No Rainy Day Blues

When I got into work today at 5:00 am it was raining and looked as though it would do so all day. I was bummed because I had lots of special baked goods to sell and we needed a good day to balance the slow hot dog days of August we suffered through all week.

I was excited because I finally was caught up enough to put out food that I had been thinking of doing for a long time. I prepped the morning breakfast pastries and couldn't wait to see how my special weekend breakfast treat would come out. It's a French pastry called Bostock which was invented to use day old brioche loaves. You slice the loaf and put almond cream on it with sliced almonds and bake it in the oven. It's kind of like a cross between almond croissant and french toast. I had made brioche earlier in the week and sliced it hot out of the oven and put plum preserves on it and was hoping to save a loaf for Bostock but a neighbor of mine bought the whole loaf to bring to Boston so I had to make a new batch. Well it turned out to be a big hit as we sold through two loaves real quickly. One customer came back after buying it just to tell us how much he liked it.

We also had out a tray of crumb buns, a childhood favorite of mine. It's a rich yeasted bun with a crunchy sweet streusel topping. We sold the whole tray of that too. All of our muffins sold out before 11 am so I guess on Saturdays I'll have to up the quantity, a good problem to have. Thankfully the weather was just nice enough to afford us foot traffic all day long so we had our best day to date. My cousin Anne surprised me and stopped buy early and bought boxes of goodies to take to work with her on Monday. She gave us an early morning boost and thankfully things heated up from there.

Here is what our menu was for the day:

Breakfast Pastries:

Muffins: Blueberry, Raspberry Ginger, Lemon Poppy, and Pumpkin Spice (vegan)
Scones: Oatmeal Scone with Currants and Cherry and Almond Scones
Savory: Cheddar Biscuits with Chives and Roasted Pepper and Feta Muffins
Brioche baked with Almond Cream and Almond Slices
Crumb Buns
Banana Bread

Desserts
Big Buddy Cookies (big chewy cookies): Chocolate Chunk, Maple Cranberry Oat with Pecan, Peanut Butter and Peanut Butter with Chocolate Chunks, Orange Coconut with Cardamom, Currants and Macadamia, Deep Chocolate with Ground Chile and Spice, Double Chocolate Almond Cherry, Almond Oat with Banana, Coconut and Dates (vegan) and Chewy Oatmeal with Currants

Buddy Bites (butter cookies); Molasses, Cherry, Chocolate Ginger, Chocolate and Cherry Pinwheel plus 2 sandwich cookies (one customer bought almost all of them at once): Vanilla with Ganache (chocolate) center, and Molasses with Lemon Cream center.

Bars: Classic Chocolate Brownies, Lemon Bars and Pecan Bars

Cakes: Cinnamon Layer cake with Chocolate Chile Buttercream, Flourless Chocolate Cake with Whipped Cream and Fresh Berries and Mini Cocoa Spice Bundt Cakes with Nutella Glaze (great suggestion by my staff member Kris)

Cupcakes: Double Chocolate with Ganache or with Vanilla Frosting and Yellow Cakes with Vanilla or Chocolate Frosting

And of course Jane's (spectacular) Ice Cream from the Hudson Valley and don't forget our great coffee and tea selections. Great day that is a glimpse of what we hope for in September.