New York: Magnolia Bakery

If you are a tourist, travelling in New York, I'm quite positive that someone would definitely tell you to visit "Magnolia Bakery" for their cupcakes and banana pudding. I think Magnolia was also on the list that Tee gave me but I was kinda ignore it since I told you I'm into cupcake much.

Anyhow, it's like a fate - I did make a stop at Magnolia two times during this trip! First was when I had dinner at Grand Central Station and I was thinking I should get some food as my breakfast. Then I turned around and found Magnolia there! Since it was already 6pm, all the good stuff have been sold out. I decided to try their mini cheesecake since it looked too good to be true. 

So I had Key Lime Cheesecake as my breakfast the next day. Oh boy, it was actually good! I was thinking it may not be that awesome since I had tweets conversation with J whom I would meet later in NY and she told me cheesecake isn't Magnolia's specialties. Anyway, the taste was very lovely; not too sweet and with a taste of lime. I think the "cheese" bit of this cheesecake is the non-bake one. Truth to be told, I didn't finish this but I had all the biscuit bit at the bottom. It was yummy!

The day later, I met up with J and after dinner, we strolled down from upper West side to Rockefeller Center to get dessert from Magnolia Bakery there. Unfortunately, it was already 8pm and all the stuffs J want have been sold out - apart from banana pudding. So she got us a small tub of banana pudding and we headed off to find places to sit down and eat that.

Honest speaking, again, I'm not a fan of pudding. But if you asked me how was it, I would say it was good. When you think of dessert & banana, you tend to think about the overpower of taste and smell of banana in that. Clearly, Magnolia's banana pudding is far away from it. There are slices of bananas in the tube along with some sponge cake (if I wasn't wrong) but there weren't too much. It was quite pleasant.

Magnolia Bakery is kinda like tourist spot but I wouldn't say you should ignore it. It is definitely worth a visit for all sweet tooth people.

Magnolia Bakery

1240 6th Avenue,

New York, NY 10020
Website: http://www.magnoliabakery.com/home.php



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New York: Lady M Confections

American style cake isn't really my kinda of thing (such as cupcakes) 'coz I found them a bit too heavy for my liking. I'd always prefer Japanese style bakery since it's much more lighter and not too sweet. So when I came across "Lady M Confections" which people said it's a Japanese style bakery shop. I decided that this place cannot be missed while I was in NY!

Me and M went to Lady M after strolling in Central Park to digest all our lunch (which happened to be Totto ramen which I have reviewed here). We were lucky that the place wasn't busy at all when we were there so we had our table and ordered something for our sweet teeth.

Definitely, their Mille Crêpes was on our agenda. We also ordered Strawberry Mille Feuille along with tea for our afternoon break. To say their Mille Crêpes was not sweet isn't exaggerating at all. You get the hint of sweetness in your bite and it was very pleasant. It's very light also. I can see why people loving this so much.

Anyhow, to me, the real winner from Lady M is their Strawberry Mille Feuille. That must have been the best Strawberry Mille Feuille I have ever tasted in my entire life! The cream was sweet but with the tangy taste of strawberry, it made this perfect. To be honest, just the thought of this already makes me craving it!


This place is the "highly recommended" place for New York. If you are heading that direction, do stop by at Lady M Confections for their cakes & stuffs. So good!


Lady M Cake Boutique
41 East 78th Street
New York, NY 10075
Website: http://www.ladym.com/





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Cooking: Cacao Sablé

Me and bakery is like parallel road.I have tried making bakery before, whether from scratch or from box, and it wasn't major success. I guess I'm kinda person who aren't bothered about measuring everything so bakery is such a hassle coz everything has to be in the right amount. So it's about savoury cooking for me, my oven is for roasting beef or baking pasta. Anyhow, I was quite inspired by Ai-san's matcha sablé (see her post here) as it looks so easy. So after having dinner, I searched around my kitchen cabinet and found all the ingredients and cacao powder so I decided to make Cacao Sablé instead of Matcha ones.

Ingredients:

150g flour
50g sugar
120g unsalted butter
1 egg yolk
a pinch of salt
7g cacao powder

Basically, you just mix everything until the dough stick together.

Then you roll it in a long roll, put it into the fridge or freezer til the dough really holds up. Then cut it into piece. The thickness depends on your liking. I'm not pro enough to do the pretty thin and round kind of sablé.

Put it into a preheated oven at 180 celcius for 15-20 minutes and voilà, your sablé!

I followed Ai-san's ingredient and just made slight change in the amount of butter coz after mixing, I found that my dough wouldn't mix together so I added more butter. And since I am amateur and the sable was in dark colour, I sorta burned half of the first tray as I didn't know how to tell if they are already cooked or not. I left it in the oven for just a minute or two too long. Anyhow, I was more careful with second tray and it came out pretty good. Ai-san's recipe isn't too sweet at all so if you don't like too sweet stuff, this will be good for you (I may have to add a little more sugar if I intend to make this and distribute to friends).

It's amazingly easy to make so I would recommend to all bakery newbie to try. I'm think what should I bake next time!