Within the past few of years, we've managed to see the cake scene in Colombo expand from just The Fab and P&S to a whole bunch of home bakers and independent cake shops. And amongst this new gaggle of baking places do we find an adorable little dessert bar with one of the nicest ambiences in all of Colombo, The Cake Factory down 5th Lane. 

We've been to Cake Factory before and while we weren't entirely blown away by it, we did thoroughly enjoy their Chocolate Treat. So, this year, we decided to drop in for another look. Here's how it went.

The Ambience

This is the absolute best part of our experience at The Cake Factory. While the cafe itself is quite small, it was covered with a gorgeous tangle of flowers. As a whole, it gives out a very Disney princess at a tea party vibe to it and we are desperately in love with it. They have very limited seating but since most people get their food to go, so it's all good. 

The Cakes

The Cake Factory, as the name suggests does cake and a bunch of other desserts. Since they already had a table full of caked options, we went with the Nutella Brownie (Rs. 180), a Red Velvet Cupcake (Rs.200), the Chocolate Treat (Rs. 400) and the Hazelnut Caramel Sponge (Rs. 500). 

Starting with the Hazelnut Caramel Sponge. It was huge with two pretty dense layers of vanilla cake and a thick layer of peanut butter tucked in between, it was quite good. The whole concept of peanut butter in the place of icing was a stroke of genius which we really enjoyed. But, we would have liked the cake to be a little lighter because the denseness of the cake and the peanut butter was a bit much.

Moving on to the Nutella Brownie. While the brownie did have a really nice layer of Nutella smothered on top, it has room for improvement. I, personally like my brownies fudgier than ones which are predominantly crumbly. This, unfortunately, was more on the crumbly side. Plus, most of the chocolate taste was coming off the Nutella, and not the brownie. We suggest getting a brownie from Smokey's instead. 

Then came the Red Velvet Cupcake. Although stunningly beautiful, we weren't quite impressed by it. The cake felt relatively dry and the cream cheese was excessively sweet. 

The Chocolate Treat is one of Vishvi's favourites and was the winner of our Colpetty's Chocolate Cake Contest. Unfortunately, the piece we got was a bit dry, probably because we got the last piece on the display. While the ganache was rich, absolutely chocolatey, and all in all sublime, it wasn't entirely moist in texture. Again, maybe it's because it dried up in the air conditioning, we'll never know. 

Non-Caked Items 

The Cake Factory does a couple of other desserts apart from their cakes so, after much thought, we finally decided to go with the Passion Fruit Meringue (Rs. 350).

Let's get this straight. I don't like meringues, generally. I find them too sweet and altogether just a bore. BUT! the Meringue at The Cake Factory was brilliant!! Positively drowned in a beautiful rendition of passion fruit custard, we absolutely loved it. The sweetness of the meringue was balanced out by the custard and the littering of cashew nuts was the cherry on top. If you're looking for something tangy, sweet and gorgeously fresh, we suggest going with this. You will not regret it. 

Service 

In terms of service, we really can't complain. They didn't really dally around and were pretty nice about packing up leftover food (we ordered a lot). 

Conclusion

At the end of it all, it's pretty much in the middle of things. They've got some good stuff, but also the room for improvement. Nonetheless, they seem to be pretty popular amongst the people in the area and they do have a bunch of options we didn't even get close to trying so, check them out and let us know how it goes.