My friend Anya told me about the new bakery on top of Queen Anne. In fact we met there for some coffee last week. I was super excited...a new neighborhood bakery? My kind of place.
Well, this place was okay at best. We had the Petit Four, Espresso Eclair, French Macaron. It looks lovely in pic but their baked goods were a bit too "homemade". When I say that, I mean there was not enough care and had too heavy handed for the baked goods. Nothing wrong with homemade that but if it's gonna cost you 11.00 for 4 little baked goods...well, they better be darn good. Also the place is suppose to be a "French" bakery, but the goods like and tasted like Safeway's bakery dept. You know the birthday cake you get from the grocery store and it's so sweet because they use commercial grade ingredients.
Anya and I both agreed, everything was too super sweet. Even their macaron just tasted like sugar. The crust was a bit chewy and not crisp of the good macarons I've had. The eclair should have espresso filling and not just in the fondant topping if it's espresso. They filled it with just the vanilla cream. They had 3 flavors like Le Panier, but looks like they make one vanilla filing and just change the top fondant. Not good. Need to make the extra effort. The petit four cake was the size of 2x4. We cut into to four pieces to eat it but because of the sweetness, we couldn't even finish. The little cakes should be the size to fit in your mouth in one bit or so not like a reg piece of cake.
When baked goods are too sweet, it means they didn't balance it with enough salt or other flavorings. They prob used unsalted butter like most bakers but you have to add salt to balance the flavors. A good example is when you eat salted caramels from Frans. Caramels are mostly sugar and some corn syrup but the salted caramels never taste too sweet. This is because the flavor is counter balanced with salt. I usually want to eat the whole box of Fran's caramels so go figure.
Note to bakers, add salt!
