🚀 go-pugleaf

Who makes a decent chocolate cake (with good chocolate icing) here in
Northern Montgomery County? There used to be a fine, old-style bakery in
Aspen Hill (not all that Northern, but doable), but it is long gone. I am
tired of mediocre grocery store cakes, with their Crisco icing. I am shocked
and horrified by some of the fancier bakeries, with their pretty cakes that
taste as if they were made from sawdust. Someone once told me that the Giant
Gourmet makes a decent cake, but that was back when there actually was a
local grocery chain called "Giant" that actually baked its own stuff. Will I
have to bake my own? What is a chocolate cake lover to do?

[While I know that most of this board's traffic has migrated to Chowhound,
hope springs eternal.]

And if I may wax nostalgic for a second, I well recall walking into one of
those old-style bakeries as a kid and almost going crazy over the wonderful
aromas.  The Aspen Hill bakery (I can't even remember the name, except that
I think it may have started with an "E"--it was next to the hardware store
that no longer exists) was one of those.  I suppose the other question is
will I do better just buying a cake mix, and whipping up some good icing
(even Alton Brown concedes that it is hard to do better than a good mix
cake)?

Paul