When you say "gelatin", do you mean like jell-o in clarity and texture? Do you just mean translucent? Or just mean gel texture but not clear? Could it be a coffee chocolate ganache? Those are quite popular.

You could make strong coffee flavored gelatin with plain (unflavored and unsugared) gelatin, substituting strong coffee for the water, and perhaps using less liquid than directions say for more body. Flavor with sugar, cream, etc., as it pleases you. Make it in a thin layer on parchment in a jellyroll pan if you want to cut out a shape, or on parchment in your cake pan if you want it the exact size and shape of your cake. Then, just demold, and invert carefully.

But I have a feeling it's more like a ganache. Or a classic icing made with piping gel. Here's a blog with a good description of how to make piping gel. I've only ever used the bought kind as is for small decorations, and I'm more of a bundt cake than frosting person, so I can't advise further on that. I suppose you could make a whole sheet of piping gel to top a cake, though, and it does kind of sound like what you ate.

Coffee flavor is a standard bakery product, as is commercially made piping gel. You can also get the strong coffee flavor, as I said above, by reducing coffee, though you'd have to go a far way down to use in piping gel. An alternative would be to dissolve espresso powder to taste in the required amount of liquid.

I know what you are talking about as two Asian buffets here have the same dessert. I can't help you on the glaze but what I found interesting was that I saw the cake squares being put out on the buffet at both restaurants--they were made and shipped from CANADA according to the box!

It sounds like using the parchment paper method would work with what I want to do! Thank you plllog!

And mustangs, that really is interesting that they were shipped from Canada! I think I'll do a search on that and hopefully find a name for this tasty desert! LOL

Glad to help! I hope you'll let us know how it turns out.

I will let you know how it turns out!

I suspect the whipped frosting may have gelatin in it to stabilize it.

I haven't had the cake you are describing. Hope you find a recipe or recipes to help you recreate it.

Isn't it grande???? I can't wait to finish General TSO and fried green beans just to get that wonderful little piece of heaven. And yes, the owner of our local Chinese buffet told us it is a coffee cake he orders from Canada!! Lord I wish I knew where to get it!!! It's out of this world!!!

Are you sure that is a gel and not a topping that is thickened with cornstarch? Just a thought, as I have never seen it. Is it jiggly like jello or does it look more like pie filling?

Putting gelatin of top of your cake would be problematic and you would have to do as the above poster said, to make it aside from the cake.

I suspect that what they dress those cut pieces of cake with is not a gelatin, rather it is a glaze more like a pie filling.

But I have never seen this cake.

Gelatin and cake are not generally a good compliment for each other, because of the high water contend in gelatin, but, maybe?

So, I thought I'd try to see if I could find the source, and found a bunch of recipes for a Canadian bar/cake I'd never heard of: Chocolate nanaimo bars. There are recipes for making the same thing as a cake, rather than bar cookies. Take a look. Is this it? It's very different from what I first thought of by the description, but it looks like it might be it by the responses. https://www.cookingclassy.com/nanaimo-bars/

This might be it, but it looks too fancy for a buffet. Perhaps the difference between tiramisu and twinkies. Home vs. factory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIEkx_LMmqI&ab_channel=M.Patisserie

This recipe uses a mold pan and the topping is applied in the mold, which makes sense. Not that the aid to unmolding is a heat gun, not a blow dryer. Don't use a blue dryer unless there's a no fan low setting. You could wrap in hot towels to loosen, instead.