Sweet Love: A Bakery Crush on BunnieCakes

It's time to share the latest CakeSpy bakery crush: BunnieCakes!

This Miami-based custom order vegan bake shop was started by owner Mariana Cortez, borne out of frustration for not being able to find high-quality sweets which she could enjoy with her two young children. Rather than despair (or worse, make them only eat trail mix or something) she started specializes in delicious vegan baked goods, most notably cakes and cupcakes; further experimentation resulted in a line of allergy free vegan goods (no eggs, dairy, gluten/wheat, nuts...and with natural sweeteners) in addition to the vegan offerings.

But with flavors like Red Velvet, Blueberry Orange, Key Lime, Banana Chocolate Chip, all topped with decadent frostings, it's pretty clear that while these cakes lack dairy, they do not lack in deliciousness! A sweet find indeed for Florida

You can check out Bunniecakes online, and find a list of Miami-area retailers here.

CakeSpy Undercover: Extraordinary Desserts in San Diego

CakeSpy Note: This is a guest post from Cake Gumshoe Laurel, a sweets enthusiast and handbag designer! She has also designed custom CakeSpy totes and wristlets which would make great Christmas presents. Just saying.

San Diego Beer Week started a few days ago. Many of the beer and food tastings are in bars, but one of the places participating in the ten day celebration of craft beer is Extraordinary Desserts. I'm a dessert nerd and my husband is a beer nerd; there was no way we couldn't go. We'll have babysitting later on in the week and plan on taking part in another beer-related event or two, but we figured this would be a good one to go try out for an early evening with our son. I didn't realize that Extraordinary Desserts was also a restaurant, with delicious looking sandwiches, appetizers, and even happy hour specials. We were here for the beer-inspired desserts though, so that's what we ordered. My husband had the warm caramelized apple pie with house-made St. Peter's Cream Stout ice cream, and I had the Coconut Porter beer float. Our 16-month-old son had a scoop of their house-made vanilla ice cream.

Some friends and I made beer floats once and they weren't nearly as good as this. (They were kind of gross, actually.) The house-made vanilla ice cream that went in my beer float was absolutely divine. It was rich and creamy, and it paired really well with the beer in the float. I've had the Maui Brewing Company Coconut Porter that they topped the float with, and it's not especially coconutty, so I appreciated that they also topped the float with toasted coconut flakes to bring out the flavor.

As much as I liked my beer float, my husband's apple pie (pictured top) was hands down the star dessert. The pie crust was flaky and buttery, and there was just a hint of cardamom in it that made it really stand out from ordinary pie crust. It was more like an individual pot pie than a slice from a whole pie, and we could definitely taste the caramel flavor in the apples on top. The ice cream was fabulous as well; the cream stout gave the ice cream an almost hazelnutty flavor, which complemented the pie very well. I could easily eat a whole bowl of the ice cream on its own, and it was all I could do to not lick the plate clean when my husband declared himself too stuffed to go on.

Our son also loved his bowl of vanilla ice cream, as you can see. He's clearly thinking about how this ice cream is so much more creamy and velvety than any other ice cream he's ever had, and how strong the vanilla bean flavor is, and how the next time he eats plain old ice cream from somewhere other than Extraordinary Desserts he'll just be thinking about how it's not as good as this ice cream. Our son has a very discerning palate.

We lived down the street from the original location on Hillcrest for two years and somehow never managed to make it in, and boy, do I feel dumb about it now. We'll definitely be visiting again in the future to try some of their regular sweets. If you're interested in visiting Extraordinary Desserts to taste their beer week offerings, make sure you go before November 15, when San Diego Beer Week ends. (And if you happen to go, and you see a crazy mom fighting her toddler for the right to lick the bowl clean, stop by my table and say hi.)

Extraordinary Desserts has two locations in San Diego, 2929 Fifth Avenue on Hillcrest and 1430 Union Street in Little Italy; online at extraordinarydesserts.com.

Sweet Bounty: Discovering the Art of the Venetian Table with Cake Gumshoe Megan

CakeSpy Note: Cake Gumshoe Megan thought she’d seen it all when it came to wedding desserts, but recently she was pleasantly surprised by what can only be described as a sugar smorgasbord.

The backstory: Over the weekend I attended my college roommate’s wedding. With seven bridesmaids, she was peppered with questions all throughout the rehearsal dinner, and most of mine revolved around the food. I’ve been to weddings with good, bad and no food, so I’m always curious what lies ahead.

I needn’t have worried. Beyond the endless finger foods the bridal party ate all day, the cocktail hour - which served more food than some people’s receptions - and then her actual reception, I should have been stuffed to the gills by the time dessert (literally) rolled around. And I actually was, but when the wait staff raced the loaded-down tables onto the dance floor, I had to make room.

Discovering the Venetian Hour: Whether you call it a Viennese or Venetian Hour, the point is decadence. Wikipedia defines a Venetian Hour as a Sicilian tradition in which the bride and groom display “a dazzling array of pastries, fruits, coffees, cakes, presented in great quantity with much celebration.” That’s a big ten-four. The dessert table at my friend’s wedding was a large oval made up of at least eight tables (I was too stunned to count) and involved pyrotechnics (see above photo).

We had our choice between fresh fruit kabobs and a chocolate fountain, an ice cream sundae bar featuring our choice of ice cream flavors as well as five different toppings and whipped cream and/or hot fudge, and then there were the cakes and cookies – tiramisu, diner-style strawberry shortcake, Black Forest, Napoleon, sfogliatelle, zeppole, Italian cookies…I could go on, but the liqueur shots taken out of edible (and yummy) chocolate thimbles made my memory a little fuzzy. I am absolutely not ashamed to admit my groomsman and I circled the tables twice!

Coming to America: While researching this delightful and heretofore unknown tradition, I realized it existed in small pockets of the US in another form. Brought to America by Italians and Eastern Europeans immigrants who settled into the industrial areas of northeastern Ohio and the coalmines of western Pennsylvania, it morphed into the cookie table, a common feature at weddings, showers, birthdays and graduations there.

For the wedding cookie table, the cookies are traditionally prepared by the bride’s female relatives. Each woman can be responsible for up to seven dozen cookies, depending on how many people participate. Communal baking also serves as a time for the women to catch up on each others’ lives.

In a very pleasant turn of events, researching this custom opened my eyes to the presence of it in my own childhood. I have relatives in central Pennsylvania, and every wedding I attended with that part of the family involved a cookie table. I thought it was just my aunt over-baking! I made so many trips to that table, hiding the cookies in my hand so my parents wouldn’t see how much I ate. And my aunt was always sending relatives home after the receptions with napkin-covered plates heaped with cookies of all flavors and types.

The final word: I’ve reached an age where my friends are starting to get married, so I’m going to do my part to bring this tradition to the mainstream. As far as I’m concerned, the more dessert, the better!

Sweet Bliss: Starbucks-Style Cranberry Bliss Bars for Serious Eats

Confession: I get a little thrill every year when Starbucks rolls out their holiday menu, that sugar bomb-laden collection of eggnog and gingerbread lattes, frosted sugar cookies...and especially the Cranberry Bliss Bar. Don't get confused by the fact that "cranberry" is in the title--these are very much the opposite of health food.


And this week for my entry over at Serious Eats, I tried a homemade version which I adapted from the Mr. Breakfast website. While the bars don't taste exactly like the 'bucks version, they are very good: dense, moist cake studded with tart cranberries and sweet white chocolate, and a veritable winter wonderland of cream cheese frosting and white chocolate drizzled on top. So sweet, they're bound to bring on a holidaze.

You can check out the full recipe on Serious Eats.

Cake Byte: CakeSpy Grilled Cheesecake in This Is Why You're Fat!

It's official, world: CakeSpy is making you fat.

Yup, it's true! CakeSpy contributed a sweet spread to the brand new book This Is Why You're Fat: Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks: the Grilled Cheesecake Sandwich! You may remember the so-decadent-it's-deadly recipe from a while back on the site--and now it's immortalized in print!

There are plenty of other so bad but so good recipe ideas in the book--it's definitely worth checking out!

You can also follow This Is Why You're Fat via their website and via Twitter!