Dessert Crawl Part Deux!

4th Street Cookie - Reading Terminal Market, 51 North 12th Street

The fourth stop on the tour was 4th Street Cookie. First of all, can I just say Reading Terminal Market! Wow! Love it! If I lived in Philadelphia, I would undoubtedly spend a ridiculously large percentage of my salary buying fresh produce, shell fish, meat and unusual ingredients to prepare lovely meals, and ready prepared food and cake when I'm feeling lazy!

If I'm being honest (and isn't that the whole point after all?), I wasn't so impressed with 4th Street Cookie. It was a pretty basic counter and their cookies looked  ... well ... normal. I'm not sure what I was expecting - actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly what I was expecting. Ginormous cookies that I would ooh and ahh over, beating myself up that I'd never be able to make cookies as nice! Cookies aren't my forte don't cha know?

I bought a white chocolate chip cookie to take away and was pleasantly surprised when I eventually tried it. It wasn't the best cookie in the world - I much prefer Ben’s Cookies in London - but it was everything a cookie should be. Nothing more. But no less either.

 Flying Monkey - Reading Terminal Market, 12th and Arch

Now this was exciting! They had lots of cupcakes, as well as brownies and other baked goodies! Mmmmmm, baked goodies .... sorry, what was I saying? Oh, yes, cupcakes! They had cool colours and lots of exciting flavours; lots! Crème brulee, pistachio, pina colada, baileys, bubblegum, black velvet, rose, chai ... and the list goes on. I wanted to try everything! But you know, the real world being real and all, I can't get everything I want so I settled on the pina colada, my partner in crime had the crème brulee, and I got the pistachio for my pistachio obsessed other partner in crime. My pina colada was good! The cake itself was really good - in Lara's opinion the best we'd tried - but my heart still lies with Brown Betty's pound cake. And the icing was nice but not too sweet. Lara's crème brulee icing didn't really taste like crème brulee; it had more of a burnt caramel taste to it. And when we eventually got round to eating Doyin's pistachio cupcake (I bought it for her, it was only right that she halved it with me :D), that also tasted nothing like pistachio either. So my general impression is nice cake, lots of cool flavours but the icing leaves a lot to be desired. I admire their ambition though!

Final *sob* stop - Serendipity - 225 East 60th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues
While we were in NY, we were staying in Queens. Shopping there during the day and then coming into the city at night for dinner and drinks with friends Trouble and First Lady. That schedule, though fun, did not leave much time for dessert crawling, despite my best intentions. I didn't get to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge or do the Sex and the City tour either :( Anyway, we did manage to make it to Serendipity, which was in Sex and the City incidentally. It was very quirky and their frozen hot chocolates - although not really frozen, just really cold and thick – were lovely! The cheesecake was alright but I really wish I had gone to Juniors for cheesecake. And Magnolia bakery for cupcakes. And Make My Cake for cake. And Crumbs for cake. And ... well, you get the picture. I guess I have to save something for next time right? And I did have Coldstone ice cream!