Today I played hooky for an hour and left the office to trek up to Cookie Bar Pop Up Store. (Don’t worry I won’t get in trouble I brought cookies back!)

Tomorrow is their last day and I highly recommend you stop by, I got to meet the very awesome Dorie Greenspan and bought the most delicious cookies.

I tried the Espresso-Chocolate Sablés, Coconut Lime Sablés, Blondies, Strawberry-Raspberry Jammers and the World Peace Cookies. They were all delicious but the Jammer was CRAZY GOOD!

They will be open till tomorrow (Friday, 2/13) from 11 am to 7pm or until they aren’t sold out! The Mizu Salon’s address is 505 Park Ave, New York NY (between 59th street and 60th)

From left to right: The Blackout (total delicious chocolate overload!), the Square Jelly Filled (a yummy classic) and my absolute favorite: Creme Brulee! (Every little bite melts in you mouth and it tastes exactly as anything named Creme Brulee should!)

I need to go back there now, maybe you should too, if my description of those amazing doughnuts did not entice you, I can also tell that their ingredients are all natural.

What you see above is the Frosted Pound Cake Souffle, with frozen strawberry lemonade and yogurt sorbet, it was my favorite dessert of the evening (we tried a lot of them!), the Souffle was absolutely delicious total comfort food, the frozen strawberry lemonade with the Sorbet was bright and worked perfectly with the Souffle and the frosting. I had been thinking about this dessert for weeks, and it was ever bit as good as I imagined. (That doesn’t happen that often.)

This Poached Rhubarb Tart above came with almond sable, earl grey tea ice cream (my favorite Ice Cream Flavor!).

Below is the Strawberry Tarragon Fizz, with crème fraiche sorbet and meringue, it was very tasty, the fizz specially. Tarragon paired Strawberries is something I was just introduced to in school and I have to say it’s very good, peeps.

Below is the scrumptious and beautifully plated Chocolate Custard Brownie with roasted cinnamon cream and espresso granite!

Now here comes the really cool part (seriously there’s more), the GM spoke to us during our meal, and turns out he’s a CIA alum, I was there with my friend  Dessertolicious (and our husbands as well), we told him that we go to ICE and also that we chose Oceana because Chef Jansen Chan’s Grapefruit Gala demo we both attended last year was full of awesome.

Come Dessert time Chef sent us the remaining desserts we did not order! How cool is that?!?

“Carrot Cake” Cheesecake with candied walnuts, coconut lime sorbet. Rich and very tasty! Let’s take a minute and enjoy that plating shall we?

Milk Chocolate – Cashew Sundae with angel food cake croutons and bourbon sabayon. The Bourbon sabayon was my my favorite part of this dessert only because I’d just made my first sabayon the day before! Don’t take this as a diss to a very yummy dessert.

As we all sat there enjoying the post amazing meal glow, talking about all the incredible desserts we tried, who stops by to greet us if not Chef Jansen Chan himself!

He was very cool and gracious chatting with us for a while, our topics ranging from bread starters, bread kitchens and summer fruits going all the way to externships (being on lesson 8 and all still that’s bit far off).

The perfect ending to a perfect evening and I’m very happy.

ps: The savory part of the meal was very good as well, best fish I’ve ever had.

A while back I had some awesome house guests, the twist was they we’re vegan (and I’m not), but it really wasn’t a twist since it turns out being a vegan in NYC isn’t exactly hard. There are vegan products everywhere, vegan restaurants, vegan cafes and ,of course, a killer vegan bakery Babycakes! Now, mind you, these guests being crazy well informed already knew from the start that we had to go to Babycakes no matter what… And they were right, mostly.

My friends had already stopped by BabyCakes a few days earlier, they we’re mid Vinyl buying frenzy and they raved about EVERYTHING, but they might have been a little biased since being Vegan in Brazil is definitely not easy.

I was dieing to go and finally we did, amidst the big snow storm in December, we made our way to to the tiniest cutest little shop that is Babycakes in the Lower East Side. Even in a snowstorm people we’re coming in all the time we we’re there, and we lingered and ate everything, since we we’re enjoying the food and also the warmth after a day of cold soggy feet!

You’re probably thinking “Tell me about the cupcakes, already!” So I will. The cupcakes we’re good (and cute!), the cake itself was a little dry but the frosting more than made up for it! They even sell frosting shots, and I almost bought one it was that good! We also had donuts which I had read on Yelp we’re better than the cupcakes, while they we’re indeed good, they seemed to be a little old.

The winner, dear reader, isn’t even pictured since the four of us ravenously devoured it, was the crazy delicious Chocolate Crumb Cake Banana Pound cake! This cake was awesome, moist and rich, we all loved it even the 50 percent of us that are not Vegan. Just found my notes from when we we’re there and the Cinnamon Crumb Cake was also good but a little dry.

So there you have it, keep in mind that while the goodies are a little pricey, BabyCakes is a worthy stop in the LES, specially for the Vegan and Gluten Free folks.

Have you been there? What did you think?

When I met my ICE Admissions director, she quickly put me in touch with two ICE alums that we’re also from Brazil. One of which was just about to come to NY for a class and that’s how I met the awesome Priscila from Make the Cake (the website is  Portuguese but pics are universal!!)  She is a very skilled and talented cake designer and owns an amazing cake shop in São Paulo. She visits NY often (yay!), and this time we hung out at MacarOn Café, it’s the coolest frenchest little tiny Macaron shop in midtown!

Among the many Macarons we tried, was the delightful Espresso and also the Dark Chocolate however the Lavender Honey was not to my taste. Now look, I will give Lavender the benefit of the doubt until I have anything with it again, but based on this baby Lavender in desserts is not for me. It could have been too much Lavender or it might just be me, but I felt like I was eating my grandma’s perfume… I couldn’t finish the macaron, and if you have ever seen me you will know, I seldom leave anything on a plate!!

Definetely check out Macaron Cafe if you are in Penn Station area, specially considering that area is pretty barren!