More Cupcakes Across America! VEGAS STYLE!

Sometimes in life, you’ve got to roll the dice.  Other times, you’ve got to know when to fold ‘em or hold ‘em.  And sometimes, you’ve just got to double down.  And that’s exactly what I did on my recent trip to Vegas.  Partly for work and partly for a girls’ weekend in a cabana @ Mandalay Bay surrounded by 1200 marines! – yeah – marines – and it wasn’t even my birthday.  Anywho, when the dealer gives you 7 days in Vegas, you must try at least two cupcake joints. 

First – and my apologies for not having any photos of it – The Cupcakery in Monte Carlo.  I had to walk right by it to get to Starbucks in the morning.  These cupcakes were good.  I got a Lemon Crème – it was good – moist, sweet yet tart.  A solid showing from this three location spot.  I also got a sample of the Julius – orange pineapple cake with a heavy cream frosting.  That one was good – a strong flavorful cupcake but the frosting wasn’t my fave. Nonetheless, good texture cake.

Then – The Sugar Factory.  This place is fun – part restaurant, part bar, and part candy/treat shop with their largest location in the Paris Casino Hotel on the strip and then a few other mini-shops around town.   Here's a pic from one of the mini-shops:

They make some questionable decisions on celebrity promotion:

Just kidding sitch!  We should hang out!

I went to the restaurant for dinner and it was quite good for an American style brasserie.  I had a salad and picked some onion rings and other treats from my friend’s plate.  They did have some creative ideas – macaroni and cheese pops – really – balls of mac and cheese in battered ball form and deep fried onto a stick.  Pretty brilliant.    For the cupcake test, I picked up a vanilla cupcake at the Sugar Factory mini-shop in the Miracle Mile Shops in Planet Hollywood.  While there it occurred to us that this mall used to be in Aladdin.  Remember Aladdin?  Easy come, easy go in Sin City.  

Here's the cupcake - looks good right?  

Anyway, this vanilla cupcake was not good.  Way too dry and crumbly texture and seemed stale.  The frosting was like a whipped shortening which was barely sweetened.  And is often the case with dry cake, the sides did not hold up - look at this side of this poor little guy:

Finally, the saving grace of the Sugar Factory, is the cute merch.  They have all kinds of candy, giant lollipops, and even cakepops.  And what goes better with that than an adorable rubber ducky to make the trip home with you.

More cupcakery reviews to come as I head back out west!  

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: