I absolutely love baked products. I will try everything when it comes to tasting baked goods. I don't know how this fascination began, but I enjoy browsing bakery windows and smelling the aromas of bread, cakes and cookies.
For the most part, Alameda has few bakeries considering the population of the city. I believe a good number of cafes around town buy from major bakeries around the bay area: Sugar Bowl, Semifreddi's, Grace, Acme and Parisian. And of course, a large portion of baked goods are from Starbuck's and Peet's Coffee House.
Jay's Coffee Shop makes a good brownie. Their brownies have rich, intense chocolate flavors that I am looking for. Their cookies and pastries are good, but not as satisfying as the brownie. The atmosphere is a wonderful space with cute decorations.
Boniere Bakery has been around for quite a long time. Their major products are bread, butter cookies and fruit tarts. I have to say their bread loaves are not appealing and I usually pass over them. The butter cookies are tasty, but lack the impact of an exciting cookie. The fruit tarts are good. The fruit is fresh and the pastry is flaky. It is a good, simple dessert without the pizazz. Overall, the bakery is good for simple items, but if you are looking for more exciting baked products, than this isn't the place for you.
Feel Good Bakery makes a decent baguette, but the loaf dries out quickly after one day. The cookies look delicious, but once you taste them, it falls short compared to their appearance. The chocolate chip cookie is their best cookie product. Their brownie is a bit sweet and did not have the strong chocolate flavor that I am always searching for. Their chocolate tart is good and intense in flavor and has the most flavor of all their items. Their claim to fame is making the Obama sourdough bread.
Blue Dot Cafe creates better baked products compared to their hot breakfast foods. The scones look amazing and it's a great winning product for the bakery. The cookies and lemon squares are also strong contenders. It is wonderful to have such delicious options to choose from. One does not get as many awesome choices to select from within the same bakery in Alameda. Hallelujah!
Muffins, Muffins, Cookies & Buns bakes their own croissants, muffins, cookies and buns. I've visited this cafe a few times and my experiences just kept on getting worse the more times I went. The breakfast croissant sandwich which consisted of a fresh croissant with scrambled eggs and bacon strips in the middle, was terrible. It's not difficult to make scramble eggs, but they got it wrong, the cook overcooked them. Plus, grease oozed out of the sandwich. This was not a pleasurable experience because I had to use a napkin to wipe away the fat down my arm. Another time, I came for the fresh baked muffins. The muffins I chose were unfortunately over baked and they were hard and dried out. The cookies were decent in flavor and texture, but they were not a strong enough incentive for me to return. I hope the business owner understands how important it is to taste test food, especially in this weak economy. My suggestion for people is to go somewhere else for baked products.
2 comments:
Muffins, Muffins, Cookies and More is no longer in operation. The new business is called Shay's Cafe.
Went to Blue Dot Cafe for breakfast with husband. He got two poached eggs, toast, bacon and two blueberries, one blackberry and one little bitesize square of pineapple. He was disappointed with his meal because the poached eggs were overcooked, the toast was cold and hard and the amount of fruit was almost non-existant. I ordered a blueberry muffin and a hot chocolate. The size of the muffin was a large portion. The muffin came to my table on a plate, without any butter or honey. I looked around for butter and honey and did not find any. I later asked for jam or marmalade, but the flavor did not go with the muffin. So I ended up eating the muffin by itself. The first couple of bites, I thought the muffin had very little taste, so I had my husband have a bite since my allergies could have tampered with my tastebuds. He said that nothing was wrong with my palate and that he agreed that the muffin was bland. I could see the blueberries in the muffin, but the overall taste of the muffin was dull. I would not recommend buying a blueberry muffin. My husband also commented that he would not order poached eggs at Blue Dot either.
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