there that I wanted a chocolate cake. At the time all they had was Black Forest Cake. I had never had that type of cake before. It sounded suspicious. But it was beautiful. Besides its large size it was covered with chocolate shavings. Much to my horror my folks only bought a slice, which I couldn’t believe they did, because obviously with anything so frickin’ fantastic you MUST buy the whole thing. To my parents credit a single slice would be enough for 6 people being that its size was about half my height.

Like I said, that cake was beautiful. When a slice was removed from the whole cake you could see the three types of frosting/filling in between each layer. One of the fillings was some red stuff that looked like jelly. I had never seen that before. Once again I was suspicious. 

When we got to our final destination it was time to try the cake. (TRUTH TIME: While driving I found that the cake was close enough to me and the wrapper loose enough for me to sneak some of the chocolate shavings off of the cake). I have no idea how we went about cutting into this hunk of cake. But what I do remember is the richest, creamiest frosting I had ever tasted. I mean, you could have just eaten the frosting all by itself. The cake itself was perfection. It was moist and rich. And the filling (chocolate crème, butter crème, and the red jelly stuff) added new dimension to a cake that I never knew existed. 

Since that time I have tried other Black Forest Cakes, but none seem as good the one we got from the Madonna Inn.  I don’t know if it’s because nobody makes  Black Forest Cake as well as Madonna Inn or over that the years my memory has turned that Black Forest Cake into a legend.