bakeries

If you live in the Emerald City area, you’ve undoubtedly heard of The Essential Baking Company. Their loaves are in stores seemingly everywhere.

But did you know that the Baking Company is actually a company? Like with a storefront and a real live bakery that you can eat in?

I did. And I had been there before. But my pal Jen had not, so when we embarked on our now infamous mini-food tour of Seattle, we needed to stop here.

Their Wallingford shop is completely cute—brick, craftstman-style woodwork, wrought iron here and there. Very Seattle.

Inside, as my friend so aptly put it, “it looks like a bakery should look.” It’s bright but rustic, and smells completely and totally and insanely good.

So. The breads. You can buy a loaf in nearly any local Seattle grocery store. Yes, they’re good. But the bread is not what we came for.

We unfortunately didn’t come either for the three-cheese pizza tucked neatly into little individual paper sacks…

…or the single-serving quiches. Which looked and smelled divine and were cute to boot.

No, my friends, we came for goods of the sugar variety. And variety is what we had to choose from. There was an array of assorted pie/tart/cake concoctions….

…that I wanted to shove in my mouth without breathing. Fortunately, a thick layer of glass prevented me from doing so.

They weren’t so careful with the cookies, however. They left them right out in the open, dangerously close to RDG’s little paws. But which one to choose?

This one would do nicely: a double chocolate cookie. The gal behind the counter informed me that they tasted like a brownie. And before she could finish her sentence I screamed out something resembling “I’ll taaaaakeee one now please thanks WOO HOO I got a cookie!”

I reached out my hand to receive it but she graciously put it on a plate for me. All my manners go out the window when baked goods are involved.

So how was it? Dense, a bit on the chewy side, but moist and very rich. It certainly crumbled like a brownie. And tasted like one. And fit nicely into one corner of my belly, just like all good brownies should.

My pal Jen was taken aback by this cuter-than-all-get-out mini lemon meringue pie.

She needed it. And at Essential Baking company, they do this miraculous thing: you give them money and they give you sugary treats. It’s like a reward system for knowing how to locate your wallet.

She completely swooned over this little guy. I may have snuck a taste or two. And lemme tell ya, this was one heck of a tart. The crust was crisp but not hard, the lemon curd tasted fresh and light, and the meringue was as velvety and satisfying as whipped cream. De-flippin-licious.

Thanks, EBC, for the mid-afternoon pick-me-up. You are essentially delicious. You may now send me a variety pack of delicious treats on a weekly basis. Thanks bunches:)

Sincerely,

-RDG

I had a week. It was wonderful. It was cold. It was, at times, miserable. It was, most of the time, fantastic. And delicious.

The fam and I are back from a visit, and a ski trip, with Husband’s folks in Colorado. High, dry, cold Colorado.

Here’s a few things I learned about living at 10,000 feet:

1) You always feel dehydrated, even after downing 3 gallons of water in one day. Yup. I counted.

2) It’s dry. Your nose will bleed. Your skin will chap. You feel like you can never breathe quite right. You will look like you have pneumonia when you don’t.

3) It’s freakin cold. Our first day on the mountain the wind chill was -12. Husband wore one of those embarrasing but effective neoprene face masks. I may have laughed at him a little. And then my throat froze so I stopped.

4) It makes for some fantastic damn skiing.

and, finally:

5) It’s dang hard to bake anything correctly. Cupcakes collapse into hockey pucks. Cookies melt right into the baking pan. And a chocolate cake will turn out more like a pan of brownies.

That last part being said, I was curious: how great could bakeries be at this altitude? Even if you make all of the flour, butter, and baking time adjustments, would the baked goods two miles high measure up to those down at sea level?

Lucy, my dear ma-in-law and I bundled up and set out on a quest.

Our first stop?

Clint’s. Our concierge pal Nate tipped us off that they had some rockin carrot cake. And if you’ve ever met me you know that I could eat my weight in carrot cake any dang day of the week.

It’s a cute two-level sort o deal, with sweets and coffee upstairs and the more savory junk downstairs. I think all restaurants should be divided this way. I would always know exactly where to sit.

I was a bit taken aback at the pastry case—everything was wrapped in cellophane. I don’t know about you, but to me saran wrapped baked goods are a bit drive-thru coffee stand.

It then dawned on me that this was a result of the dry atmosphere in this neck o the woods. Those loverly croissants would dry out quicker than a wino in jail if not for that tacky yet effective cellophane.

But we weren’t here for the pastries, my friends. We were here for the goods.

And this big ol’ slab-o-cake did not dissapoint. It was perfectly moist, despite all of the obstacles to keep it that way. The cream cheese frosting walked the fine line between too sweet and too cream-cheesey with ease.

The side was coated with chopped walnuts, which I adore. It gives it such good crunch and texture, plus cuts the sweetness of the frosting nicely.

The frosting-to-cake ratio was perfect. Nothing bugs me more than too little frosting over too much cake.

Nate, thank you for bringing this carrot cake into my life. Clint’s, kudos for a job well done.

With our bellies full of sweet, nutritious (a main ingredient is carrot, after all) cake, we put our jackets back on and ventured to our next destination.

Unfortunately, our next stop was guarded by two vicious, mangy, out-for-blood attack dogs.

We managed to sneak by unscathed.

And here we are: Mary’s Mountain Cookies. It’s a cute little shop, and by little I mean about 6 feet by 6 feet. They make cookies and nothing else. I always admire that in a bakery–stick with what you’re good at. Diversity is overrated.

They had the usual suspects: snickerdoodle, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter.

But they also had these intriguing sandwich numbers stacked with buttercream frosting…

…and these naughty dipped cookies that weighted a quarter pound each. Holy fat cookie, Batman.

In the end, we took home three varieties: cranberry white chocolate chip, double fudge white chip, and a “White Out”–two snickerdoodles hugging a hefty dollop of vanilla buttercream.

Being that our palates were still sugared-out from carrot cake, we decided to wait for the troops to come back from skiing before sampling these beauties.

Meanwhile, we moved on. Word on the street was that there was a cupcake joint in town that was not to be missed. And I’m always game for a new cupcake joint. But, sadly, it was not our day.

Our path was blocked by a man-eating, frosting-throwing, Jaba the Hut-sized Snow Cupcake!

It took all of our efforts to dodge his attempts to devour us in his huge, snow-frosting-blob of a mouth.

Luckily, Lucy knew what to do.

She flashed him her biggest, buck-toothed smile and he melted away, wrapper and all. We hopped the puddle…

…and arrived here: Breckenridge’s own Rocky Mountain Cupcakes.

It’s a sizeable shop with a rustic, ski-lodge sorta feel.

They had quite a few varieties to choose from–all beautiful, perfectly frosted, and topped with something interesting.

Ready for some cupcake porn? Here we go…

Chocolate coconut…

…strawberry snowflake (have you ever seen a cuter cupcake?)…

…key lime…

…chocolate chai…

…butterscotch…

…and the cutest dang red velvet I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Which ones to pick? We debated a while.

In the end, we settled on strawberry (because it was cute, plus I wanted to know if it actually tasted as pink as it looked), chocolate chai (for my dear ma-in-law, who loves her some chai), key lime (pretty, and an intriguing cupcake flavor), and “Double Diamond” (for husband–double chocolate).

We meandered home, past the Jaba the Cupcake puddle and the vicious blood-sucking attack dogs. We set the bakery boxes on the counter, warmed our toes, and then twiddled our thumbs and waited for the gang to get home so we could sample our loot.

Lu and I drifted off into a warm mid-afternoon nap, dreaming of skiing cookies and snowboarding cupcakes. When we awoke, much to our dismay, one of the cookies was missing. Gone. Finito. Never to be seen or heard from again.

It was, sadly, the double chocolate white chip. The one I had picked out for myself. The one I had been looking forward to all afternoon.

Scanning the fam, they all had mysterious chocolate crumbs at the corners of their mouths. Little devils.

Luckily, the other two cookies more than made up for it. The cranberry white chocolate chip was amazing–buttery and soft, crunchy at the edges, with hints of cinnamon and vanilla.

The “White Out” was absolutely insane: two of the best snickerdoodles I have ever had sandwiched with a vanilla buttercream, emphasis on the cream. It was delicious. It was divine. It weighted about two pounds.

We had no trouble finishing either cookie and moving on to the cupcakes.

The chocolate chai was the obvious winner. Moist, rich chocolate cake covered with a creamy chai-flavored frosting. Totally yummy.

The strawberry? Let’s just say it tasted very, very pink. I’ll leave it at that.

The key lime and the double chocolate were fairly yummy, although both left something to be desired in the cake department.

Overall? Decent cupcakes. Not spectacular, not terrible. Middle of the road. Except for the strawberry. That was far off the road in the ditch. But the others? Inventive, pretty and just fine.

When we go back to Breck next year, I will do two things:

1) Eat my weight in Clint’s carrot cake.

2) Sample every dang cookie Mary’s has to offer. They know how to make a seriously yummy cookie, even at 10,000 feet.

Well I’m off to recover from traveling with an 11-month old, hit the grocery because last night we had to eat bratwursts from 2007, and hopefully put a dent in the mountain of laundry we brought back from the mountain.

Thanks to the lovely bakeries of Breckenridge, CO for the delicious treats. I will not thank you, however, for my post-vacation waistline.

Happy monday!

-RDG