I don't mean to sound like a braggart, but I really can't help it on this one:
I am a most excellent connoisseur of carrot cake.
I don't have a huge sweet tooth, but carrot cake is an extreme weakness for me and therefore, I have tasted more than my fair share of carrot cakes. I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in the carrot cake department.
Today I saw the really, really, really good.
Let me start from the beginning.
On Saturday, Jimmy, Mac and I were out walking about, doing some errands, when I saw this woman carrying a very nice shopping bag. I'm not a big shopper, but I LOVE a good shopping bag. I have been known to buy something just to get a good shopping bag. You know the kind I'm talking about? The ones that you can re-use over and over before they are ripped beyond repair? Well this looked like one of those kinds of bags. Bogota's got nice shops, but you don't see shopping bags here like you do on the streets of NYC.
So when I saw this bag, I craned by neck around to see where it was from. And I saw this adorable script that said "Home Baked".
A nice shopping bag from a store called Home Baked?? My good fortune astounds even me.
I came home and googled "Home Baked, Bogota" and all I got (that I could understand because there was a lot in Spanish) was a Facebook page for an artisanal bakery here in Bogota.
I checked out the Facebook page, found out where the store is (within walking distance, oh my!), and looked at the most yummy pictures of cupcakes that I've ever seen.
I'm having a little breakfast at my house on Thursday to welcome a new wife into the neighborhood, so I decided to make a quick pit stop there today to see about ordering some muffins for the breakfast. They make adorable mini-muffins (as well as normal-sized ones) that I ordered for Thursday. But in the name of research - since I had literally never tasted anything from this bakery and needed to know what I was serving my guests - I bought 3 carrot cake cupcakes and 1 chocolate chip muffin.
I was sold on the packaging, I have to tell you. I am shallow like that. Everything in this store is pink and very cupcake-y. So they have this cute box that has four slots in it and they stuck the four things I ordered in their own little slots. These cupcakes were Perfection (with a big P) and you wouldn't want the icing and that adorable little marzipan carrot on top to roll around and get stuck to its sister cupcake on the way home. Then they sealed the box up with a cute sticker and they put another sticker on top that said the cupcakes had been prepared with fresh ingredients, no preservatives, etc and were meant to be consumed quickly.
They not only give you a fancy shopping bag to hold that cute sectioned cupcake box in, but they give you permission to eat the contents quickly???
Um, okay.
So I got home with the goods, Mac followed shortly and I served him a cupcake. He devoured the cupcake, but to his credit, he said my cream cheese frosting is better (I love that kid!), but they have cream cheese frosting at this bakery that tastes like cream cheese frosting is supposed to taste.
Do you know how monumental this is, living here in Bogota where Philadelphia Cream Cheese is a relatively expensive commodity?
Then Jimmy got home but had to leave almost as soon as he got home to go back out to a work function. He said he was starving and I said he should eat his cupcake. He walked downstairs and wasn't gone but a minute - surely not long enough to eat a cupcake - before he walked back upstairs and said that was the best carrot cake cupcake he'd ever eaten. I took slight offense but decided if I'd ever put a marzipan carrot on top of my carrot cake cupcakes, he might not have said that.
He left to go to his event, Mac and I ate dinner and I ate my carrot cake cupcake for dessert, and I have to tell you that it was in the top 3 carrot cakes I've ever tasted. We are talking yummy, oh-my-goodness delicious quality. Light, fresh, not-dense carrot cake with real shreds of carrot and lots of cinnamon topped with a big pile of smooth cream cheese frosting. Probably about 1500 calories of Perfection but worth every single one.
Tomorrow afternoon I go back to pick up my mini muffins for the breakfast, so I'll let you know how those are after the party (if they last that long). I got banana nut and red fruit. And while I'm there, I will surely have to buy some more flavors of cupcakes. They had all these yummy things like Rocky Road and key lime. Oh my.
I have a new purpose in life and that is to be the best customer Home Baked has ever had.
So today, for the blessing of Home Baked - with its fancy shopping bags and its customers who wander the streets of Bogota carrying the shopping bags so the rest of us can find out about the store - I am most definitely and sweetly thankful.
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