2014 Year in Review of NYC's Dessert Offerings

The new year is in full swing and so my bakery reviews of local confections is due as well. I have to say in looking it over I hadn't ventured to as many places. Maybe I was eating "healthier" or maybe I was baking at home more. But that doesn't mean that sweets weren't had and I wouldn't take the time to tell you the good, bad, and the unfortunate.

Here goes...

Ivy Bakery - Formally a storefront in SoHo Daniellan now offers her wonderful desserts in Brooklyn at Root Hill Cafe.

Highlights: Everything gooie! The red velvet gooie has a blood red color and good texture just like a bar. The butter gooie is still my fave of the batch. The green tea pie is quite good as Daniellan's crusts are fantastically flaky and tasty. Dunno if she uses high-class butter or lard but whatever it is keep doing it Daniellan!

Dominique Ansel - I tried Ansel's stuff before the whole rat debacle happened. So I feel somewhat comfortable noting what I did enjoy.

Highlights: The magic souffle. The orange in the brioche "shell" had a nice tang but the chocolate mousse inside is the star of the show. The mousse was wet like an undercooked bread pudding it holds semi-firm and is dense and delicious and not too chocolatey or dark chocolate flavored. However it's pretty costly (and small) at $7. Also finally tried the Cronut (Milk & Honey edition)! The FauxNuts have NOTHING on this one. Perfect consistency with the interior being very much like a nice chewy croissant and the exterior perfectly fried like a doughnut so it has a nice crunch. And the cream inside was tasty, sweet, and drizzly through the flaky layers. The inside of the cream was a bit oily so it ran, but it was good. However, I dunno if this is wait in line for hours good.

Red Rooster - Marcus Samuelsson's restaurant was a place I visited on several occasions this year for restaurant week and press dinners. Usually the desserts do not blow me away, however...

Highlights: ... the sweet potato filled doughnuts were perfection. Screw munchkins, get these light and lightly sugared tasty rounds coupled with a nice frothy sweet potato cream that oozes out when squishing your doughnut so it fills your mouth with tastiness. A sweet cream was served as a dollop on the side.

Silk Cakes - Ever since Silk Cakes opened up in Forest Hills (not far from my place in Queens) I have made a point to go on walks with a friend just to stop by their bakery and reward myself post-walk with milk cakes and/or cupcakes!

Highlights: Yuzu cake (kind of citrusy with lemony/limey) with green tea buttercream and green tea truffle in the middle. The cake was solid texture, nice subtle green tea flavors in the truffle and frosting. And the frosting was perfect, super smooth, best when room temperature (not when cold) and is like velvety perfection but filling (hence the name Silk Cakes). Can I say it again? I LOVE the frosting. I also tried the chocolate cupcake with semi-sweet chocolate truffle inside and green tea icing on top. I am addicted to this icing. So good and smooth.

Another addiction? Their milk cakes! The cinnamon milk cake which was reminiscent of a cinnamon roll. It's on the light and airy inside with the right amount of a sweet brown sugar/cinnamon swirl. Much better than a dense Cinnabon roll I tell you. By years end I had tried ALL the milk cakes from the cinnamon to banana, to green tea w/ blueberries and adore them all fantastic with tea. And again, a nice post-walk treat for yourself.

Trois Pommes - This patisserie is now closed.

Lowlights: A friend said she enjoyed their red velvet twinkie and it was fine. It had a solidred velvet balance and taste and the filling is nice, not too much could actually use more on the chocolate/red velvet side since there's so much cake and is light in cream cheese taste.

Cafe Glechik - The owners have Ukranian ancestry and displayed some of their hometown food at Village Voice's annual Choice Eats event last year.

Highlights: I pretty much repeatedly passed this booth for their Napoleon Cake. It was one of those eyes are bigger than your stomach scenarios. I wish I could've eaten more of that massive phyllo & vanilla cream layered goodness. Light, yet filling. Sweet yet not overwhelming. Fantastic.

Hill Country BBQ - I go for the brisket and the green bean casserole but Hill Country is known for their award-winning desserts.

Highlights: A friend shared some banana pudding and chocolate nut pudding. When having the pudding you must have it with the cookies that goes with them. The chocolate comes with chocolate wafers and the banana with Nilla wafers. If you're a fan of banana then the banana chunks in the pudding will be nice and creamy. However, this has to be eaten relatively quickly as the banana tends to lose water and this makes the overall pudding consistency a bit less solid so that you'll be dealing with chunky bits versus watery surroundings. The chocolate was HEAVY but delicious with the nuts, milk chocolate pudding and the cookies inside. Would recommend sharing the chocolate, the banana I could eat alone.

Old Fashioned Doughnuts - While their storefront has closed down this place popped up at the LIC and/or Astoria Fleas over the summer.

Highlights: Joining in on the FauxNut craze OFD's version was the Cream Croughnut. To me it was one of the better fake Cronuts I have had. It's more croissant like on the interior and is baked not fried. It's not dry like the Crumbnut and not too hard yet sweet unlike Trois Pommes version. It is quite soft and there's a lot of cream so it can get messy with the powdered sugar on top. But a very good find if you don't want something fried.

Sweet Muse - This is a new pop up available for purchase online. They specialize in brownies and I got to partake at LIC Flea last summer.

Highlights: I tried their cashew and caramel fudge brownie. It's a large brownie and the caramel had hardened but was still gooey and worked well with the overall brownie. You know I am all about the texture for brownies/blondies and this one had that dense quality I enjoy. Owner Laura Siner offers a wide range of flavors to choose from. There are also inspirational messages packed with the brownie in a mini ziplock.

Two Little Red Hens - This place may be known for their pies but their cupcakes are also very, very good.

Highlights: The chocolate and peanut butter cupcake, chocolate cake that was perfectly moist reminding me of a homemade Duncan Hines texture with peanut butter inside as filling and a fantastically smooth and creamy icing of chocolate and PB swirl.

That is not to be out shined by the pumpkin spice cupcake with pumpkin apricot spice frosting. Wonderful! Red Hens cupcakes can give Sugar Sweet Sunshine a run for the money in terms of the quality of the cake. The frosting was nice, not too thick or buttercream like and I like the added sweetness alternative from the apricot in the spice frosting. Well done. Large size, wish they had a more "regular sized cupcake." But very good.

Kicky's Kitchen - Is the cupcake dead? Not in NYC apparently. New pop up I tried at Madison Square Eats last summer.

Highlights: The pina colada caketail (cupcake with alcohol). Kicky's thing is making cupcakes out of cocktails! And this entails a cake with pineapple and coconut liquer (and some shredded coconut), and buttercream with a rum floater. It is not heavily alcoholic and you'll enjoy the tropical taste. It was fluffy and a reasonable sized cupcake. The cake itself was springy and the buttercream thick and sweet. I tried a taste of the car bomb (had chocolate stout in the cake) which tasted way more alcoholic than the pina colada.

Macaron Parlour - This place is one of my favorite bakeries and makes the best range of French macarons that I've had as far as I'm concerned. But I am open for others trying to persuade me otherwise.

Highlights: I retasted the Giggity macaron, which is a chocolate macaron with chocolate, caramel and peanut filling. Kinda reminiscent of a Snickers in macaron form. Fan-tastic. But would I expect anything less from Macaron Parlour? I think not.

Molly's Cupcakes & Milk & Cookies Bakery - See my May 26th cupcake crawl post for info on these. They were by far the best things on the crawl.

Chloe Doughy - While this isn't a bakery Chloe Doughy does warrant noting. I won a sample of this dough from the NYC Bake Sale raffle. Basically you sign up for Chloe Doughy and get two doughs (one new flavor for the month and the staple of chocolate chip). I'd recommend this as a cool gift to someone who enjoys baking. Like moi!

Highlights: The chocolate chip was divine. While the process of making it is reminiscent of Duncan Hines it is also distinct in the taste, quality of chocolate, and the fantastic smell. It's a standard chocolate chip that stands out as well and the dough held up well after 2 weeks in the fridge.

The lemon lavendar seemed to dry out a bit after two weeks and this may be because it's more a shortbread type cookie. Instructions say to add sparkling sugar and whipped lemon icing. The dough is fragrant like sorbet and the lemon in the cookie is quite light which is why the lemon icing may be necessary for taste. And to me the subtlety of the shortbread alone was enough to have me wanting more.

Sprinkles - You may know them as the place where you can get cupcakes via ATM. They have branched out form California to the fancy areas of Manhattan.

Highlights: Had the mini lemon cupcake with lemon icing and an unnecessary candy disk on top of the cupcake. The lemon flavor comes through mainly in the whipped icing, nice and frothy, and is subtle in the cake itself but definitely there. I'd get again, but a bit pricey for the mini size at $2. Would prefer it to be $1.50 at most, but then again I was in the UES.

La Toulousaine - I don't have a lot in terms of bakeries in Morningside Heights. I had stumbled upon this place and decided, what the heck?

Lowlights: I tried the pistachio and regular "madeleine's." (Notice the quotes.) They were massive and taste less like a traditional madeleine than a kind of pound cake in madeleine form. Mind you madeleine's are buttery cake but this was not the same. The pistachio was not that pistachio. Not bad but not like the formal madeleine. This is definitely not your typical patisserie. For that I'd suggest going elsewhere.

Le Maison du Macaron - I've been here before and being in the Chelsea area they don't only have French macarons but many freshly made goodies available every day.

Highlights: The key Lime Pie macaron definitely has the essence of key lime pie down. Key lime in the filling, green cookie with graham cracker crumble sprinkled on it. Good stuff. Had it twice. 

Vendome Macaron Bar - I'll admit to being a bit biased because the second time I went to their booth (or tent) at Smorgasburg the vendor got a bit testy. Could've been the heat but still...customer service.

Highlights/Lowlights: Their Reese's peanut butter macaron does taste like a Reese's peanut butter cup. Win! The claim to fame for Vendome is dying their macarons and the orange cookie captures the peanut butter and the chocolate ganache filling is tasty. I later had the salted caramel (light blue cookie) good but this one was not memorable. Their nutella macaron was okay as well. I had to freeze it after it was melting so may not have gotten the best of it as the nutella overwhelmed in the chilled/hardened filling.

Treat House - This place is known for varied rice krispy treats. And that's pretty much it.

Lowlights: For me a rice krispy treat is pretty darn simple to make. Add some more bits into it and it may not be spectacular but fine. I had a chocolate pretzel rice krispy treat that was very chocolatey with a chocolate frosting and flavorless pretzel. Chocolate chips were included in the rice krispy and it was aight. I also had the salted caramel which was fine but I'm also a rice krispy purist. And for $2 each they are small for what you get (and could easily make at home) but service is nice and they keep well.

Levain Bakery - This is the big a** cookie place. Cookies the size of your head I tell you!

Highlights: On a splurge I got the pumpkin loaf, deliciously cinnamony, moist. The perfect quality for bread with a nice crisp crust. I am also quite happy because they gave me the "butt" of the loaf so I got a hefty piece. :-)

Kitchenette Uptown - I used to go here more since it's near my job but the lack of scones in the morning (they make 6 a day) and the increasing prices for watered down cider have me going less and less.

Lowlights: Their cakes and desserts are said to be made fresh everyday. I had their red velvet cupcake and I am sorry to say people that it is not true red velvet! While it's a moist cake with creamy icing (that is also not cream cheese). The red velvet has no chocolate flavor, is closer to pink than red in color. So save your pennies if you have a red velvet fix and get something else. Now their big-as-your-hand cookies, namely PB was very good.

Epicerie Boulud - The director of my company brought two pies in from this fancy place. That means she loves us.

Highlights/Lowlights: The chocolate pecan pie was dense, super sweet, and very good. It's definitely a sinful and good dessert. The dark chocolate is so rich and wonderful...

The apple crumb pie however was dry. If you want some good apple crumb I suggest Little Pie Company's sour cream apple. Boulud's apple crumbs were a bit on the dry side and apple inside is fine and cinnamony but nothing overly special.

My Weekend Cupcake Tour

This Memorial Day weekend my friend Kim and I went on a cupcake walking tour with Great New York Tours. Admittedly we were a bit surprised at how many people came out for food walking tours on a holiday weekend. But hey, people like food and to see new places around the city so why the heck not indulge in one. First things first though, Kim and I ate actual savory food pre-tour. Having done self-made tours with friends I knew that I would be craving actual food with all the sweets so better to get in some salad and soup beforehand leaving yourself ready to indulge. It turns out others on the tour did not consider this and there was some moaning as we got to our third and fourth locations (passing many eateries along the way) that the desire for something outside of sweets was vocalized. So there's a plan for you. If you're doing a walking tour of sweets only, make sure to eat beforehand or prep to do so somewhere in there.

Anywho, onto the tour! The sun was out but it started to get a might bit cloudy with the anticipation of rain. Yet it was fine for walking and scouting out shops. We all met up at the corner of Union Square Park (West) and then proceeded to our first location: Baked by Melissa.

I've had Baked by Melissa before and find the cupcakes okay. They are very much bite sized and I can gulp one down in a second (really, I can). Though the cupcakes are good and the variety of flavors do make them a catch. Melissa's first opened as a teeny shop in SoHo six years ago and has steadily grown in that time to have several locations in NYC (even in Long Island).

We got to enjoy May's mini-of-the-month which was the Neapolitan cupcake. A vanilla cake with chocolate icing and strawberry filling (that was also a dollop on top surrounded by chocolate). In one bite you got the vanilla, chocolate, and fruity strawberry flavor. I enjoyed it as did the others and I would recommend trying it before the month of May is out. Also, if you go I'd suggest the cookie dough. Really any of the minis with fillings are the ones to get for the added taste. Just their cupcake with frosting is not enough flavor, at least for me.

Next up was a staple in NYC. You may see as many Crumbs Bake Shop in Manhattan as you see Starbucks which tells you of their popularity. Crumbs is a brand I used to swear by when I was in my early 20s and they first started branching out.

At Crumbs our guide Mallory brought out a couple variety mini packs, thankfully. If you've ever been to Crumbs one of their big items was the ginormous cupcake as big as ones face. I am not joking. Check the size out. They have minis, "normal" size, gigantic, and also one ridiculously big cupcake that serves as a cake I guess.

It was first come/first serve in terms of the flavor you got and with me and Kim being in the back of the line I ended up with red velvet. (This would become a trend for the remainder of the tour for me.)

The red velvet was not good. And as I've come to see Crumbs cupcakes are not the pinnacle of cupcakes. If you should eat one cupcake before you pass on to the next life, Crumbs should not be it. The red velvet was nothing like red velvet. It was somewhat dry, the icing was buttercream (a hard buttercream) with sprinkles that was piled too high onto the cake itself. Having a grandmother of Southern roots who can make red velvet cake in her sleep has left me a bit spoiled and quite critical. Do not get their red velvet.

A bit more walking lead us to Amorino Gelato. Mallory called this the "palate cleanser" of our six-dessert course. Amorino is tres fancy and apparently this location in Greenwich village is the only one in the United States with the main being in Europe. Yes, NYC gets almost everything good.

Within minutes Mallory returned with a cup full of spoons and a tub of mango sorbet. She dug in giving each of us a healthy spoonful and we, or at least I, marveled at the creamy texture and natural flavor of mango that was so rich it really did hit all the taste buds. I don't know how much their sorbet costs but I will buy it in gallons! It trumps anything I've had by Haagan Dazs and of course the magic words are "all natural."

There was more walking along University Place passing many street vendors selling their art and a foray into Washington Square Park for brief pictures. The whole tour Mallory was giving us historical facts not just about cupcakes but about NYC locations we passed and I have to say it felt as though Mallory were made for this kind of tour. Her voice elevated, she knew when her jokes were corny, and she was efficient at each and every location taking care to make sure no one was lost or strayed too far behind.

After some walking we got to West 3rd Street and Molly's Cupcakes, a place I had passed many times, making a mental note to return there but had not actually been to.

Molly's is a fairly new cupcake establishment but is one that has some awards behind it. Most notably, to me, was the fact that the owner won the first Food Network Cupcake Wars which I used to watch on the regular.

Lucky us that we would not be getting minis but full sized cupcakes, or perhaps not so lucky as we were two-thirds of the way through a sweets tour. We got to choose our cake and our icing with the knowledge that our proceeds from doing this tour would have a portion go to a charitable organization. Sweets for a cause. I like it.

I went with the red velvet and cream cheese icing.

And I gotta tell you. I have NO regrets on that one. The cream cheese icing was perfect. Creamy, rich, with the perfect cream cheese/sugar balance. It was not too much icing but the taste heavy enough to balance out with the moist cake. Now the cake didn't have the chocolatey taste (as red velvet is basically a chocolate cake with red dye), however, red velvet is also a light chocolate cake in that it contains the powder and not many other items to enrich the chocolate taste. Yet, you should be able to sense some chocolate in there. Nonetheless, would I get this cupcake combo again? Hell yes. And a taste of the brown butter icing was exactly how brown butter tastes. Spot on, Molly's Cupcakes.

We headed up Bleecker then off into some back streets to go to our next location. Not for cupcakes but to eat part of what was in the bakery's name: Milk & Cookies Bakery. At Milk & Cookies we were treated to the salted oat cookie. An oat cookie with toffee and white chocolate bits and crystallized salt on top. The cookie was a treat, large considering we'd just had a few cupcakes. It was crumbly around the edges yet soft in the middle making it all kinds of chewy in your mouth. The toffee and white chocolate and oat mix was well done but the crystallized salt bits on top deterred in that it gave the sweetness a heavily salty kick. I would suggest a flaky salt rather than the drops of salt to be a bit more subtle. But again, a good cookie.

Our next and last stop was the original location of Magnolia Bakery before it became a thing. (Thanks Sex in the City.)

And it was at this point that the skies opened up and started to drizzle, rain, than downright pour down on us.

Under umbrellas Mallory, smartly, divided the cupcakes with the group and provided boxes so that we could take them home. Anticipating that we'd be sugared out and want to get the hell out of the rain ASAP. And what cupcake did we get from Magnolia? You guessed it, red velvet with vanilla buttercream.

Kim and I boxed our cupcakes and rushed to Five Guys to avoid the rain that continued on in heavy and light stretches for another hour or so. (Thanks Five Guys for housing us!) I ate my cupcake as we waited the rain out and talked. The buttercream in this case was a nice whipped one that worked better texture-wise than the buttercream on the Crumbs red velvet. Also, the cupcake was better than I remember. The last time I had a red velvet from Magnolia (about 3 years ago) it was not that good. This one had more of the chocolatey taste that Molly's lacked but again, I was quite upset about the pairing of red velvet and vanilla buttercream. For me, red velvet needs cream cheese icing. It requires it. Maybe that's a purist attitude or not. But it just isn't red velvet for me.

In sum, I had many tasty items and was introduced to three new eateries and was reminded of why I did or kind of liked the others I had had in the past. The tour was under 2 hours. There was fun--I'd suggest bringing a friend. Mallory was de-lightful. And for the most part the weather cooperated so that we didn't lose momentum. Well organized all around.

What I would say is that at $50/per person seems a bit high in price for what you get. But I also understand a portion goes to the bakeries and leaders like Mallory. I got this at a Groupon price and would suggest that. Perhaps the other food tours may give you more for the $50 fee but 2 mini cupcakes, 2 full cupcakes, a cookie, and a spoonful of sorbet don't quite add up to this for me and if you knew the itinerary you could get all that for quite a bit less. BUT, what you are going is for the experience and fun of it--and it is fun.

Lastly: Dear Great New York Tours, Please drop Crumbs from your cupcake line up. I know it's convenient because it's on the current tour route but there are better places! If you extended the route a bit or started it elsewhere and weaved around the Lower East Side I know you could find other places. Just a suggestion. Your friend, Jenn.

And that, was my weekend cupcake walking tour.