▼ Café Sweet Tooth The inspiration behind deserts at Scottsdale’s Weft & Warp. BY BAHAR ANOOSHAHR above. A concrete walkway guides you toward A Weft & Warp Art Bar + Kitchen. As you ap- proach, one of the staff is lighting the fire pits outside the restaurant. Enter into a Midcentury Modern design of wood and leather with an open kitchen encased in glass. The clean lines and rectangular shapes bring a sense of calm. Smooth jazz plays in the background. It is luxury with- out the stuffiness. Works of art from local artists add color to the walls. This is what inspires Morgan Malzahn, the lead pastry chef at Weft & Warp. The menu includes five desserts. Three stood out: the Chocolate Cube, Persimmon Me This, and Arizona Winter Citrus. Clean and colorful geometric designs appeared on dark and light blue and gray plates. Persimmon Me This was a rectangle of almond cake, dipped in caramelized white chocolate and Marcona almonds, topped with a piped ribbon of caramelized white chocolate ganache and sprinkles of crushed Marcona almonds, all topped with two persimmon chips. It was served with a persimmon chutney. With the first bite, it became clear that Malzahn has a knack for balancing flavors and textures. The cake’s mellow sweetness was offset against the zing from the per- simmon chutney, made with cayenne, honey, and pomegranate. The chips crunched lightly to release a soft persimmon taste. Her Chocolate Cube was a marriage of chocolate and blackberries. Blackberries, basil leaves, and hazelnuts rested over and around a velvety chocolate cube, bits of pink cake (blackberry microwave cake) strewn around. Sable Bretton made the base of the cube and part of one wall. She used Manjari chocolate, which is Valrhona chocolate with fruity notes. Cut into the cube to find a sphere of blackberry mousse in the center. Now take a perfect bite, a lit- tle of everything. This dessert leaned sweeter than the first, but the hazelnuts added a hint of savory crunch. Then came the winner of them all, Arizona Winter Citrus. A shallow white dome rested in the center of the plate, with puffed quinoa dotting one side. Macerated Chef Morgan Malzahn. Gary Glenn Morgan Malzahn supremes of citrus lay pink and orange against the cake while basil splashed green. An airy cheesecake surprised with bright citrus flavors; the puffed quinoa lent a perfect crunch against the softness of the cake. Light and bright, this sublime juxtaposition beckoned back for just another bite. Malzahn is an Austin, Texas, native who was and raised in Detroit. She’s had a sweet tooth for a long time. “Growing up, my mom always baked her heart out,” she says. “We had a very Norman Rockwell family — dinner at the table every night; desserts a lot of times, either cake or pie.” She has whipped up pastries for the past 15 years with stints at T. Cook’s at Royal Palms Resort and Spa, Food Network’s Chef Keegan Gerhard’s D-Bar in Denver, Enchantment Resort in Sedona, and the L’Auberge de Sedona resort. She moved to Denver in 2007, where she would juggle marriage and later, motherhood, with work.“I was deliver- ing cakes a week before I went into labor.” Malzahn moved back to Arizona in 2015. The chef isn’t likely to stick to recipe books and bakes “organically from the Mahlzahn’s Persimmon Me This. heart,” she says. Instead, kitchen recipes are transcribed by her assistant as she adds handfuls of ingredients to the bowl. Malzahn’s style is a playful twist on comfort food. “Instead of having a paint- by-numbers, which I think people think pastry is, I’m more of a blank canvas,” she says. “I decide the flavors and sketch what I think I want it to look like, but allow my- self the freedom to change direction when necessary.” Her sons, ages 7, 9, and 12 are the source of her playfulness, the Midwest, her love of comfort food, and Arizona the source of her ingredients. “A lot of the people who visit Arizona think it’s a giant dust bowl and it’s not,” Malzahn says. “It’s so (geographically) di- verse. I love this state. You go up north and you’re in the mountains. You come down here and you’re in the desert. People can survive on what grows here.” She’s working on a new dessert menu called Donuts in the Desert, which has in- gredients like rosemary, pecans, and an- cient grains. “We’re also going to start making our own cinnamon rolls, stuffed croissants, and changing things up. The department is growing and we are excited,” she says. 29 ndaz Scottsdale Resort is a modern affair: bungalows set amid manicured desert landscape, the pink brush- stroked desert sky towering phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES FEB 10TH– FEB 16TH, 2022
