Baked Goods
Bakerbots
Bakerbots is just eight weeks old and only open on weekends and evenings, but it has already earned a reputation for some of the best ice cream sandwiches around.
I head to Bakerbots on a day of unprecedented heat, practically clawing at the locked glass door waiting for the clock to strike six. Relief. The door is opened, and I head inside, thinking only of ice cream--and if I'm lucky--air conditioning.
Inside I find owner Rosanne Pezzelli whisking away with a metal bowl, barely lifting her head from the sweet concoction she's preparing behind the counter. Rosanne looks swamped, she tells me she's swamped, and the look in her eyes tells me she's not joking. "I just have to keep going at it," she says.
"It" is Bakerbots' assortment of cupcakes, cookies, cakes and macarons, mostly sold on weekends but with the odd little batch available during the week. The shop is open just between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. from Tuesday to Thursday, primarily to sell ice cream treats.
Rosanne's career didn't begin with baking. She started as an illustrator and painter working out of New York before deciding to travel to Europe where her love of sweets and pastries took full form. She later enrolled in the Baking and Pastry arts program at George Brown College, which led her to start her own catering company, which later motivated her to open this storefront retail shop.
I ask Roseanne (who is now piping onto a cookie sheet) if she has plans to open the store during the day throughout the week. "I'm not sure how I could do it," she says. "We'd have to expand. Because right now, during the day I'm using this space for my catering and wholesale."
And the problem clearly is that there's not a lot of space. There's just one table for seating and a little counter cash, and a few people hustling back and forth in the bakery area. But Bakerbots' reputation is quite large despite its size, with the buzz most centred around the red velvet cupcakes and macarons in Mojito, Saffron, Earl Grey, and other flavours.
But I've come for an ice cream sandwich--the other famed Bakerbots offering--and Roseanne's husband, Chris, fills me in on the method. "Roseanne makes the cookies. We have Ginger, Captain Peanut, Everything..." he says listing off the cookie names. "So you pick your cookie, and then choose your ice cream." The ice cream comes from Ed's Real Scoop, and while the varieties are often changing, they can include flavours such as Burnt Marshmallow, dairy-free Raspberry, Guinness Stout, French Mint, Mercury Espresso, Maple Bacon, and others.
Bakerbots' chalkboard menu has suggestions for ice cream/cookie combinations, so I take its advice and opt for an Everything cookie with Burnt Marshmallow ice cream. The cookie looks pretty big, so I opt for a half sandwich ($3.50) instead of a whole ($5.50). And when I see it, I'm glad I did.
The cookie--split in two--sandwiches a good few inches of ice cream in the middle. Ed's ice cream, as always, is fantastic, and the cookie has a great sturdiness to it, keeping everything inside. It has that home-baked taste and is chewy in a bit of a stick-to-your-teeth type way. And it's flat--not fluffy or crumbly--which makes it perfect for an ice cream sandwich. I bet it would taste even better in the mid-afternoon. And yes, that was a hint.
Bakerbots is open Tuesday-Thursday: 6-10pm, Friday: 4-11pm, Saturday 11am-11pm, Sunday 11am-8pm
Photos by Jesse Milns
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http://twitpic.com/5it632
That is the half sandwhich, it was still enormous. I could barely finish it. Coco cookie with creme caramel ice cream, if I remember correctly.
:O
I frequent more than I should really.
Here are photos from one of {many} trips to Baker Bots love-as-a-verb.blogspot.com
I am sorry about the experience you had with us and would like to apologize for not making you feel more welcome. I too appreciate good customer service, believe me, and there is no excuse for rudeness.
Our space is tiny which means our baking station is right up with the retail counter and that makes it difficult for anyone to distinguish between the baker, who usually need to focus on delicate or time sensitive stuff, (often me) and the service people who help our guests (sometimes me too). I LOVE interacting with the neighbourhood which often feels like one big family, and it's sometimes a bit of a challenge for me to juggle both production in the kitchen and the front counter if the service person is with busy with another guest. If I fell down on that, I apologize. It was certainly not the result of an overriding philosophy or anything and must have been some bad juggling on my part.
I'd love to make it up to you, please give us another try sometime.
Rosanne
its a shame when people mistake quiet, shy and not All Up In Your Face Salesperson for rude, cold or unfriendly.
Ro is one of the kindest, sweetest most thoughtful people ive met via being a customer in the 10 years ive lived in this neighbourhood.
ill take bakerbots over any bullshit pseudo chain shop any day!
I think people who are defending the behaviour of the proprietor of Bakerbots need to read our messages again carefully, in particular mine, in which I describe, line-by-line, why we felt the way that we did. Where she says above in her comment, "I LOVE interacting with the neighbourhood which often feels like one big family"- well, perhaps she should learn to say hello and smile at her "family". She didn't love anything about us because there WAS no interaction from her side. No one expects her to be chatty- but just civil and a bit interactive (when she is not superbusy, of course).
I have to agree with other poster's here but the owner/baker was the most JOYLESS person I had ever met. So deadpan, so sombre, so sour...I thought, "gosh, for someone who is doing something they love for a living you've got some chip on your shoulder!" I (reluctantly) bought a cupcake and swore I'll never go back again.
But damn it, if that wasn't the best cupcake I ever had in my life! So now I don't know what to do. Choose to take her cantankerous attitude personally and not go back or just watch for when she's not behind the counter so I don't have to deal with her again. This is the dilemma that I'm faced with.
Sidenote - I know the difference between shy and rude and she is definitely not shy.
I do not go to bakeries to feel loved or special. I go to bakeries to eat delicious baked goods. It's tiresome to constantly see people complaining because other people are different in how they interact socially. She is a human being. If you are so sensitive and insecure that you need to feel warm and bubbly and overly welcomed when you go somewhere then go to a place where affected and disingenuous people work. I do not trust anyone who is always overly upbeat and optimistic. Anyone who works in customer service would know that is impossible to be without duplicity.
Grow. Up.