SPOTLIGHT ON: Whole Foods Bakery

Whole Foods in Union Square, NYC

RATING:YYY(3 out of 5 hearts!)

Whole Foods Bakery oftentimes stocks a variety of vegan baked goods. It's a great option for picking up something quick to serve to bring to a party or serve to a group of friends. It's also an easy place to go to get a freshly baked cookie or cake rather than something packaged and shipped from afar. However, I do Here's what I would and wouldn't recommend.

WOULD
Cookies - Their cookies are always amazing. They are soft and chewy, large and a little bit on the greasy side but I love love love them. Plain 'ol chocolate chip cookies are my fave.
Cupcakes - The packaged cupcakes from the bakery are spongy, moist and last a long time post-purchase. The frosting is kind of boring but it's a good cupcake overall.

WOULD NOT
Chocolate Cake - you'd have to order this behind the counter and I think it takes some time to make. The cake is pretty dry and the frosting is not exciting. I mean, it serves as your basic sheet cake. I was never a fan of sheet cake, so vegan sheet cake doesn't do it for me either. It's good if you need to pick up a birthday cake and have no where else to go... but I wouldn't recommend purchsing it for fun.
Chocolate Chip Vegan Scone - It's kind of boring. Just not worth it.

That's all I've tried here.. I believe they have muffins too, but have I left anything else off? What do you think of Whole Foods bakery? Post in the comments!

TASTE TEST: Sweet & Sara Peanut Butter 'Smores

Sweet & Sara Peanut Butter 'Smores (Credit: Sweet & Sara)

RATING:YYY(3 out of 5 hearts!)

I was walking to the train yesterday from work and I stopped in the supermarket Jubilee. This is where I picked up the Sweet & Sara marshmallows for the vegan “peeps” I made a few weeks back so I wanted to see what other goodies they had. I saw a few vegan cookies and other goodies but I was once again drawn to Sweet & Sara. I picked up the Peanut Butter ‘Smores, which looked to me like a huge mallomar. Since it was so big I decided to check the calorie count & serving size (Yes I do do this every once in a while) and DAMN, not listed?! That seemed kind of strange to me and off-putting. I can’t find nutritional info on their site either. Isn’t that illegal?

Anyway, the Smore rocked. I may be 10 pounds heavier, but very tasty. It’s topped with a dark chocolate covered shell, the peanut butter marshmallow is in the middle and there’s a graham cracker crusted bottom. The consistency is just perfect, each bite has the soft sponginess of the marshmallow along with the crunch of the chocolate shell and the cracker. The chocolate/cinnamon/peanut butter flavor was awesome. Very rich. I loved this, I tried to only eat half but I ended up eating the whole thing. I will probably find myself getting these from time to time. I know there’s a non-peanut butter ‘Smore as well for those who aren’t as big of a peanut butter fan as I am.

SPOTLIGHT: Etsy Vegan BakeShops

Cream Bakery Cupcake Cookies (Credit: Cream Bakery)

I discovered Etsy around the holidays last year when I was looking to purchase gifts for friends. Most of the items are handmade and one-of-a-kind so I thought it would be really rad to purchase gifts solely from these shops. My friends loved the gifts and the originality of it. Some vegan companies got the idea to sell their wares on Etsy too. I noticed that several shops specialize in vegan cupcakes, cakes, TWINKIES, cookies and all sorts of goodies. I am just starting to realize how amazing the possibilities are, it’s the world’s vegan bakery right at your finger-tips. Here are some of the shops I’m loving…

Cream Bakery

Sweet Fritsy

The Cupcake Mint

Tanlayens

Vegan Propamanda

KT's Kitchen

Clover & Clutch

A Vegan Bakery

Sugarplum Vegan

Some of these mail out and some will even deliver to your home as long as you are within their radius (up to 25 miles!) My only issue here is that I don’t really have a reason to order a dozen twinkies besides the fact that I want to eat them all… I’m going to space out my ordering and try all these shops for you guys!

Do you have an Etsy Bakeshop and I left you out? Did you order from any of these shops in the past? Post in the comments!!

Babycakes cookbook: It's coming!

WATCH!

BabyCakes, the Book of Recipes: It's Here (Almost)! from BabyCakes NYC on Vimeo.

How cute is this? This video makes me want to work at Babycakes and dance with them. I can't wait for this cookbook to come out so I can make my own banana bread MMM

Babycakes: Frosted Chocolate Chip Banana Bread and Lemon Blueberry Cupcake

Babycakes cupcake party!

RATING:YYYY(4 out of 5 hearts!)
As the spring begins to bloom in New York City, I am more apt to take lunch breaks. Recently on a bright, sunny day, my co-worker and I took a walk over to Babycakes for lunch. I picked up the frosted chocolate chip banana bread and the lemon blueberry cupcake. I’ve never seen either of these products there before so I was glad to go. I love that Babycakes always has some mainstays but otherwise will often have new things popping up on the menu.

The frosted chocolate chip banana bread was quite delicious – very moist, with chunks of banana and sweet chocolate chips dispersed. The creamy vanilla frosting on top was the same frosting that is typically used on the cupcakes (that people buy shots of for $1.50 – yes it is that good). I probably could have eaten a whole loaf of this. The lemon blueberry cupcake was interesting, I don’t know how I feel about it. The lemon frosting on top of the cupcake was amazing! But the blueberries on top of the frosting were kind of weird. I love blueberries but I just don’t know if I enjoyed the consistency of these raw on top. I’m sure that it’s somebody’s cup-of-tea because it was executed well, just not mine so much.

I hope I spend more spring & summer lunch breaks at Babycakes, it's the best pick-me-up that could be!

DC VISIT: Hello Cupcake!

Chocolate Cupcake with Strawberry Frosting

RATING:YYYY(4 out of 5 hearts!)

Hello Cupcake! Is a cute cupcake shop located near Dupont Circle in DC. What’s cool about this place is that it serves a diverse crowd, from young to old, hip to frat, it’s kind of fun to see an older man indulging in a cupcake. Though this shop is not 100% vegan, they always have gluten-free and vegan offerings. Unfortunately the vegan selection is pretty limited, when I stopped in I could only choose from a chocolate cake with either chocolate, vanilla or strawberry frosting. However, it was kind of refreshing to have a simple cupcake rather than something over-done.

I chose the strawberry and it was perfect. It wasn’t overly sweet & sugary – the strawberry flavor was just right. The cupcake itself was moist and soft. I really enjoyed this little bite! If I lived in DC I would frequent this place .

DC VISIT: Sticky Fingers Bakery

Sticky Fingers Sticky Cinnamon Bun (Credit: Sticky Fingers Bakery)
RATING:YYYYY(5 out of 5 hearts!)

Sticky Fingers is a 100% vegan bakery that also serves soups, sandwiches, lunch items (mac & cheese with teese) and snacks (primal meat sticks). They are known for their famous Sticky Buns, which is a product I haven’t seen vegan in New York yet. As soon as I saw them in the display window I couldn’t wait to devour. These Sticky Buns are huge! Covered in cinnamon frosting and topped with chopped walnuts. I honestly thought I wouldn’t be able to finish a whole one but it was gone in two minutes.. It’s exactly how a sticky bun should taste, chewy, sweet and cinnamon-y. I bet if I heated it up at home it would’ve been out of this world.

I also picked up a “Little Devil” to take home. These look like lil’ Debbie snack cakes. As soon as I saw this I HAD to have. One of the main things I wish I could find vegan versions of are yodels and ho-hos. Damn, this was pretty close. The top is a hard chocolate shell with two layers of chocolate sponge cake sandwich-ing vanilla cream. So amazing. The cake was so soft and there was the perfect amount of cream. It wasn’t overly sweet either, just the right level.

Redesign!

VeganSweetTooth just got an awesome redesign. Major thank you's go to the very talented Joe Frontirre who drew mr. cookie and ms. cupcake and to my mom who showed me how to use photoshop to color them in! Definitely check out Joe's blog, Deviant Art, and comic R. Beast's Out of Love; you'll be blown away by how ridiculously good his art is. 

I know I've been slacking but I have some good updates this week!

TASTE TEST: Kozy Shack Soy Pudding

Kozy Shack Soy Pudding Credit:kozyshack.com

RATING:YY(2 out of 5 hearts!)

I was very excited when I found out Kozy Shack made a soy pudding. My mom has always been a fan of their rice pudding so I was expecting something really great. The pudding comes in a 4 pack of either vanilla or chocolate. I chose the chocolate. The first thing I noticed were that the individual pudding cups were kind of small. Then it took me about 10 minutes and some help from a roommate to open the cup. When I finally did open, my spoon was met with a weird plastic-y film of pudding. The whole top was covered with this, kind of like how soy yogurt is. It kind of grossed me out and wouldn’t even mix in to the rest of the pudding. Anyway, once I got rid of that the pudding was pretty yummy. It had a nice soft consistency just like how pudding should be. The chocolate flavor was creamy and light. But to be honest though, next time I go food shopping I’ll probably pick up ZenSoy pudding over this one.

D.I.Y.: Sweet Crepes, "Peeps" and Ice Cream Sandwiches

I'm not a chef. In any way shape or form. But, I love watching the food network AND I love eating, therefore, sometimes I gotta make my own sweets in order to fill certain cravings of things that are not readily available vegan. I'm sure all you other vegans or trying-to-become vegans out there know the drill. I'm sure that even some of you have 40 vegan cookbooks and then look at the ingredient list and cry. I know I do most of the time. So my purpose here is not to give you recipes you can't use, but rather to show you ways a lazy vegan can make some awesome, tasty treats!

Sweet Crepes:
I borrowed this recipe from vegan yum-yum. I threw all the ingredients into my hand blender. blended. watched the instructional video (it's very useful!!) in the vegan yum yum post and made. Making crepes is hard. My hawt & single (nudge-nudge) friend Xin, who helped me with all this suggested we add food dye to make these crepes look pink. They came out kind of flesh colored instead. Gross.

Before I became vegan (was ovo/lacto vegetarian), I lived in Rome for a month and I would eat banana /nutella crepes every day. This is what I intended to re-create. I actually had purchased vegan hazelnut spread while in Rome, but my boyfriend and I ate it all within 5 minutes after I returned to the states and haven't been able to find it since. I found out that the Noir dark chocolate spread at Le Pain Quotidien is vegan, so I got some of that as a replacement. If you can't find that, this is vegan and so is this. I spread this on the crepe, chopped up bananas into slices and topped on the crepe, folded the crepe into a wrap, topped with powdered sugar and wa-la!

These crepes tasted amazing. Even if you suck at making crepes it will taste awesome, just not as awesome if you get it really thin and perfect.


Vegan "Peeps":
This is ridiculously easy and you are going to scoff at me when you read this, but they seriously tasted like peeps! All you need to do is buy some vegan marshmallows... I picked up Sweet & Sara because I found them in the grocery store near my job. Then you keep 'em at room temperature for an hour or longer, let them get kind of mushy. Get some colored sugar crystals - I found it hard to get these so I used the leftover ones I had from Christmas themed cupcakes I made in December. If you have granulated sugar or sugar in the raw you can just use that and it will probably be fine. Take one marshmallow at a time and put it quickly under running water, then dip each side in the sugar crystals. There you go! It looks like a peep. Now time to shape & decorate. Xin decorated her "peep" guy like a bunny. It's very cute. Mine look like the block guys from gumby. Before you eat... I would freeze them to let everything dry and stick together. Put them in the freezer for an hour. Remove, let them sit and return to room temperature (20 min)... then enjoy! These caused a crazy sugar rush and brought back some fond childhood memories.

Ice Cream Sandwiches:
I saw Giada making some awesome gelato ice cream sandwiches with lady fingers and mint and nutella and strawberries and I decided I could do that. So this is the lazy vegan version. I got some water crackers (carrs), they are basically plain crackers that have no flavor what-so-ever. It's good because then you can do whatever you want with them. What we did was we took a dropper and dropped one drop of peppermint extract on every cracker. This isn't necessarily but it adds a nice, fresh flavor to the dessert. Then I smeared on some of the dark chocolate spread that I mentioned earlier. Lastly, I went in the freezer, got out my Rice Dream Strawberry Ice Cream and used a tablespoon to put a big dollop of ice cream on one of every 2 crackers. Then i took the un-ice creamed cracker and put it on top of the ice creamed cracker in order to make a sandwich. Since everything melts so quickly, these are best served frozen. I put these bad boys in the fridge for an hour then ate them, all. This was definitely my favorite DIY of the day.

Thanks XIN for your help! and thanks roommates for helping to devour! <3>

Happy Birthday to Me!

Babycakes Cupcakes in my Bag!

Here's what I got myself for my Birthday this past Thursday... Babycakes Cupcakes! I'll do a whole profile on this place another day but this is one of my favorite cupcake places... definitely my favorite in New York City. Cute store, amazing sign out front, adorable staff and awesome selection of cupcakes, brownies, breads, scones, ICE CREAM CHIPWICHES, etc. Tend to allergies, use agave nectar instead of sugar. It's a pretty magical place.

I got myself the chocolate mint brownie cupcake and a plain vanilla spelt cupcake. love.

TASTE TEST: Happy Buddha Cakes

Happy Buddha Tofu-Cheesecake & Decadent Chocolate Cake

RATING:Y(1 out of 5 hearts!)
Um. I never go to Queens. I was there this past Saturday and got to check out Happy Buddha Vegetarian, which is a vegetarian chinese restaurant chock full of mock meats and dim sum dishes.

I noticed the vegan desserts menu consistent of a "decadent chocolate cake" and a "cheesecake" so I decided to try both.

Both were pretty disappointing. They must have been kept in a freezer because they were both hard as rocks and cold when they arrived on our table. The cheesecake was more edible than the chocolate cake because it actually did have a nice cheesecake flavor. I think if it wasn't frozen, it might have tasted pretty good. Most tofu cheesecakes taste just like plain tofu to me, which is gross, but this definitely had that cheesecake edge going on.

Unfortunately, there's not much positive to say about the decadent chocolate cake. It was spongy with absolutely no flavor. There was no frosting/ganache/sauce... nothing, just spongy boring frozen hard cake. At some point while trying to cut a piece my fork went flying... sigh.

I wanted so hard to like these but they really missed the mark.

Have any of you had the desserts at Happy Buddha? Any other great spots in Queens? Post in the comments!

TASTE TEST: le pain quotidien apple canele

Le Pain Quotidien Apple Canele

RATING:YY(2 out of 5 hearts!)

I can't pronounce the name of this place for the life of me, so I am often intimidated to enter, but, I heard they had vegan foods. I stopped in and was greeted by a friendly server who politely corrected my pronunciation of canele and even explained to me what it was. She described it as a bread pudding.

It tasted to me kind of like a super spongy fruit cake. It was very sweet and tasty and the top was covered in a sticky apple glaze. It's kind of heavy for a morning breakfast but it's good when one wakes up starving. I would definitely get it again.

What I liked about this place was that they noted on the card/menu what was vegan. It made it easy for me to make my choice rather than having to bug the server about what options I had.

Have you tried the vegan breakfast options at le pain quotidien? Post in the comments!

Sweet Avenue Bakeshop Cupcakes

Sweet Avenue Raspberry Swirl and Mocha Madness Cupcakes

RATING:YYYYY(5 out of 5 hearts!)

This place shares the name with my favorite Jets to Brazil song, so I knew that I would love it before I arrived. Located among victorian houses in the quaint town of Rutherford, New Jersey, Sweet Avenue bakeshop is one of the cutest places I have ever stepped in. Much of the store is pink and a case full of beautiful, colorful cupcakes are the first thing one sees when one walks in. Since it is close to Easter there is a domokun dressed in a bunny costume on top of the register... it's adorable.

What's interesting is that they don't sell themselves as a vegan place. There isn't a huge sign on the outside saying "HEY VEGAN HERE". It's more like, "AWESOME CUPCAKES HERE"... and oh, they happen to be vegan.

So this place has a rotating menu with different cupcakes each day and new ones on the spur of the moment. For example, they had Spumoni cupcakes last Friday that was available for the day. In addition they have a cupcake of the month, for April it is Cotton Candy. It's really fun to be surprised like that and for there to be such variety in the menu.

Here's what I tried:

Raspberry Swirl, which is a chocolate cake with raspberry frosting filled with Raspberry Preserves. This would be perfect so someone who likes very sweet cupcakes because it is super sugary.

Mocha Madness, which is a chocolate cake with mocha frosting topped with a chocolate covered espresso bean. OMG it was heaven. I love coffee flavored things so it might be biased but it was a strong, rich taste.

Cinnamon Sticky Bun, which is a cinnamon cake with a creamy glaze. This was my favorite. It tasted like a cinnamon sticky bun - need I say more!

Lavender Lemon, is a lemon cake filled with lemon curd and topped with lavender frosting (and flowers too!). It tasted like lavendar flowers! It was kind of weird at first but still really good. I liked the lemon curd in the middle.

Lemon Raspberry, is a lemon cake filled with raspberry preserves topped with lemon frosting and a raspberry. This one was also sweet but not overpowering. I loved the lemon flavor.

Snowball, is a chocolate cake topped with coconut frosting and shredded coconut. I love me some shredded coconut so this "classic" cupcake on the menu was very enjoyable.

The most amazing thing about these cupcakes is that the frosting does not melt!! This is the best vegan frosting I have ever had. I am in awe of it's consistency. It's what frosting should be - whipped, creamy yet hardened on the outside, and super sugary. I didn't have to refrigerate these! I put them on my kitchen counter and the frosting stayed exactly the same! This makes me so happy.

The second most amazing thing is the cake itself - it's moist and light and fluffy! sigh... I want more.

These cupcakes were so good. It makes me sad that I can't try a different one every day. If I lived in Jersey I would be there all the time. I guess I'll have to make it a trip I reward myself with. Sweet Avenue - distribute in New York City!!

Map of Locations that carry Vegan Treats

Supervegan twittered a google maps database of all the restaurants and shops that carry Vegan Treats, makers of the peanut butter bomb and other fine delicious sweets. Here it is!