Category Archives: Bakeries

Bouchon Bakery Donuts — For Early-Risers Only

Posted on by 17 comments

I’d known about these elusive donuts for awhile. I just never managed to get to Bouchon Bakery in Yountville early enough to snag any.

Until last Sunday.

You see, in addition to the usual variety of baguettes, nutter butter cookie sandwiches, and flaky-beyond-belief croissants, the bakery makes a limited quantity of donuts only on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It amounts to a mere couple dozen of each type of donut offered each day.

They are made in the fryer at next-door Bouchon Bistro before it opens for lunch. Once the doors to the bistro open, the fryer is tied up with orders of irresistible frites instead.

When I arrived at the bakery about 9:40 a.m. last Sunday, there were already about half a dozen people in line, and another half dozen sitting at outside tables, sipping coffee and noshing on brioche and macaroons.

As I inched my way through the doorway, I spotted them — three different types of donuts on the wooden back shelf where all the bread was. There were only about nine donuts left. My heart sank, thinking the people in front of me might buy them all.

Read more

Trick Or Treat Time With Sprinkles Cupcakes

Posted on by One comment

Halloween cupcakes (Photo courtesy of Sprinkles)

Sprinkles Cupcakes fans will be glad to know that through Oct. 31, they can buy a boxed dozen that will guarantee a frosting-filled Halloween.

The “BOO” box features three of the bakery’s most popular flavors: vanilla milk chocolate, black and white, and red velvet — plus limited-edition caramel apple cupcakes. The cupcakes come decorated with cute little ghosts, too.

Read more

Cupcake-itis

Posted on by 15 comments

Clockwise from back: Strawberry-filled vanilla, chocolate, peanut butter-filled chocolate, and marble cupcakes.

I blame this on Nate of the House of Annie blog.

After returning from my Los Angeles vacation, where I made the rounds of bakeries, I thought I was done with nibbling on cupcakes. At least for a little while.

But then Nate had to tell me that one of my favorite South Bay bakeries had started making cupcakes.

Darn him. Darn him.

So, of course, I had to try them.  Calories be damned.

Off I went to Sugar Butter Flour’s original location in Sunnyvale (there’s a second one in Campbell now, too). Last year when I was still writing for the San Jose Mercury News’ food section, I had picked Sugar Butter Flour’s pastry chef-partner, Irit Ishai, as one of the top pastry chefs in the South Bay. Consider her resume: Former pastry chef at Sent Sovi in Saratoga under then-Executive Chef David Kinch; former pastry chef of Kinch’s subsequent restaurant, Manresa in Los Gatos; and an apprentice at Fleur de Cocoa in Los Gatos, owned by Pastry Chef Pascal Janvier, whom I also singled out in that same story as a stellar pastry chef.

Sugar Butter Flour’s cupcakes are $3 each. I picked one of each available that day to cart home: a strawberry-filled vanilla cupcake, a marble cupcake topped with chocolate buttercream, a chocolate cupcake with a white squiggle a la Hostess, and a peanut butter-filled chocolate cupcake with peanut butter buttercream.

Read more

Cupcake Challenge, Part 2 — LA-Style

Posted on by 10 comments

In one corner, cupcakes from Joan's on Third.

It would be hard to do justice to the cupcake culture that’s risen in Los Angeles. Everywhere you turn, it seems like there’s a cupcake bakery or one about to open. And it would be doubly hard to do an all-out cupcake-off after one is already bursting at the seams from a lunch of bone marrow, and burrata pizza.

But my hubby and I gave it our best shot, even after such a filling lunch. We picked up five cupcakes total from two bakeries (priced at $3 to $4), then took them back to our hotel room to do our own taste-test.

First up, cupcakes from Joan’s on Third, a cute-as-a-button, family-owned, cafe-bakery that also sells gourmet food to-go, including chi-chi pasta sauces, cheeses galore, charcuterie, and roast chickens. We had high hopes for these cupcakes. They were beautiful to look at. We chose a Snickers bar-topped chocolate cupcake; a peanut butter-marshmallow chocolate cupcake; and a “Cloud,” a chocolate cupcake topped with a huge spiral beehive of chocolate-dipped marshmallow that looked like Marge Simpson’s head.

In the other corner, cupcakes from Sweet Lady Jane.

We also picked up two cupcakes from an old favorite, Sweet Lady Jane, known for its fabulous cakes. The downside to Sweet Lady Jane is that it doesn’t always have cupcakes. You just have to hit it at the right time and hope for the best. We lucked out that day, getting our hands on a Red Velvet and a chocolate cupcake.

Read more

Going Bananas

Posted on by 8 comments

Bakesale Betty's Banana Bread with Cinnamon Crumble Topping. Recipe follows.

When sweet, juicy strawberries finally arrive in spring, my husband will choose to eat a banana instead. When I can’t get my fill of peaches, plums, apricots, and candy-sweet pluots in the height of summer, my hubster still prefers a banana. In fact, hardly ever varying from habit, he eats a banana just about every morning.

Go figure.

It’s not that he doesn’t like other fruit. It’s not even that bananas are his favorite thing in the world to eat. It’s just that — how can I put this delicately — he’s lazy. Oh, believe me, he will be the first to admit that he is. Go ahead, ask him. Why go to the trouble of washing and slicing other fruit, he will tell you, when a banana requires none? Case closed.

A banana does possess many merits. It’s the perfect grab-and-go food. It’s easily portable, what with its own built-in protective case. It’s full of good-for-you potassium. And it’s easy to digest — for everyone from kids to grandparents to those with upset tummies.

I enjoy bananas, too — sliced atop Greek yogurt, with a sprinkling of crunchy granola. I also love them in banana bread, still warm right out of the oven. So when I spied this banana bread recipe from Oakland’s Bakesale Betty, I knew I had to try it.

I’ve yet to have the pleasure of visiting the Oakland shop, where the fried chicken sandwiches and strawberry shortcakes are legendary. Because the place has such a following already, I had high hopes for this banana bread by owner-baker Alison Barakat, an Aussie transplant who used to work at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Trust me, it didn’t disappoint.

Read more

« Older Entries Recent Entries »