Thursday, April 5, 2012

Bakery Review: Deerfields Baker - Chicagoland

This review brings me to Chicago.   What a great city.  Underappreciated I think because it's cold but sometimes you get lucky and get a few hours to yourself in Chicago on a warm sunny spring morning.  The obvious thing to do is to find a bakery and so I turn to Yelp to point me to something nearby where I had a meeting and I got lucky in that I was directed to Deerfields Bakery. 

It was later that I looked at their website and found their true American dream story.  Deerfields is owned by the Schmitt family whose baking roots began in Germany in the 1880s. In 1911, Adam Schmitt imigrated to American and he and his wife set up "The New York Bake Shop" in Chicago.  His son then started Schmitt's Bake Shop which expanded to over 30 locations.  As they say - bigger business means bigger problems (I don't know who "they" are - I'm pretty sure I just made that up.  The expansion forced Henry to lose his business.  But, because this is the American dream, he apparently just continued to work hard in the industry until he was able to buy another bakery in 1972:  Deerfield Bakery.  Twelve years later, that bakery was National Retail Bakery of the Year.  Who doesn't love a comeback story like that?!  Deerfields now has three locations in the Chicagoland area and I was lucky enough to stumble upon their newest one in Schaumburg, IL.  New as in - opened in 2000.  So essentially, these guys are totally legit.  Too legit to quit (sorry - had to!).

While they did not have a huge selection of cupcakes, they did have a little bit of everything.  See the selection of fresh muffins and donuts: 

And the cute Easter-ready lamb and chick mini-cakes:



They also had a load of bagels, breads, and a whole gluten free section!  AMAZIN! 

But this day I had a hankering for Red Velvet!  Luckily, I had two really good options:  red velvet cupcake and red velvet DONUT!  Um - what?! 

I ended up getting both (don't judge).  They were both flat-out amazing!  The red velvet donut was actually - donut-y - not too dense but still had all the flavors of red velvet.  AND it had the cream cheese frosting and a light dusting of powdered sugar.  Bask in the awe of red velvet magic by Deerfields:





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