Decided to have lunch at Dean and Deluca today.
I have visited Dean and Deluca once a long time ago when it only had a single outlet that was located in Orchard Central and it was the first time I saw a shop in Singapore selling Nielsen Massey Vanilla Extract, so that kind of elevated how posh Dean and Deluca was to me in my head. I almost bought the Vanilla Extract from but gave up when I realized how expensive it was.
They were selling one bottle for around $22, which at that time, I thought was really expensive, good thing I didn't buy it because my baking skills 2 years ago were abysmal, my cakes were always hard and the butter-cream I tried were thick and not fluffy at all, it was really bad, would have been a waste of a good bottle of vanilla extract, but now they are good and I can get my Nielsen Massey from Phoon Huat at a lower price.
Anyways, went for lunch today and it really didn't surprise me that the menu items were all quite expensive, I was planning to pay for my own share but my sister decided to just treat me to a meal, so I went with it and bought a cup of iced tea as well. When the total bill came back to almost $50 for the two of us, I got a bit shock at how expensive the meal was... $50 for 2 meals and 1 cup of tea, I can buy 10 cups of KOI with $50. I knew it was going to be expensive but I didn't expect it to cost that much.
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| Citrus Mint Iced Tea - $7.00 |
This cup of Citrus Mint Iced Tea cost $7, and it cost $7 because they gave us the biggest size without asking us, I didn't even realize there was a large cup until I saw the menu again.
It was more peppermint and not so much citrus because I couldn't taste any citrus flavor, so I won't be getting this drink again. The profit margin from selling this must be really fucking high because they probably have a huge jug of it in the fridge somewhere where all they do is probably fill that jug with water and let a few bags of peppermint tea sip in it for the whole day, throw a few slices of lemon while they are at it and viola... $7.00 per cup.
And then the lunch came and blah blah blah... boring savory stuff that I'm not going to get into. So before we left Dean and Deluca, I decided to get a slice of cake to bring home and consume, my stomach was bloated after my meal but I wasn't going to go home without a slice of cake.
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| The packaging was obviously too small |
And I got myself a slice of their rainbow cake. I've always been fascinated by this cake because people are always so eager to get it for their kid's birthday party or for their own birthday party and I kind of understand the appeal, I mean look at those different colored layers of cake, it's a bloody nightmare to bake them in bulk.
Normally a rainbow cake sold at bakeries are just plain old vanilla cake dyed with food coloring and those aren't very fun for the taste bud, but the layers in this rainbow cake are individually flavored so every layer had a different taste.... doesn't make you feel cheated at the end of the day like normal rainbow cakes do. The disappointment the kids must feel when they realize the colors don't define the flavors... or maybe they can't be fucked.
So the flavors for each layers are...
Red is Strawberry
Orange is Orange
Yellow is Lemon
Green is Apple
Blue is Blueberry
Purple is Grape
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| Awesome frosting. |
When I first had a bite of it, I was very overwhelmed with the flavors, I guess the best way to describe the taste would be akin to eating all the different flavors of skittles at once, you can tell it's fruit flavored but the individual flavors don't really register, it's just this overwhelming sweetness in your mouth.
As satisfying as the different layers were, my favorite part about the cake has got to be the frosting. I'm not sure what it is exactly, it can't be whipped cream because it's too smooth and it held up really well at room temperature, I took hours to eat this cake because I was so full and the topping didn't show any sign of melting, and it can't be butter cream because it's too white... so my guess would be marshmallow frosting or some sort of meringue but definitely not dairy.
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| Almost done. |
Overall, it was a good rainbow cake experience and one I will probably revisit, should try out their red velvet one day and see if it's on par with the one from Lady M. I highly doubt it though.
There was actually a cupcake shop within the vicinity called Cupcake Engineer and I would have bought some cupcakes from them had they not been priced at a ridiculous $4 a piece, and it's not even big, it's probably slightly smaller than those from Twelve Cupcakes who sells their cupcakes at $3 a piece. I mean I might try it out one day just for the sake of trying it out, but the price is really quite a big turn off, the price of 2 cupcakes would allow me to buy a slice of rainbow cake and still save 50 cents.
But I did get cupcakes from a shop I visited recently....
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| Your's Antidepressant... YOUR'S? Antidepressant |
Cupcakes OCD, the sister brand of Oni Cupcakes. I have to admit, when I first saw the website of Oni Cupcakes, I didn't have a good impression of the cakes because the cupcakes themselves were flat, the buttercream designs were a bit tacky and the cupcake liners they used were really ugly, it's like the liners that neighborhood bread shop uses that screams cheapskate.
So when I went down to the shop to get the cupcakes with very low expectations. I wasn't expecting much, but I was curious to try, so I got 3 flavors, one my sister took which was their signature Nutella and I got myself 2 fruit flavored ones whose names I can't remember.
I have to say, I am actually really surprised with the quality of the cupcakes...
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| Raspberry Buttercream and Vanilla Cake |
The cake base itself isn't fluffy, it's not moist, it's a bit on the hard side and a little bit crumbly, but the flavor was good. The butter cream was great, can tell that they use real raspberry and not those artificial flavoring crap and I know because I myself recently made raspberry sauce from scratch.
It had a nice tartness to it, and this buttercream is as light as Swiss Meringue Buttercream but you don't see them charging their customers $4 a cupcake because of it, or maybe it's French which is equally time consuming to make.
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| Mango Buttercream with Chocolate Cake base. |
Okay, so I just tasted this one, the cake base is bad, like really dry and crumbly, it's not very flavorful as well, if I were to bake a batch at home that came out like that, I would probably throw the whole batch away and burn the bloody recipe.
I really like the buttercream though, it has a nice creamy mango taste. They have really yummy buttercream but their cakes just aren't that good, definitely not as bad as I thought it was, the buttercream is definitely better than the ones from Cupcakes with Love whereas Cupcake with Love has a better cake base, but of course both shops are nowhere near the cupcake standards from Plain Vanilla.
Anyways, to give an idea of how low their cupcakes are...
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| Red Velvet from Twelve Cupcakes |
A red velvet mini cupcake from Twelve Cupcake. Lots of cake sponge and a little frosting, which is fine with me because I hate cream cheese frosting.
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| Mango Cupcake from OCD Cupcakes |
That's quite sad looking for a cupcake base, not that I'm missing out much because the cake base was horrible, but as I have said, the butterceam is nice.
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