Comfort me with cupcakes

I’ve had a rough two weeks — too many deadlines, too little sleep — and I’m not proposing that it’s a good idea to use dessert to lift your mood (I am sure going for a run would’ve cleared my head and refreshed me just as well and certainly in a much healthier way) but two Fridays in a row, I’ve found myself at Sweet Bliss Baking Company in Leslieville picking up a cupcake as a special treat.

And let me tell you: the cupcake’s super light cake topped with the freshest icing (in just the right frosting/cupcake proportions) did its job fantastically. Maybe it was just the sugar high, but I definitely felt ready to tackle everyday life again after devouring it.

Husband-and-wife team Chris and Christina opened Sweet Bliss four years ago. The top sellers are the cupcakes — chocolate and red velvet in particular — but they also sell the city’s best cinnamon buns (according to Toronto Life), brownies, butter tarts and other treats. “Regulars like to stick to their favourites,” says Chris, noting that they’ll walk out if the brownie or tart they’d come in for are sold out.

I sure wish other customers would branch out a little as two of the best cupcakes I have ever had were from limited-edition batches I happened upon at Sweet Bliss. Last week was the whoopie pie cupcake: a chocolate cupcake with marshmallow cream frosting. As a rule I don’t even like chocolate baked goods (people always seem shocked by this — a woman who doesn’t love chocolate cake?!)  but I could tell just by looking at this cupcake that it was something special. Maybe it was the way the cupcake glistened from being so moist. And I wasn’t even sure I’d like the frosting but let me tell you this, the flavour of it almost makes me want to go pick up a jar of Marshmallow Fluff (which I always admire on the grocery store shelf for its retro design, but shudder on inside at the thought of what I assume to be very unhealthy and unnatural chemicals and preservatives in the jar).

The other damn good cupcake flavour was an apple cupcake with cream cheese frosting I had a few years ago. Ever since that day, every time I go into Sweet Bliss I am hopeful Chris has made a batch of them again, but alas, he has to stick to what the majority of customers will buy (you know, having to stay in business and all). This apple cupcake is something me and a girlfriend still wistfully talk about, its awesomeness lingering in our tastebud memories. It was that good.

I’ll try to make it through the upcoming week without a cupcake pick-me-up, but I’ll just take it one day at a time (although right now a cupcake sure would help dealing with losing an hour to daylight savings time a little easier…).

Sweet Bliss Baking Company, 1304 Queen St. East. Open Fridays and Saturdays, 9-6; Sundays 10-4.

7 Comments March 15, 2010

Caffeine fix

A new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine revealed that drinking coffee or tea is linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. The more you drink, the more your risk is lowered: Drinking 3 to 4 cups per day was linked to a 25 percent lower risk than drinking none or up to two cups per day.

This was good news to me because I love coffee. In fact, most weekend afternoons you are very likely to find me at a coffee shop in Leslieville (my hood, which lucky for me has turned into coffee shop heaven — with six-plus coffee shops all within walking distance).  

And I was thrilled to hear about this new research just as I was scheduled to learn even more about my favourite brew at a coffee cupping session at one of  my fave coffee shops, Te Aro.

Coffee cupping is a coffee tasting technique used to evaluate a coffee’s aroma and its flavor profile. The technique is also used to determine if a batch of coffee beans is tainted and to create coffee blends.

At Te Aro, Jessie and Andy (the cute couple who own the place) lead our group through the cupping, where we sniffed three different grounds, then added hot water and deeply inhaled each cup’s aroma. I love testing my nose and palette and was pleasantly surprised to find out I could actually make out the scent of blueberries in one cup and a nutty earthiness in another (after sniffing its aroma, the next step is tasting the coffee by taking loud, loud slurps of it — I don’t blame the dude who was working on his laptop in the seat next to mine for moving to another table…).

Broaden your own coffee knowledge by signing up for a free coffee cupping yourself — register in Te Aro and Jessie will email you about upcoming dates and times.

5 Comments December 21, 2009