Review: Olive Garden Black Tie Mousse Cake

Olive Garden commercials and ads tend to focus on the pasta, soup and breadsticks, but Olive Garden also serves a selection of rich desserts -- mostly cakes. At $6.25, the Black Tie Mousse cake is quite possibly the best dessert offered by the popular chain restaurant.

Olive Garden Black Tie Mousse Cake
The brief menu description and photo do not begin to convey the various flavors in this dessert. A crust of rich chocolate cake surrounds a dark chocolate cheesecake topped with a layer of creamy mousse. Chocolate ganache with swirls of white chocolate covers the top of the cake. A wall of mini chocolate chips adorns the sides of the cake crust and two big flourishes of frosting provide the final garnish.

Overall, this dessert is delicious. The chocolate cake is moist and has a nice crumb, but the dark chocolate cheesecake layer is sweet and lacks the strong signature taste of dark chocolate. The mousse layer is somewhat plain, but serves as a perfect foil for all the chocolate. On my recent purchase, it was a bit too soft and ran into the ganache. (See photo.)

The thin layer of ganache adds something extra, but the mini chocolate chips and frosting flourish are too much and work best as decorations. The frosty temperature of this cake makes the mini chocolate chips especially hard and the texture is an unpleasant contrast to the chocolate cheesecake.

Nutrition Content
Not surprisingly, the black tie mousse cake is also rich in calories. One serving contains 760 calories, 48 grams total fat with 27 grams saturated fat, 270 milligrams sodium, 73 grams carbohydrates and 8 grams fiber. Surely, skipping the chocolate chips and frosting spares some calories, but I prefer to go even further by splitting this dessert.

Room for Improvement
As unlikely as it sounds, this dessert has too much chocolate. A few dark chocolate curls or shavings are a better alternative to the mini chocolate chips and dollops of frosting

The dark chocolate cheesecake layer is too sweet to live up to the reputation of dark chocolate. It is more accurate to call it chocolate cheesecake

Beware of Black Tie Mousse Cake Recipes
A quick search on Google reveals thousands of copycat recipes for this rich dessert. Most of these recipes use a gelatin-based layer for the chocolate cheesecake. However, this shortcut substitute absolutely cannot rival the taste and texture of the authentic cheesecake in this dessert.

Sources
"Nutrition Information", OliveGarden.com