Dominique Ansel - A Little Taste of Paris in Soho

Dominique Ansel has been showing up everywhere since it opened in Soho in November 2011.  My general rule of thumb is if I read about a new bakery more than 3 times, and the word 'best' is included  somewhere in the review, it gets added to my neverending list.  I saw mentions of Dominique Ansel in NY Mag, Time Out NY, Serious Eats, Dessertbuzz - all my go-to sources for everything chocolate related.

My initial problem with Dominique Ansel, was that every time I tried to go there - it was closed!  The first time I went after the gym around 7:30, to find that they closed at 7. The next time I tried to go with a friend, we got there to discover they're not open Mondays.  I mean, for the city that never sleeps, this place sure does seem to get it's share.  Yesterday I finally made it there, on a Wednesday, at 6:30, and I was good to go (finally!)

Dominique Ansel (who is a man, which I just learned when doing my background research) who used to work as the Executive Pastry Chef for the restaurant Daniel, which I've never been to and probably never well since it's way out of my price range.  Originally from Paris (obviously), Dominique has risen to pastry stardom, and has been named one of the top 10 Pastry Chefs in the United States.

Dominique Ansel has a selection of sandwiches, salads, and soups, if you choose to stop there for lunch, which isn't a bad idea since they have a cute little garden area in back.  But I was there for the liquid caramel chocolate tart.

I definitely had my choice of desserts that looked amazing there.  There was a dulce de leche cup, filled with orange blossom milk chocolate ganache and caramelia rice krispies (that are also gluten free - I probably would've tried that too if I'd realized it yesterday).  There was a chocolate soft bun - milky chocolate bread with a chocolate ganache center.

But on to more important things - the liquid chocolate caramel tart.  Even the name makes me excited.  Who doesn't like liquid caramel with gourmet chocolate.  You really can't go wrong here.  The tart was a decent size - easily split between two people but not overwhelming for you to enjoy solo.  The chocolate shell was too thick to cut through with a fork, so you had to eat it by hand.  I was nervous the 'liquid' caramel would spill all over the place, but while it was liquid-y, it was also thick enough that it didn't ruin any article of clothing :)
The combination of thick caramel and soft ganache was perfect.  It was rich and creamy and each bite was thoroughly enjoyed.  There was a layer of chocolate cake with espresso, where I couldn't actually taste the espresso but it contrasted well with the sweetness of the caramel to dim down the sweetness.  The tart was $5+ tax, which is on the pricey side, but - it's in Soho, and it's French, and it's some sort of celebrity-type pastry chef, AND it was really good, so - I'll have to let it slide.

To be honest, after I finished the tart I wished I could try every other dessert in the place.  I was curious if everything could be that good.  I'll definitely be heading back here to try the chocolate bread and a cappuccino, and probably 3 or 4 other things that will definitely break the bank.

Dominique Ansel bakery is located at 189 Spring Street between Sullivan & Thompson. 212-219-2773

Their hours are 8-7 Tuesday through Saturday, and 9-6 on Sundays.  CLOSED MONDAY! DO not make the same mistakes I did - do not go on Monday, and don't show up at 7:30.  I promise, they will be closed :)
www.dominiqueansel.com

Cupcakeries from DC

A few years ago a friend went to Washington DC and told me about a cupcake place that was so good, people lined up to get inside.  In 2008 when Georgetown Cupcake opened, it was the first cupcakery in DC.  I found this shocking, since I've been a Crumbs loyalist since at least 2005!  But the DC market was apparently untapped, and Georgetown made a huge splash.  About a year ago, Georgetown opened a location in where else but NYC, so now I'd have the chance to try it too!

What I learned about these cupcakes, and why there were lines to get in, was that the owners - Katherine Kallinis and Sophie LaMontagne - are sisters who loved baking since they were children.  They used to bake with their grandmother, and use the leftover to make mini cakes and cupcakes.  Once they got older, they decided to quit their jobs in fashion and finance to open up the first shop, and once it got big it became their full-time gig (so envious!)  In 2010, they became the stars of the TLC show DC Cupcakes, which told their story and the aspects of running a small business from scratch.  They've now opened up locations in LA, Boston and Maryland as well.

If I was ranking establishments on decor alone, Georgetown would probably top the list.  EVERYTHING is pink!  If you know me, you know that this alone is a major sell point.  There's a whole wall of pink boxes to wrap the cupcakes - pink t-shirts - pink aprons - even a pink sparkly blender!  It's a 5 year old girl's dream :)
The down side of the shop are that there are only 3 tables to sit at in the NY location, but it's on Mercer street on a block that has a lot of stoops to sit on.  My friend Alana and I brought our cappuccinos and cupcake across the street and enjoyed them there, Sex & the City-style!

You can taste the freshness in Georgetown's cupcakes.  They're baked fresh every day, using specially imported ingredients (cocoa from France; vanilla from Madagascar, etc).  The menu changes daily, with about 18 flavors rotating each day.  they always have varieties of chocolate, vanilla, and red velvet, and then seasonal and special flavors.  There are some fun sounding ones on the menu like chocolate hazelnut and mint cookies and creme.  The full menu can be found here: Cupcake Menu

After staring at the display case for a good 10 minutes I decided on the Chocolate3, which consisted of Valrhona chocolate with Callebaur chocolate ganache icing, topped with french chocolate sprinkles.  Immediately after ordering, I decided  I'd made the wrong choice- the frosting is my favorite part!  
It was still a delicious cupcake though - it had rich chocolate, but not overwhelming chocolaty.  They're moist, with the perfect ratio of cake to frosting.  Surprisingly they mention the calories of the cupcakes, which you don't typically see except at places like Crumbs that have so many locations that they're mandated to put it on display.  Georgetown's cupcakes are estimated to be 250 calories each; 200 in the ones that have less frosting like the C3.

A fun tip - if you follow Georgetown on Facebook or Twitter, every day they announce a flavor that's not on the menu.  If you're one of the first 100 inside and mention the flavor, you get the cupcake for free!  

Georgetown Cupcake is located at 111 Mercer Street between Prince and Spring in Soho.
They're open Monday-Saturday from 10am-9pm, and Sundays from 10am-7pm.
www.georgetowncupcake.com

Rocco's Not So Modern Life

After a wonderful dinner at one of my favorite restaurants Sushi Samba in the West Village, my friend Becca wanted to pick up dessert at one of her favorite bakeries on Bleecker Street, Pasticceria Rocco.  I'm pretty sure I've been here before pre-blog days, but now it was time to write a review!

Pasticceria Rocco is a New York tradition.  It's probably the only spot on Bleecker Street that's been there since 1974.  An Italian bakery, you can find anything from cannolis to rainbow cookies to about 47 different kinds of cake.

Rocco is definitely famous for their cannolis.  While we were there I heard almost every other person ordering them.  Now you might think that would be what I'd review, however - recall the name of the blog here.  It's all about chocolate.  I'm just not a cannoli kind of girl, sorry!  They did have little chocolate covered ones, but I was distracted by the giant cookies in the window.  They were about the same size of a Jacques Torres cookie, but also extremely thick.  Holding one in your hand, it feels like it weights about a pound!  
<--- Brownie marshmallow cookie

                                                     Oreo marshmallow cookie --->

There were chocolate chip cookies dipped in chocolate, brownie
cookies with marshmallow, regular cookie dough cookies with marshmallow and oreo - lots of fun combinations.  I tried the brownie marshmallow and Becca had the oreo marshmallow.  They were decent cookies, but not close to being my favorite.  They had that Italian bakery taste to them - not very doughy or fresh tasting.  The rainbow cookies and lacy cookies were better, but not all that different from what I'd find at any other bakery.  Maybe I've gotten spoiled, but I felt that while Pasticceria Rocco has been around for almost 40 years, it hasn't changed with the times.  It had the taste and feel of an old-school bakery.  Which is fine, but I'm always on the hunt for something new and life-changing, and with places like Levain in existence, I can't give Rocco's too much credit.
That's not to say if I stopped off here to have coffee that I wouldn't get something anyway, because there were about 100 desserts to try (the chocolate mousse cup looked great, as did a number of the cakes).

Pasticceria Rocco is located at 243 Bleecker Street.  Open daily from 7:30am - midnight (weekends til 1am), you can stop in early for a cappuccino or after dinner at Keste for a late-night snack.

www.pasticceriarocco.com

Blue Bottle Coffee - a sweeter view from the Highline

To continue our never-ending quest for a NY cookie better than Levain, we took a trip over to Blue Bottle Coffee, located across the street from Chelsea Market beneath the Highline.  To give fair credit, Blue Bottle is originally from San Francisco, but since I never intend to go to that city again and there's more than one location in NY, I'm counting it.

I had read that Blue Bottle, aside from having amazing coffee, featured a double chocolate cookie with chocolate from Mast Brothers, a Williamsburg-based artisinal chocolate maker.  Mast Brothers makes some really good chocolate, but the $8 a bar pricetag stops me from buying it every time.

The cookie at Blue Bottle is $2.25, and includes large pieces of Madagascar Mast brothers chocolate.  They sprinkle sea salt throughout the cookie, giving in to that sweet & salty flavor I fell in love with at the NY Chocolate Show, and have been seeking out wherever I can find it now.  Each bite gave you a good ration of cookie, chocolate and sea salt.  My biggest complaint about many chocolate chip cookies is the uneven distribution inside.  Some, like Jacques Torres, have a bit too much chocolate to cookie ratio.  Others, too many to name, skimp out with the chocolate and I'm left with giant heaps of plain old boring dough.  But Blue Bottle had it just right.  We also liked the presentation - the cookie was served in a brown coffee filter (unused, of course!)  There's limited seating inside, but you can always take your coffee and snacks over for a nice walk down the Highline.

The coffee was indeed amazing too.  We opted for the New Orleans blend iced coffee, and it was strong and tasteful.  It was also $4 for a small.  I think I'd prefer to fly to New Orleans and go to Cafe DuMonde for that much - but our 2 coffees and 1 cookie totaling over $10 WAS a nice and well-deserved break during our 30 mile bike ride.

The location we went to is located at 450 W 15th street, between 9th and 10th Avenues.  There is a larger Blue Bottle Coffee in Williamsburg, at 160 Berry Street which has a larger selection of cakes (Gingerbread cake, rice loaf brought over from their original San Fran location), and one in Rock Center.  They also have a temporary outpost for the summer on the Highline, and at Smorgasburg (spoiler alert - the next free Saturday I plan to do a giant Smorgasburg entry to cover the massive amount of dessert food trucks there!)

http://www.bluebottlecoffee.net/

Almondine... Another reason to visit Brooklyn

I keep an ever-growing list of new desserts to try saved on my Google docs, which at this point in time has been in the works for so many years that I don't even know what's on there anymore, where it came from, or why I decided I should go in the first place.

A few weeks ago when my roommate Stacey and I were wandering around DUMBO, we passed a Jacques Torres on Water Street (who knew that was there?!), and across the street, a bakery with a line out the door.  We went closer to investigate, and I recognized the name - Almondine Bakery. Almondine had been on my list for at least two years now, but since I never go to DUMBO and thought that Water Street was in the Financial District, Almondine was doomed to remain there forever!

Stacey and I peeked inside and saw (and smelled) amazing desserts.  Giant chocolate chip cookies. Meringues that looked like ice cream sandwiches.  Macarons in every color and flavor imaginable.  We had just eaten, but decided to come back on our next journey to DUMBO.
Memorial Day weekend, we returned.  Luckily for us, Almondine was much emptier on this trip over.  On the down side, a lot of the desserts I'd been dreaming of since our last visit weren't there.

We ended up with one of the giant chocolate chip cookies, an oversized chocolate macaron, a chocolate rocher and a pretzel bread filled with gruyere cheese.

They also offer chocolate mousses, tortes, specialty cakes (definitely recommended for the next special occasion, they looked amazing) and a ton of breads made with organic flour and few ingredients (the Cjaps aren't fans of processed foods, which is why we stick to bakeries where everything is made fresh).  Almondine is known for their croissants and macarons.  We didn't try the croissant, because they were out of chocolate ones, but the pretzel bread was delicious.  There was a light layer of gruyere cheese on top, which could've been heated up a bit to make it soft and melted, but we still loved it.

As for the chocolates - well. The chocolate chip cookie was pretty damn good.  Not up there with Levain or Paradis, but it was a good cookie.  It was tremendous (see photo for proof.  My hand isn't that big!)  My initial reaction was that I wasn't going to like it because there were so few chocolate chips.  I like when they're evenly distributed throughout, and there's a little chocolate in every bite.  In Almondine's cookie, there were three giant chocolate chips, but then about 80% of the cookie was just cookie.  Despite this, it was a good cookie.  It was rich, thin and buttery, and there was a little bit of chocolate spread throughout.  Guest blogger of the day Stacey liked it more than I did, but it served it's purpose.  However, I probably wouldn't get it again.

There was also a dark chocolate walnut cookie offered, as well as oatmeal raisin, of equally large size.

There was an assortment of different flavored and colored macarons, but I opted for the large chocolate macaron that was so big it slightly resembled a whoopie pie. The chocolate cake layers were dusted with powdered sugar, and were dense and tasty. The chocolate in the middle was rich and flavorful.  It was a large macaron cookie, and can easily be split between two people.  The smaller ones looked good too, but those will be tasted another time.  The rocher I found extremely boring.  I had it in my bag and it melted, so the next day after refrigerating it, it tasted like a melted, re-chilled, mushy rocher chocolate.  You're better off buying them from your local Duane Reade and go for the better options at Almondine.

They also offer sandwiches and soups, and a full blended coffee menu.  There are a few tables inside, or you can walk down a couple of blocks to enjoy your treats at Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Almondine is open daily from 7-7 (except Sunday, 10-6)

85 Water Street between Main & Washington (DUMBO)
442 9th Street (off 7th Avenue in Park Slope)
www.almondinebakery.com

A Make-Your-Own of it's Own

We all know about make-your-own froyo.  We've all been to a 16 Handles, Yogurtland or some type of place where you take a cup, fill it up with different flavored frozen yogurt, and add 8 pounds of toppings of your liking.  It's a trend we all know and love.  What's a trend that we don't know but would love if we did?  Make your own cupcakes.  And you can now do that at Molly's Cupcakes in the West Village!

 Molly's features their own signature cupcakes as well.  Made from scratch each day with the finest ingredients, you can get classic flavors like chocolate, vanilla, red velvet, etc, but really fun flavor combinations.  They had:
-Cake batter
-Butterscotch caramel
-Kahlua
-Chocolate mousse
-Blueberry cheesecake
-Cookies & cream
and more....

We tried the Cookie Monster.  Which was a-maz-ing.  Cookie dough filling! Actual raw cookie dough inside the cupcake.  It was vanilla chocolate chip cookie cake filled with the cookie dough, topped with buttercream and a small chocolate chip cookie on top.  We loved this so much, and pushed Molly's way up in my list of favorite cupcake spots!  Pricing is on par with other cupcake shops - $3.75 for the specialty cupcakes.

Now for the make-your-own.  We did not make our own last night.  I'm ashamed to admit this, because that is the most exciting part about Molly's!  But I got thrown by the Cookie Monster!

But here's the details:
You pick a size.  A mini is $1.25, and a Molly, which I'm assuming is a large, is $2.25.
Then you pick your cake flavor, from chocolate, vanilla, red velvet, carrot or banana.
Next you pick your frosting: vanilla, chocolate, cream cheese, butter cream or brown butter.
Last you pick your toppings: cookie crumble, brownie bits, Reeses, M&Ms, Whoppers, gummy bears or chocolate chips.
When I DO make one, I know it'll be vanilla cake, cream cheese frosting, with brownie bits, Reeses & gummy bears.  And I can also tell you I'll be back here real soon.

Even if you don't make your own, Molly's has an assortment of colorful sprinkles that you can add on to any cupcake - a pre-made or custom made one.
There were other treats available too - ice cream, cookies, pies, cheesecake, and bars (the 7-layer looked amazing, but we were sticking with the signature cupcakes for the first visit).  The full menu can be found here: Molly's Cupcakes Menu.

Molly's is open until 10pm on weeknights and midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, so you can get your cupcake fix after dinner in the West Village.  Any other questions?  Like who's Molly?  Molly was the owner's third-grade teacher, who used to bake cupcakes for her students' birthdays.  In honor of Molly,  a portion of their profits are donated to schools in the community.  How sweet is that?

Molly's is located at 228 Bleecker Street, between Carmine and Downing
There's also a location in Chicago, in the Lincoln Park area.
Take a trip down and tell us what custom creation you made!
Molly's Cupcakes

Dessert Truck Works Better on the LES

The influx of food trucks in NY started a few years ago, and has been expanding at a rapid pace.  You can barely pass a corner without running into someone selling pastries, frozen yogurt or tacos.  DessertTruck was one of the original food trucks, selling their pastries from a mobile operation since October 2007.  The success of their truck was so great that in 2010, a cafe was opened on the Lower East Side, down on Clinton Street next to to the ever-famous Clinton Street Baking Company.

The cafe has sandwiches as well, but people come for their desserts.  I went in because of a craving for bread pudding, but while there ended up with nutella filled brioche donut squares and a chocolate chip cookie as well (whoops!)  The bread pudding came with vanilla ice cream, topped with whipped cream.  It was extremely sweet, and definitely needed to be shared by two people, there was no way to eat this all alone.  Of course, in addition to this, we had the chocolate chip cookie, which was warm from the oven.  The cookie was good, but didn't make any of the top lists.

Now I'm not a big donut or nutella fan, but these were actually delicious.  Again, on the super sweet side, but they were perfectly filled with nutella, the brioche was crisp and fresh (again, served warm right from the oven), with a thick layer of sugar on the top.



All of the desserts are $5.97 + tax; the cookie was $3.03 + tax. Pretty reasonable considering the size and satiety.  The cafe itself has a strange seating set-up, the tables are super tiny and low, and the chairs are hard to sit on, so I wouldn't come with a large group.  But for 1-2 people, definitely add it to your list!


Dessert Truck Works is open Sunday - Thursday from the afternoon (2/3) until 11pm, and on Fri/Sat until midnight. Perfect for a late night snack!


Dessert Truck Works
6 Clinton Street between Avenue B & Houston St
http://www.desserttruck.com