CakeSpy Undercover: Chuck's Donuts in Renton, WA

I often say that bad things happen when you leave the city, but when a CakeSpy reader emailed extolling the virtues of Chuck's Donuts in Renton:

While you won't find espresso, cupcakes, or frozen yogurt on the menu, you will find the best maple bars in five counties and a lot of extremely tasty cake donuts with simple fillings. I could eat their chocolate-covered custard-filled donuts until they came out my ears! I grew up on these sugar bombs and many people in my massive family consider them prime bribe material.

...well, let's just say I knew it was time to hit the road.

Chuck's Donuts is a deeply and delightfully unpretentious place. It's perched at the corner of a strip mall off of the highway; the signage and decor are fairly nondescript. But that's OK, because we're here to talk about the donuts.

We tested three to get a full variety: a bear claw, and old fashioned, and a frosted cake donut. The bear claw had a thin sheen of glaze that shattered oh so delicately when bitten into, giving way to a yeasty, sweet dough filled with a buttery cinnamon-sugar mix--the filling was a nice complement to the lightness of the donut.

The cake donut was lightly crispy on the outside, dense, soft and cakey on the inside; the frosting was almost too sweet, but we powered through it--and it should be noted that the coconut added a nice texture too.

But the real start of the show was an old fashioned cake donut which vaguely resembled a potato in size and texure (though as to the technical name, not quite sure), which was filled with jam and lightly glazed; overall, very pleasingly dense and just greasy enough to be satisfying without being gross.

Overall, a great find and definitely worth a stop if you find yourself in Renton; and though we do have a number of great donut shops in the city, I'd even deem it a worthy destination for Seattle donut lovers.

Chuck's Donuts, 5335 N. 4th Street, Renton; click here for more info.

CakeSpy Undercover: A Cake Gumshoe's Thoughts Cakes on Demand, Chilliwack, BC

CakeSpy Note: This is a guest post from Cake Gumshoe Jess.

What luck: my new neighbour is a baker and the owner of Cakes on Demand. Well, I was so very excited when she arrived at my door to welcome me to the neighbourhood with some of her delicious delights! Caitlin was just leaving when she arrived and quickly retreated back inside the house so that she could partake in the cupcakery confections.

They all looked so good it was so hard to decide which one to eat first!

Caitlin was quick to zoom in on a fluffy coconut one. Her thoughts? Yum.

I decided to try a coffee one as I am a nut about anything coffee. We were both delighted to find that our cupcakes were cream-filled!

I highly recommend Cakes on Demand to anyone needing a cake or cupcake fix.

Cakes on Demand is a special-order cupcake and cake bakery in Chilliwack, BC; for more information or to make an appointment, visit cakesondemand.com.

To read more about Cake Gumshoe Jess's adventures, visit her blog.

CakeSpy Undercover: A Cake Gumshoe's Thoughts on Sprinkles Edible Art in Olympia, WA

CakeSpy Note: This is a guest blog post from Cake Gumshoe Roxanne Cooke. Check out her website here!

At Sprinkles Edible Art in Olympia, your cupcake can be dressed up the way you want. Sprinkles, which is dubbed “an interactive pastry shop” on its business cards, offers the “Edible Art experience” either in a kit to take home or directly in the shop. For $6, you get a cupcake, individual cake, cookie, or brownie, as well as a small container of frosting, three different kinds of sprinkles, and a drink.

There are dozens of sprinkles of all shapes and colors to choose from, including bear-shaped sprinkles and Christmas-themed sprinkles. Cupcake and frosting flavors cover the basics, such as chocolate cake and cream cheese frosting. Drinks include soda, juice, milk, coffee, and water. Once you order your baked good and gather your sprinkles, you’ll sit at a table with a cupcake-shaped placemat and begin to frost your goodie.

Now it’s time for the fun part. I found that each tiny container of sprinkles was more than enough to cover the entire cupcake. I added the other sprinkles just for fun, but most fell onto the plate because there wasn’t anything left to stick to! The chocolate cupcake was good and moist, and the cream cheese frosting was delicious.

If you’d rather skip the art experience and get straight to the goods, you can. Cupcakes are $1 for small, $2 for large; brownies are $2.25; cake is $5; and cookies are under $1.

On my second visit to Sprinkles, I opted to try a cupcake without all the jazz. The shop was sporting a new display case, and inside were lemon-filled cupcakes that looked too good to pass up.

Though the cake looks a bit like cornbread, it definitely doesn’t taste like it. The cupcake was a tiny bit crumbly, yet still plenty moist and flavorful. The filling was pure heaven, gooey and sweet—but not overly sugary. It was similar to doughnut jelly filling, rather than the lighter lemon curd found in other lemon-filled cupcakes.

Sprinkles also hosts live music events and rents its space for any special occasion you can think of, from birthday parties to Pampered Chef parties to cookie swaps. There’s plenty of seating, from tables and chairs to couches surrounding a television. A local photographer’s art hangs on the walls, and there is interesting cupcake art near the entrance, including cupcakes-on-the-cob covered in yellow jelly beans and speared with corn cob holders (CakeSpy Note: this project was also done beautifully on Peabody's blog!)

Sprinkles Edible Art is an artistic shop with plenty going on. The people working there are always friendly and inquisitive, making sure your experience goes well. The cupcakes are tasty and the topping choices are abundant. Kid or adult, it’s a fun place to visit!

Sprinkles Edible Art, 316 Capitol Way N., Olympia WA, (360) 350-0712; online at sprinklesedibleart.com.

For more of Roxanne Cooke's work, check out her website here.

Do you want to be a Cake Gumshoe too? Feel free to submit bakery reviews or great baked good related finds (with pictures, please) to jessieoleson@gmail.com.

CakeSpy Undercover: Amelie's French Bakery, Charlotte, NC

By Cake Gumshoe Shannon Connell

So what’s better than a super-cute French bakery with a variety of delicious home-cooked goodies? One that’s serving up treats around the clock.

Stepping into Amelie’s French Bakery and Café was a magical experience. I had high hopes for the bakery, which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and I was enchanted at first glance by the chic, bohemian environment.

True to its name, once you walk through the door, you may feel as though you’ve stumbled into a bit of Paris mixed in with eclectic, shabby chic décor. Funky lampshades, one-of-a-kind chandeliers and toile adorn the cozy café along with Parisian monikers such as wall-hangings of Marie Antoinette, the Mona Lisa and black-and-white pictures of well-known and loved monuments of the City of Lights.

The fabulously French ambiance aside, Amelie’s offers a variety of baked sweet tooth cures in addition to an array of tartines, soups and baguette sandwiches. While the Ham and Gruyere Tartine that I sampled was quite good, the pastries and desserts are the real draw.

The Chocolate Mousse Cup was the consensual and uncontested favorite among Amelie’s employees and me. Creamy, rich chocolate mousse was nestled in a delicate chocolate cup and topped with a luscious and tart chocolate-covered strawberry. To top it all off, the strawberry was situated in a pillow of thick and creamy chocolate frosting. A symphony of tastes in harmony, the Chocolate Mousse Cup was a decadent treat sure to cure any chocoholic.

Another delightful Amelie’s dessert that I sampled was the Salted Caramel Brownie, a moist, chewy fudge-like concoction topped with a salty-sweet layer of soft caramel. The only thing that would make this treat even tastier would be if it was served a la mode.

While the chocolate desserts were my favorite, the Blackberry Lemon Torte is not to be underestimated. The torte had an almond and sugar crust topped with alternating layers of lemon and blackberry custard-like soaked sponge cake, combining sweet and tart flavors with a slight almond crunch.

Other Charlotte favorites of this maven haven include croissants, which are made six times on Saturdays to ensure freshness, and petit fours including the signature, award-winning peanut butter, chocolate ganache and feuilletine petit four. I have yet to experience the simple joys of these popular offerings, but I’ll have the opportunity to do so as I know I’ll return to this sweet spot again and again to enjoy the variety of baked treats offered at all hours of day!

Amelie’s French Bakery & Cafe, 2424 N. Davidson St., Charlotte (704) 376-1718; online at ameliesfrenchbakery.com.

For more of Shannon Connell’s work, check out her website here.

CakeSpy Undercover: A Cake Gumshoe's Thoughts on Indulge Cupcakes in Puyallup, WA

CakeSpy Note: This is a guest blog post from Cake Gumshoe Roxanne Cooke. Check out her website here!

Live life one cupcake at a time.
Keep calm and have a cupcake.
Are you checking out my cupcake?

Inside Indulge Cupcakes in Puyallup, you’ll find a variety of cupcake sayings, as well as a variety of cupcake flavors. Indulging here is simple.

The bakers at Indulge have the classics covered: vanilla with chocolate or vanilla buttercream, chocolate with vanilla or chocolate buttercream, and red velvet with vanilla buttercream.

Indulge also offers chocolate chip mint, lemon with lemon cream cheese frosting, cinnamon swirl, caramel macchiato, and orange dreamsicle. The lemon and orange dreamsicle cupcakes have freshly squeezed juice in their batters.

The shop sells a few specialty cupcakes, including carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, coconut with coconut buttercream, cherry chip, and strawberry shortcake.
Regular cupcakes cost $2.80 and specialty cupcakes are $3.75. The rest of the menu is devoted to drinks: espresso, tea, and smoothies. There’s a shelf full of cupcake-themed items, including cards and cupcake-shaped ceramic containers. Indulge also rents its space for events, such as baby showers.

On two separate occasions in June, I visited the downtown Puyallup shop with a friend. On our first visit, it was near closing time, and we ordered the chocolate chip mint and red velvet. Both were a bit dry, but we chalked this up to the late hour. The frosting, while beautifully done, was a bit sugary for our taste buds.

Before leaving, I bought a cherry chip cupcake to go and kept it in my fridge for a few days before tasting it. The cupcake was yellow on the outside and pink on the inside. It was moist and sweet, but not overpowering.

On our second visit, we arrived early in the day and tried the caramel macchiato and carrot cake cupcakes. The caramel macchiato (pictured directly above), featuring a coffee bean on top and caramel syrup swirled over the frosting, had a delicious coffee flavor, but the frosting was still on the too-sweet side. The carrot cake (pictured below), now my favorite at Indulge, was just about perfect. The ratio of cake to frosting was more manageable, the frosting felt smoother and tasted less sugary, and the cake was rich, moist, and flavorful. Plus, it’s just cute!

I’ll definitely be going back to Indulge Cupcakes to try their other cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and to see what other specials they come up with. The people running the shop are always friendly, there’s interesting art on the walls, and their beautiful cupcake creations are fun to try.

Indulge Cupcakes, 207 N. Meridian, Puyallup, 253-904-8234; online at indulgecupcakes.com. For more of Roxanne Cooke's work, check out her website here.

Do you want to be a Cake Gumshoe too? Feel free to submit bakery reviews or great baked good related finds (with pictures, please) to jessieoleson@gmail.com.

Waffle House: Delicious French Waffles at Scandinavian Bakery, Seattle

Upon walking into the Scandinavian Bakery in Ballard, Seattle, you'll notice a few things.

Certainly you'll notice how it looks--sweetly retro--but not in a contrived way, more in a "it's been this way since the day it opened, years ago" sort of way.

And you'll probably notice how it smells: of sugar, yeast, warm bread and various other wonderful things.

But once you've gotten beyond these surface charms, you may notice a small anomaly in their bakery case: the French Waffle. On the one hand, this seems strange--what business do French Waffles have with the cardamom buns and marzipan cakes? But once you taste them, all is forgiven. Crispy with brown sugar and spices on the outside, they're ever-so-slightly soft on the inside, and filled with a sweet dab of frosting that perfectly offsets the texture of the cookies.

It seems that these filled waferlike sandwich cookies truly are a sort of lovely mixture of cultures: where they vaguely resemble these French Waffle cookies, the sugar-and-spice coating ultimately does have a Nordic feel. 

So though they may waffle between cultural identities, but regardless of their origins, these little waffles are definitely delicious.

Do you know more about these sweet treats and their origins? If so, please comment!

French Waffles can be found (call first for availability) at Scandinavian Bakery, 8537 15th Ave. NW, Seattle (206)784-6616. 

CakeSpy Undercover: A Sampling of Sweets from Budapest

A few months ago, CakeSpy buddy (and very talented textiles designer) Diane Kappa made a big move: from Seattle to Budapest. Now that's she's had some time to settle and get to know her surroundings, it's time to dig into the bakery scene in Hungary. What has she been enjoying? Here are some of her favorite sweet treats so far:

The first thing I think of is called a csoko csiga (chocolate snail) It is not really a snail. It is in the shape of a snail and is absolutely delicious! And the funny thing is you can buy them in the subway station. They are about $1 and taste so delightful! Not too sweet but heavy on the cocoa taste.

And you can not forget Retes! It is so tasty!!! You can buy them savory or sweet. Sour cherry, turo (like cottage cheese but drier), apple are my favorite. You can also buy them with cabbage. I attached a photo of an apple retes (top picture)! The photo was taken at a “cukrászda” (sweet shop) called “Lukas” Here are some photos from Lukas:

All I can say is, like whoa. Wouldn't you love to be in Budapest right now?

Want more? You can stay updated on Diane's sweet adventures via her blog; while you're spending time on the internet (you junkie!), why not also check out her shop and portfolio?

Rhubarb Nirvana: The Rhubarb Strawberry Bar by Parisian Star Desserts

Rhubarb is a magically versatile vegetables (yes, it's a vegetable). It can be used in a variety of dishes both sweet and savory, and some even claim to like it all on its own (liars).

But really, everyone knows that rhubarb is truly at its best when used as an ingredient in sweet desserts. And recently we discovered a really, really good one: the rhubarb-strawberry bar made by Parisian Star Desserts.

Parisian Star is a Seattle-based wholesale dessert company whose desserts live up to their name: fancy, Frenchy desserts that seem ideal for post-dinner party. They are sold at various venues around town, but they have an especially nice showing at PCC's Fremont bakery case, which is where the bar in question caught Mr. CakeSpy's eye.

Now, there are plenty of awesome rhubarb crumb cakes, bars and pies out there. And with its cookielike base and crumb topping, this one didn't look too different from other varieties we'd tried. But this one has a little something special--it sets itself apart with a thick layer of custard, which perfectly mellows out the tart fruit in addition to adding a delightfully rich flavor dimension and density to the bar. As an added bonus, the custardy filling provided a perfect texture contrast to the slightly crunchy topping and firm bottom layer. 

But watch out--though it may look like a bar cookie, all the awesome in the middle does have a tendency to ooze, so this one definitely requires a fork and knife.

Parisian Star Desserts Rhubarb Strawberry Bar, available at PCC in Fremont; for more information on their desserts and other places to buy, visit parisianstardesserts.com.

Beyond the Lunchbox: When Peanut Butter and Jelly Meet Bar Cookie

No doubt about it, peanut butter and jelly have enjoyed an enduring love affair that is basically the stuff of culinary history. But it's come time for them to abandon the bread and become awesomer than they could ever be as mere elements of a sandwich: it's time that we all pause to greet the peanut butter and jelly bar.

This baby was discovered at Ciao For Now's East Village, NYC location. Ciao for Now is a sweet little bakery specializing in organic treats (many of which are also vegan!). Though their menu does vary day by day, this peanut butter and jelly cookie bar instantly captured my attention on a recent visit. Served in thick, dense wedges, this bar is weighty--but oh so rewarding. It all starts with a thick cookie-like crust on top of which is sandwiched a thick layer of peanut butter and a sliver of jelly, which is then all topped with an oaty-nutty-crumbly topping. It's sort of like a mazurka bar, but with peanut butter.

And in my humble opinion? This bar is perfect. The peanut butter adds a decadent richness to the bar, but the jelly adds a slight tart contrast which brings together the savory peanut butter and sweet crumb topping. In fact, the only problem may be the fact that I didn't buy two.

So, in closing? When peanut butter and jelly meet bar cookie, awesomeness and deliciousness ensue. 

Ciao For Now (East Village), 523 E. 12th Street, NYC (212) 677-2616; online at ciaofornow.net.

Get Sconed: Sweet Treats at The Scone Pony, Spring Lake NJ

The Stone Pony is a legendary rock club in New Jersey, largely put on the map as one of the venues where Bruce Springsteen got his start. But why go into detail about that on a baked-good website? Well, it lets you in on the joke when we talk about one of our favorite new bakeries, The Scone Pony in Spring Lake, NJ.

Now, we were already halfway in love with this bakery based on the pun-tastic name alone. But happily, as good as the shop's name is, the baked goods are even better. For reals.

As soon as you walk in, the warmth of the space and staff hits you instantly. The space is small but cozy, with various little gift items and a limited amount of seating up front leading up to a generously filled bakery case which opens up right into the kitchen so you can see the bakers at work. Owner Debra grew up around baked goods--her parents owned a bakery in North Jersey when she was growing up--and her passion and enthusiasm are contagious. She and her family made the transition from home baking to commercial baking starting with scones (theirs are half biscuit, half cake, and very delicious), which began to take on a cult following at holiday get-togethers; they began to build a home business around it, and eventually decided to graduate to a retail space. Though the scones are still a big part of business, they're certainly not the whole picture: the bakery has a dizzying array of treats. Naturally, we tried a variety:

Some deliciously flaky sfogliatelle;

An insanely decadent, fudgy chocolate brownie;

Cupcakes, including a delicate coconut cupcake which had delicately coconut-infused cake as well as frosting, and a surprisingly subtle, not too-sweet German chocolate;

A whoopie pie filled with tantalizing sweet creamy filling;

An almost too-decadent (note: almost) peanut butter pie topped with luxurious chocolate ganache;

A simple but perfect peanut butter cookie sandwich filled with a sweet peanut butter cream (kind of a fancy Nutter Butter);

And of course, the scones--in vanilla bean and mixed berry.

Honestly, everything we tried was very impressive--homey, but in a...shall we say, better than we could make at home sort of way. The Scone Pony has a great name and even better baked goods--if you happen to find yourself by the NJ shore, they're an absolute must-try.

The Scone Pony, 305 Washington Ave. (just off of Main Street), Spring Lake, NJ, (732)280-8887; online at thesconepony.com.