It must be that crackish aspect of sugar that leads clamoring crowds to pay such high prices for sticky-sweet cakes scarcely better than those your reasonably competent aunt could turn out. Or maybe it’s the cushy couches. Or the city’s singular obsession with sweets. Whatever the reasons for the Dessert Gallery’s success, its bright interiors are consistently overpowered by herds of people. Couches are taken over by groups of friends, while rambunctious children, seemingly propelled by sugar-fueled jet engines that enable them to outrun their frantic parents, are everywhere. Staff members have a hard time keeping track of who has ordered which cake. It’s a madhouse.

Although there’s a huge variety, there’s a shortening-and-sugar sameness to the many-layered cakes, whose frosting and art appears to be of the grocery-store variety. The popular “Chocolate Euphoria” is decadent, with textures of smooth and chunky dark chocolate dominating the palate for about three bites, at which point your euphoria turns to sloth. Cheesecake works in the same manner. Carrot cake holds out longer before its flavors becoming boring and overbearing; most of the tooth-numbingly-sweet cream-cheese icing winds up scraped off to the side. Nevertheless, the cakes are better than the cookies, which are often too hard and missing that critical salty component. But you know what? The kids don’t seem to mind.