Two Whole Foods cupcakes one crazy cute (above) and one one a little Cake Wrecky, but more on that later. Today, I hung out with the very cool Mary Ann from Puff & Choux (also the organizer of CupcakeCampNYC) while I sipped the some hot chocolate from City Bakery’s Annual Hot Chocolate festival. I chose the delicious Earl Grey Hot Chocolate, it might sound weird but, trust me it was yummy.

After that, I stepped into Whole Foods and spotted that “Cake” Cupcake! Seriously how cute is that? To be honest, I was a little wary the top cake was going to be giant butter cream glob but it wasn’t! It was a little Vanilla Chocolate Chip Cake on top of a pretty decent Devil’s Food Cupcake! Score!

I will share something with you, dear reader, my favorite animals in the world are pigs (they’re great too look at and great to eat!) and before you think this post all over the place, I will show you why pigs come up. Behold reverse “butter face” piggy cupcake.

Precious fondant face: check. Cute Squiggly Tail: check. Body? …Meh. Feet??? Feet? What are those exactly? Oh well, cupcake was still good though, same Devil’s Food from the “Cake” cupcake. What are those? Why not just put the cute fondant face and call it day?

I will, however, wish all the party people in the house (that’s you, dear reader) a great week!

A while back I had some awesome house guests, the twist was they we’re vegan (and I’m not), but it really wasn’t a twist since it turns out being a vegan in NYC isn’t exactly hard. There are vegan products everywhere, vegan restaurants, vegan cafes and ,of course, a killer vegan bakery Babycakes! Now, mind you, these guests being crazy well informed already knew from the start that we had to go to Babycakes no matter what… And they were right, mostly.

My friends had already stopped by BabyCakes a few days earlier, they we’re mid Vinyl buying frenzy and they raved about EVERYTHING, but they might have been a little biased since being Vegan in Brazil is definitely not easy.

I was dieing to go and finally we did, amidst the big snow storm in December, we made our way to to the tiniest cutest little shop that is Babycakes in the Lower East Side. Even in a snowstorm people we’re coming in all the time we we’re there, and we lingered and ate everything, since we we’re enjoying the food and also the warmth after a day of cold soggy feet!

You’re probably thinking “Tell me about the cupcakes, already!” So I will. The cupcakes we’re good (and cute!), the cake itself was a little dry but the frosting more than made up for it! They even sell frosting shots, and I almost bought one it was that good! We also had donuts which I had read on Yelp we’re better than the cupcakes, while they we’re indeed good, they seemed to be a little old.

The winner, dear reader, isn’t even pictured since the four of us ravenously devoured it, was the crazy delicious Chocolate Crumb Cake Banana Pound cake! This cake was awesome, moist and rich, we all loved it even the 50 percent of us that are not Vegan. Just found my notes from when we we’re there and the Cinnamon Crumb Cake was also good but a little dry.

So there you have it, keep in mind that while the goodies are a little pricey, BabyCakes is a worthy stop in the LES, specially for the Vegan and Gluten Free folks.

Have you been there? What did you think?

When I met my ICE Admissions director, she quickly put me in touch with two ICE alums that we’re also from Brazil. One of which was just about to come to NY for a class and that’s how I met the awesome Priscila from Make the Cake (the website is  Portuguese but pics are universal!!)  She is a very skilled and talented cake designer and owns an amazing cake shop in São Paulo. She visits NY often (yay!), and this time we hung out at MacarOn Café, it’s the coolest frenchest little tiny Macaron shop in midtown!

Among the many Macarons we tried, was the delightful Espresso and also the Dark Chocolate however the Lavender Honey was not to my taste. Now look, I will give Lavender the benefit of the doubt until I have anything with it again, but based on this baby Lavender in desserts is not for me. It could have been too much Lavender or it might just be me, but I felt like I was eating my grandma’s perfume… I couldn’t finish the macaron, and if you have ever seen me you will know, I seldom leave anything on a plate!!

Definetely check out Macaron Cafe if you are in Penn Station area, specially considering that area is pretty barren!

The delectable pretty thing above is a White Chocolate Grapefruit Parfait with Honey Sabayon, it was very good. (Not to toot my own horn; that’s also a pretty good shot for an Iphone pic)

My favorite (and mind you they were all amazing) was the Tarragon-Grapefruit Soup with Mascarpone Gelée & Dark Chocolate Sorbet below, seriously tasty and so so beautiful! The Mascarpone Gelée and the Soup were insane!!!

We also had the pleasure to watch the chef  make the Île Flottante (Floating Island) of Grapefruit Anglaise and Milk Chocolate Sorbet, again delicious.

We also sampled Steamed Chocolate-Grapefruit Cakes and Chocolate tarts with Grapefruit marmalade and Coconut tuiles, but for those pics you might want to check out PastryScoops flickr set, as my humble Iphone shot weren’t as nice as the ones above.

This was my favorite demo to date, FCI had a cocktail before it started and while I didn’t drink (it was noon people) yours truly did enjoy the hors d’oeuvres and writing this post brought back memories of the crazy good Pastrami on Rye with Grapefruit Moustarda.

Chef Jansen Chan was charming and invested in showing us what he was making and also in answering our questions. I can only wish Oceana take interns from ICE, I’d be delighted to work there.

For now what I can is eat at Oceana someday, which you can do too and also if you haven’t had enough of this Grapefruit madness read RunnersKitchen account.

I’m off now to find some Pastrami and Grapefruit, thanks for reading!

I haven’t done a “Product I ♥” since last April, doesn’t mean my pan collection has been at a standstill! These pretty bug shaped cakes above (next to naked Mad Men cupcakes) were a cinch to make!  My awesome friend (and perpetual baking class buddy) Dessert-o-licious gave me the Nordic Ware Backyard Bugs Pan as a very cool birthday present. Look how cute it is!

If you are anything like me, after the cuteness factor wears off, you start to think “those those little ridges aren’t going work…”  but it was quite the opposite! Those cute as a button mini cakes pictured came out perfectly with just Pam. There’s also a silicone version of this pan available, but I am weary of silicone and this one works very well. Do you have this pan? I haven’t been able to frost them nicely yet, I spared you the frosting carnage picture… That’s a future project!