Sunday, March 30, 2014

Local Bakery Expands and Home Bakery Expands Waistline

Recently, Three Brothers Bakery opened another location near my house off Washington Avenue. Since their cupcakes are humongous, we went with two each. I couldn't even finish my second cupcake.

Hubby had the two flavors I tried and featured in a previous post, so I won't get into those. I'll just jump right into mine.

Starting with Mocha; it's a yellow cake brushed with a coffee liqueur and iced in mocha buttercream, and garnished with chocolate sprinkles. This cupcake was definitely mocha tasting, but I liked it. I usually don't like coffee flavor, but since the cake was yellow, the coffee wasn't too strong.

Second, I had the M&M cupcake. It's filled with fudge, topped with white buttercream and rolled in M&Ms. First, this cupcake was VERY chocolate-y. The description says it's rolled in M&Ms, but that wasn't the case. There were just a few M&Ms inside. This cupcake was OK; not my favorite though.

And then we also experimented with another gourmet cookie mix from Sisters Gourmet. This one was plain old chocolate chip.

Similar to the first cookie experiment, these turned out flat too. The first time, I thought it was because I pressed the dough with the palm of my hand, but I didn't do that this time and it still ended up flat. I'm not sure why. Anyway, it still tasted good. Here's the finished product...

Sunday, March 2, 2014

A Not So Fresh Take on Cupcakes

While visiting The Fresh Market, a new small gourmet grocery store, I spotted some cupcakes that peaked my interest. For a grocery store, they were a bit pricey at $2.99 each, but we tried a few out anyway...

First cupcake was strawberry white chocolate. It appeared to be a yellow cake with white chocolate and a touch of strawberry frosting, and white chocolate chips. White chocolate was the predominant taste; there was very little strawberry flavor. I don't know how fresh the cupcake was or if it was because it was in the cooler, but it was a bit dry. If it wasn't for the dryness, this would have been a good cupcake.

The next cupcake was cookies and cream. This too, was a bit dry. Even if it wasn't dry, I would have rated this one just OK. I've had better.

My last cupcake was Boston cream. This one wasn't as dry as the other two, but it wasn't very moist either. However, the frosting compensated for the slight dryness. So, overall, this one was fairly decent.

I also had a bit of hubby's black and white and red velvet cupcakes. While they both tasted good, the black and white cupcake was a bit dry as well. The red velvet was the only cupcake that was not dry.

Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed that these pricey pastries weren't as fresh as the name of the store implies.

Gourmet Cookie Experiment Part Two

Once again, we tested another cookie mix from Sisters Gourmet. This one was Cinnamon White Chip. As usual, it called for ingredients like butter, an egg and vanilla.

Last time, I made the dough into a ball and pressed them a bit onto the cookie sheet. They turned out flat. This time, I left them in the ball and did not flatten them. From one extreme to another, these came out thicker and smaller in circumference.

In a nutshell, they turned out well. However, I didn't taste cinnamon. The mix appeared to have oats in there, so it was more like an oatmeal chip cookie.

Lookout for cookie experiment part three in the near future.