Seocho café fruit birthday cake with white wine: Chef Cho

For my husband’s birthday, I was wondering what kind of cake to get this time, so I visited Chef Cho Shinsegae Department Store Gangnam. Chef Cho was in the basement food hall of Shinsegae Department Store Gangnam, and the display case had a wider variety of whole cakes than I expected. The cakes are made by a chef featured on SBS’s Master of Living, so it is already such a famous place!!!

Chef Cho whole-cake selection

One of Chef Cho’s popular cakes is the Real Mango Rose. Just as its name suggests, it was beautifully topped with mango arranged like roses. The yellow mango covered the top of the cake, making it look so showy—and if you love mango, wouldn’t this be the first thing to catch your eye?

Peach Berry is a cake loaded with strawberries and peaches. It was also the cake I ultimately chose, and the red strawberries and peaches together made the colors so pretty. There were many other varieties too, including Sebit Crepe, Fig Crepe, Chocolate Whole Strawberry, and Pistachio.

I thought there would only be fresh-fruit cakes, but there were crêpe and chocolate cakes too, so there was quite a broad range depending on your taste. If you want to see the kinds of fruit used while choosing a cake at Shinsegae Gangnam, I think it is best to look at the display case in person. Even among fresh-fruit cakes, the whole mood changes depending on the fruit on top.

If you are looking for a Shinsegae Gangnam cake for a birthday or anniversary, I thought it would be worth having a look around.

Chef Cho, known as one of the four great cake shops

As you may already know, Chef Cho is famous enough to be called one of the “four great cake shops.” It became well known after appearing on SBS’s Master of Living, and is especially known for cakes and desserts made with fresh fruit. Haha.

Which cake should I try... I really had to think it over, haha.

How did the Peach Berry whole cake taste?

After considering all the varieties for quite a while, I chose Peach Berry. Since it was my husband’s birthday cake, I thought a refreshing fruit cake for the two of us would be better than a very heavy chocolate cake. More than anything, I loved that it was piled high with strawberries and peaches.

The first thing I noticed with a bite was that it was not as sweet as I expected. There were quite a lot of strawberries, so their distinct tartness came through first in every bite, then peaches came in here and there for a softer, sweeter finish. With strawberries alone it might have leaned a little too tangy, but the peaches made the flavor much gentler.

I tend to get tired of cake after a few bites if it has too much cream or feels rich, but that feeling was less noticeable here because I ate it with the fruit. The whipped cream itself was not excessively sweet either, so it did not overpower the fruit.

The sponge was moist and fluffy rather than dry, so it all went down softly with the fruit and cream. Especially when I ate one piece of strawberry and one piece of peach together, the fruit flavor was so clear—tangy and sweet, exactly that feeling~

Personally, I think this flavor would suit someone who likes refreshing fruit-filled cakes more than someone who loves very sweet cakes. At first, since it was a birthday cake, I planned to have just one or two slices, but it was lighter than I expected, so I kept reaching for more, haha.

Peach Berry with white wine

Cake and white wine pair quite well, you know? After eating the cake and drinking the white wine, the soft creamy feeling left in my mouth was neatly cleared away, and when I went back to the cake, the strawberries’ tartness came through even more clearly. If the cake had been too sweet, I think it would have clashed with the wine, but Peach Berry was not overly sweet and had the fruit’s acidity, so it went unexpectedly well with white wine.

I did not choose a cake that was only pretty for my husband’s birthday—once we actually tried it together, it was a flavor that would satisfy anyone who likes strawberries and peaches but finds very sweet cakes too much. I chose Chef Cho’s Peach Berry for my husband’s birthday, and we really enjoyed all those strawberries and peaches!