Old Post 10: Late night bakeries

At 5 pm this past Wednesday, a friend asked what bakery she should go to buy a birthday cake for the next day. Oh, the procrastination! To add to the issue, she also needed the bakery to be open "late".

Late in bakery time means anything past 5 pm;  5 pm is closing time as most bakeries are open by at least 7 am, if not 6 am. You drastically narrow your options when you need a "late" night bakery.  In fact, there were really only 3 options to give:

1. Whole Foods Market
2. The Pie Place
3. Giant Eagle Market District

Let's start with Giant Eagle. It's important to specify the Market District chain. Although they are not as easy to find, their bakery is leaps and bounds above the regular stores. The cakes look nicer and they have more variety. The big problem with a Giant Eagle cake is freshness. So many cakes from Giant Eagle are incredibly dry. The other big issue is that they tend to over-ice the cake. When the icing is incredibly sweet and overdone and the cake is dry, you end up with a terrible mouthfeel . This is the "last resort" recommendation, although for super-procrastinators, Market Districts are open very late and can save you in a real time crunch.

The other two choices really come down to what direction you are going in. If you are headed south, The Pie Place is a great choice. Located in Upper St. Clair, they are open Monday through Thursday until 8pm and Friday & Saturday until 9 pm. They always have carrot cake and cheesecake on hand and can be really flexible with orders- most being filled in 24 hours.

If you are in the city, Whole Foods Market is another excellent choice. Located in East Liberty on Centre Ave, Whole Foods is open until 10 pm every night and have a nice selection of cakes to choose from.

It's funny how you sometimes need your own advice. This past Friday night, it was a very close friend’s birthday extravaganza. Bound and determined to make a homemade cake, the baking began in the O'Brien sweatbox around 4 pm. At 7:30 pm, it had to be abandoned. In the extreme heat and humidity, the cake and icing wouldn't come together properly. The party was in the city, so it was off to Whole Foods to find a chocolate cake.

At 9:15 pm, they still had a decent selection and we ended up buying two cakes. One was a simple chocolate mousse cake. It was 3 layers of a devils food cake filled and iced with creamy chocolate mousse and topped with whipped cream. The other was a Norwegian Heaven Cake. This was a devils food cake filled with a vanilla Bavarian-style cream glazed with a dark chocolate ganache and topped with fresh berries.

The cakes were moist and flavorful, which is incredibly hard to achieve with chocolate cake of any kind when it must sit in a case all day, and the fillings were not overpowering. The fresh berries a top the Norwegian Heaven Cake were especially delightful and balanced the heavy chocolate cake and ganache.

Procrastinators, never fear. Whole Foods and the Pie Place have you covered for "late" night cakes.

Whole Foods Market Norwegian Heave Cake on the Sugar Love Scale:
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4 out of 5 ♥’s

Old Post 6: Vanilla Pastry Studio- cupcake heaven!

Have you ever heard of the Vanilla Pastry Studio?  If you haven't, it's probably because the noise of the other cupcake shops in town has filled your ears until there is no room left to hear of another.

Located on Centre Ave, next to Kelly's Bar and just past S. Highland Ave, Vanilla Pastry Studio is easy to find and centrally located near Shadyside, East Liberty, and Highland Park.  Aside from the adorable interior that's light and airy and fresh, the welcoming atmosphere that says, "Come, try our delicious treats!", and the quaint kitchen seen through double french doors, the cupcakes and pastries are out of this world.

It's nice that's it's not just a cupcake shop as well- they have a decent selection of cookies, brownies, and other delights such as the apricot mango "pop-tart".  If you have 5 extra minutes, order the pop-tart and sit in the window to gobble it up as quickly as possible.  It's almost too good to savor.

Although that pop-tart might steal the show, the cupcakes are your main event.  On Tuesday, they had a great variety of flavors from Vanilla Caramel to Chocolate Espresso to Champagne to Berry Limeade to Lemon.  The icing topping isn't overdone and unapproachable and they don't kill you with sprinkles.

Speaking of icing- Sugar Love has rated a lot of buttercream, but to date, this buttercream is the favorite.  It's not too light, not to dense, whipped to perfection and the flavor is intense.  They also seem to focus a lot of the flavoring in the icing, not the cake. So for instance, on the lemon cupcake, you get a vanilla cupcake with a lemon icing.  It's a delightful combination and different then other lemon cupcakes which tend to be a lemon cake with a lemon icing or a cream cheese icing.

The cupcake of the day though, went to berry limeade.  The cupcake is a limeade cake and the buttercream is a pink berry flavor.  The berry icing shoots straight to the back of your mouth and then is balanced by the limeade cupcake.

Cupcake lovers of Pittsburgh, and I know there are so very many out there, you have to take a trip to Vanilla Pastry Studio.  And try a pop-tart too!

Vanilla Pastry Studio's Berry Limeade Cupcake on the Sugar Love Scale

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5 ♥'s and a kiss for good measure (because it was that delightful)