Deuxnut vs. Deuxnut

Tags

apple, bavarian cream, cronut, HEB, Le Deuxnut, NaBloPoMo, pastry

I’ll admit it: when I first heard of cronuts, I was certain that they had to be the best thing ever. Fried, donut-shaped croissant dough named so cleverly? Gimme.

But then cronuts became annoying (though maybe not as much as the ramen burger) and I felt like I was over it. I didn’t even bother to seek out any of the knock-offs that started cropping up around Austin this summer.

About a week ago, I began hearing good things about HEB‘s Le Deuxnut. (That spelling would make more sense with an ‘a’ in it, right?) A little skeptical of a knock-off cronut from a grocery store, I knew I’d give it a try because, well, I go there for groceries anyway. Kristin of Mad Betty posted a picture of a Deuxnut this morning declaring it to be “the winner” (compared to another local fauxnut), which prompted me to go a little out of the way for a couple while on the way to the gym.

2013 Austin City Guide: East Side Restaurants

Tags

atxcityguide, Austin, East Austin, restaurants, reviews

While I don’t usually write review posts, this is my contribution to the 2013 AFBA City Guide. If you are heading to Austin this year or live here and want to find some new places to eat, please check it out!

A year and a half ago, I moved from San Antonio to the east side of Austin. I didn’t know much about this part of town, but it was a successful Craigslist match that led me here. Since then, I’ve grown to love the area. While the USDA labels parts of it as a food desert, there sure are a lot of good restaurants over here, minus the parking meters you find on the other side of the highway.

The (brick and mortar) restaurants in this guide are east of I-35, between Cesar Chavez and 51st Street. Most are located on 6th, 7th, 11th, and Manor, west of Airport.

Trailer Food Tuesdays

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Austin, food trucks, nablo, Trailer Food Tuesdays

Anyone who has ever been to Austin knows that there is a serious mobile food situation in this town. I couldn’t tell you how many food trucks or even food truck parks there are around here. This led to the creation of the Gypsy Picnic Trailer Food Festival a couple years ago, which I attended. There was supposed to be one this year, but I heard that there weren’t any weekends available (crazy Austin!), which is why Trailer Food Tuesdays was born. The main organizer of both events is Tiffany Harelik, author of the Trailer Food Diaries Cookbook.

Since July, TFT has been taking place on the last Tuesday of each month, from 5-10pm at the Long Center. Tonight was both the last TFT of 2012 and my first time going. A handful of other bloggers were there as well: Julie, Suzanna, Rachelle, Natanya, and Katie! We didn’t actually know Katie beforehand, but noticed that she was taking an awful lot of photos of her food to not be a blogger. We (Julie) asked if she had a blog, and she said she did. Takes one to know one!

Onto the trailers…

Holy Cow Ice Cream – Red Hook, NY

Tags

Holy Cow Ice Cream, ice cream shop, New York, Red Hook

One of the best things about spending a month in upstate New York comes in the form of a simple ice cream shop. In this case, that shop is called Holy Cow Ice Cream and it’s located at the end of a strip center in Red Hook, about 100 miles north of New York City.

The inside of the shop is very basic with a few freezer cases, a menu, and various ice cream machines, but no seating; that’s outside in the form of picnic tables. Offerings include hard ice cream, soft-serve, flavor burst (soft-serve with the gel flavor edges..), Razzles (think McFlurry or Blizzard), egg creams, floats, malts, milkshakes, and probably other things I’m forgetting.

black raspberry | mint chocolate chip | blueberry pie | coffee + fudge

Where to eat in Austin: Take it from the local food bloggers!

Tags

AFBA, atxfood, atxfoodguide, Austin, Austin Food Blogger Alliance, sxsw, sxswfood

It’s amazing how fit this city is because one thing is certain: Austinites are obsessed with food! With new restaurants and food trucks (oh, so many food trucks) popping up every which way, it can get very overwhelming, even for someone who lives here. Where do you start if you’ve never even been to Austin?

Not surprisingly, there is a large community of bloggers here who keep up with the food scene, and they have compiled a comprehensive guide to help you out! Looking for coffee and breakfast tacos? Need to find a vegan-friendly place in East Austin? In the mood for, I don’t know…Persian?! Well, your new friend is the 2012 Austin City Guide! If you’re indecisive and need some help narrowing down ideas, check out the survey results of the Austin Food Blogger Favorites.

Cappuccino (Patika Coffee), Crispy Green Beans (Contigo), Cauliflower Gratin (Contigo), Egg Salad Tartine (Blue Dahlia)

Macaron Café in NYC

Tags

bakery, French, macarons, NYC, reviews, travel

The weekend before last I headed down to the city from upstate NY to visit some grad school friends that I hadn’t seen in a few years, which was so great!  On Friday night after eating at a Greek place, we baked a batch of red velvet cupcakes and a loaf, then ate most of it while drinking wine and watching youtube videos.  Honey badger don’t care!

We went into Manhattan the next day where we walked around 5th Avenue (I finally went into the crazy Apple store), then meandered through Central Park.  At this point, I thought I’d try to look up the whereabouts of the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck via twitter, but it turned out that they had gone to Maine for a friend’s wedding.  Sad panda.

But then a lightbulb flashed, and I said I wanted to look for macarons!  Luckily I found out at that point that my friend Amanda was obsessed with them and had even had some at the famed Ladurée in Paris.  Jealous!

It turned out that we actually weren’t too far from a macaron-devoted bakery: Macaron Café!  Once there, we were greeted with the biggest selection of macarons I have seen yet.  This was actually only the second time I had really tried them at a bakery though, and there were only about five flavors the first time.  The shop was very small and cute with a little seating area in the back.  The menu also listed breakfast, salads, sandwiches, daily specials, and beverages, but we just bought macarons and left. 

Little Czech Bakery: Kolache Pit Stop in West, Texas

Tags

bakery, Czech, Czech Stop, kolaches, Little Czech Bakery, reviews, Texas, travel

Guess what!  I’m going to be fancy and do a block quote.  What’s the occasion?  Kolaches!!  (aka Czech bun-type things filled with yumminess)

There’s apparently a big Czech/kolache center in Texas; sounds like I need to do some traveling for science (or vicarious traveling…maybe I can find a Texan-baker willing to do some research…? >.>).
– Mary from n00bcakes on kolaches

Howdy!  I am happy to report that this Texan-baker (1/4 Czech/Bohemian to boot!) has finally done some field research for blog pal Mary.  The Czech/kolache center that I assume she was referring to happened to be on the way to New York, but umm, much closer to San Antonio than my final destination.  It’s in West, Texas and every time I say this, I feel the need to add a dramatic pause where the comma is so as not to sound like I’m referring to West Texas.  Totally not where this place is…it’s 75 miles south of Dallas and 15 miles north of Waco, which is the northeast part of Texas.

This gem of a place is known as Little Czech Bakery which is part of Czech Stop.  There are gas pumps in front of it making it also a gas station, which you can use as justification for stopping to Czech it out (hur hur).   I had to get gas, so this was convenient, but there were so many people that I had to wait 5 minutes.  No biggie.

Babycakes Downtown Disney

Tags

Babycakes, bakery, cupcakes, Downtown Disney, Florida, gluten-free, Orlando, vegan

I have one final food-related post from my trip to Florida a few weeks ago.  As you recall, my friends and I sampled butterbeer at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, then got our eat on raw and vegan-style at The Present Moment Cafe in St. Augustine.

Fast forward to our last day in Orlando. :(

Katie found out that Babycakes (yes, the vegan, gluten-free bakery in NYC and LA) has a location in Downtown Disney!  I didn’t even know what Downtown Disney was, but soon found out it was a place made up of tons of shops and restaurants.  We were having the hardest time finding Babycakes, so when I saw a lady toting a pink bakery box, I asked her where it was.  It turns out that it’s in this place called Fresh A-Peel which is basically a mini food court with healthier options.  We had walked past it a few times…go figure!

The Present Moment Cafe

Tags

Florida, gluten-free, organic, raw, restaurants, St. Augustine, vegan, vegetarian

As a follow-up to my previous post about things consumed whilst in the Sunshine State, I will now wax on about another place, this time having nothing to do with Harry Potter

On Wednesday of our trip, we drove up to St. Augustine, the oldest European-established city in America.  Two out of the four of us have celiac disease (myself not included), which made me realize just how tricky it is to find gluten-free meals while eating out.  After trying and failing to find a place for lunch and eating chips and popcorn in the meantime, I used my trusty iPhone to search for restaurants with gluten-free options for dinner.

Lo and behold, the first hit was for The Present Moment Cafe and it was almost entirely gluten-free!  We headed there around 5pm, but as we neared our destination, I noticed that it was also vegan…and RAW.  Rut-roh!  How could we all like it? Even I was nervous about the raw part as I’m not a big fan of raw veggies (vegetarian fail, I know). 

Butterbeer in Harry Potter Land!

Tags

butterbeer, Florida, Harry Potter, Orlando

So I’m back from Florida and have yet to cook/bake anything that isn’t eggs.  You all forgive me, right?  I had a fantastic time and did consume some good eats and drinks, so it sounds like it’s time for some recaps!

I know you’re supposed to save the best for last, but I can’t help posting about this first.  And actually, the main draw of Orlando for all of us was to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Universal Islands of Adventure, so we went there on the first day.

January seems like it’s the best time to go to these parks because the weather is perfect (not hot!) and the lines are short, or at least almost always moving!  The first ride we rode happened to be the best ride EVER.  It’s Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, which is the one that’s inside Hogwarts (!).  Freaking incredible.  If you’ve never been on it, you basically feel like you’re flying.  Enough said.

The other major highlight of HP world was the butterbeer.  My expectations weren’t very high because I knew they had two versions that were cold, one being frozen.  While reading the books, I had always imagined butterbeer to be a warm beverage, but evidently J.K. Rowling approved both concoctions at Universal.