salted caramel – Jellybeans in the City

PAUL Boulangerie et Pattiserie, SM Mega Fashion Hall

I had to accompany my daughter #ExhibitA as she got her booster shot last Sunday, and I thought “Why not make an outing of it?”

Given my work schedule and her classes, we hardly get any opportunity for some mother-daughter bonding.

So we took the opportunity to have brunch at PAUL Boulangerie et Pattiserie at SM Mega Fashion Hall.

This cafe is a spot of understated luxury inside a busy mall. Here, handmade bread are freshly baked throughout the day as has been done in various PAUL bakeries for over 120 years.

The cafe also offers menu items that combines the pleasures of eating with well-being. These dishes are characterized by authenticity, the use of natural ingredients and being attentive to the need for a balanced diet. These include:

Croque Salmon (Php420). Smoked salmon, cream and ementhal cheese enveloped in soft butter-toasted pain de mie and served with crisp greens drizzled with a tangy-sweet vinaigrette.

Pesto & Cream Pasta (Php295). Al dente fusili tossed in basil pesto cream sauce and garnished with sundried tomatoes, parmesan cheese and bread stick.

Creme Brulee (Php175). Rich and creamy vanilla flavored custard topped with caramelized sugar.

Drinks. Freshly steeped Earl Grey Tea (Php115) and Salted Caramel Flavored Latte (Php215).

A lovely meal and a relaxing atmosphere made for an enjoyable time!

This PAUL Boulangerie et Pattiserie branch is located at Ground Floor Al Fresco 1, Mega Fashion Hall, SM Megamall, Ortigas, Mandaluyong City. For inquiries, call +63 995 2525279.

To know more about its products and offers, visit PAUL’s website or follow it on Facebook or Instagram.

Palm-sized cookies from Extra Butter

Have you ever had those really stressful days when nothing is going right so you just want to curl up somewhere and seek comfort from a delicious cookie?

During those kinds of days, you know that the comfort you get from a regular-sized cookie won’t be enough.

How about a cookie the size of the palm of your hand?

This monster-sized cookie (and other similar sized variants) are made by Extra Butter.

This new online food seller is a collaboration between two siblings who both have impressive backgrounds in the Pasig food scene: Ingrid and Renz Mediarito.

Ingrid is a culinary instructor and entrepreneur who also runs Buffalo Swing Cafe and Ingrid’s Sweet Haven Pattiserie while Renz is one of the managing partners behind Moonshine Pub and Union Square Pizza.

During the quarantine, the siblings decided to engage in a joint project: a dessert shop that sells palm-sized cookies.

What exactly is an Extra Butter Cookie? Well, it is 150 grams of sweetness, comfort and indulgence. It features familiar flavors enhanced by the use of premium ingredients (such as couverture chocolates) sourced from local suppliers (so it also supports local business). It’s an amalgam of moist and chewy cookie goodness interspersed with interesting textures. It has no preservatives and is baked on a per-order basis.

An Extra Butter Cookie can be one of six flavors:

Triple Chocolate Ganache. Belgian chocolate cookie batter with ganache filling and milk chocolate couverture.

Double Milk Chocolate. Batter made with nutty butter mixed with milk chocolate couverture.

70% Dark Chocolate. Batter made with creamed brown butter mixed with two variants of 70% dark chocolate couverture.

Cranberry & White Chocolate. Oatmeal cookies with tangy dried cranberries and white chocolate callets.

Matcha & Black Sesame Seeds. Cookie dough flavored with Japanese green tea with black sesame seeds and white chocolate chunks.

Salted Butterscotch. Cookie studded with caramel chocolate callets, toasted marshmallows and salted pretzel.

Extra Butter bakes on Thursdays for delivery on Fridays from Pasig to anywhere in Metro Manila. You can get a Box of 6 for Php660.

To order, fill up this form. Cashless payments via BPI, BDO and GCash are accepted.

How about indulging yourself with some Extra Butter cookies? Wallow in the sweet comfort it brings and come out from your shell ready to face life’s challenges again.

Disclosure: Product samples were provided to facilitate an honest review.

Check out my blog posts on other small enterprises and startups in the food business:

Morning sweets at Cupcakes by Sonja, BGC

A friend and I suddenly found ourselves with some time on our hands while in Serendra yesterday morning, so we decided to break our fast at Cupcakes by Sonja.

This store was Manila’s first ever cupcake store, opened by Sonja Ocampo to bring the cupcake experiences she had in New York to our shores.

The store has the charm of a corner bakery: from its colorful storefront, the quaint bric-a-bracs inside to the lovely display of goodies available.

Cupcakes by Sonja features whimsical pastries baked fresh daily, using premium ingredients and no preservatives. Expanding its repertoire beyond the classic cupcakes flavors, its menu now includes hybrid cupcakes, full-sized cakes and pies.

Today, the shop offers these goodies paired with house-made hot beverages such as in Hey Hot Stuff Combo 1 which gives the diners a slice of cake and a choice among latte, cappuccino and hot chocolate for only Php179.

I got myself a Reverse Salted Caramel + Latte. The Valrhona chocolate cake base is richly flavored and moist, wrapped in layers of salted caramel buttercream. The latte I had with it is not too sweet, a good complement to such a decadent dessert.

My friend got the Rainbow Fiesta + Hot Chocolate. The cake is made of six layers of fluffy vanilla chiffon cake in different rainbow colors finished with marahmallow frosting and garnished candy sprinkles.

I also got myself a Red Velvet Vixen Cupcake (Php95). Did you know that Cupcakes by Sonja was the first store to offer this classic Southern American cupcake flavor in the Philippines? I remember having my first taste of this confection in this very store more thab a decade ago, and this cupcake still holds its appeal to me. With a decadent Belgian chocolate cupcake base, colored with that deep red hue, and topped with a luscious cream cheese frosting, it has become quite a local favorite.

I had a lovely return to this wonderful store for my morning sweets.

This Cupcakes by Sonja branch is located at Ground Floor, Serendra, Bonifacio Global City, open Sundays to Thursdays from 8am to 11am and Fridays to Saturdays from 8am to 12 midnight.

Other branches are located at:

Ground Floor, Mega Fashion Hall, SM Mega Mall, Ortigas, Mandaluyong City
Second Floor, Glorietta 2, Ayala Center, Makati

Morning Sweets from Top Pot Doughnuts, Bothell

This morning, bro decided to rush over to the Bothell branch of Top Pot Doughnuts for our breakfast.

Top Pot Doughnuts is one of Seattle’s homegrown coffee and doughnut shops. It came about in a small brick storefront in north Capitol Hill, and now boasts of several branches in Washington and Texas.

The store’s interiors blend the vintage aesthetic with a cozy feel, a nice and quiet place to enjoy your morning sweets.

If, however, you feel like munching on your doughnuts while enjoying the brisk morning air and the beginnings of the day’s sunshine, head on outdoors.

Today, however, bro had the doughnuts to-go, so a dozen of these freshly-made treats were waiting for us when we came down for breakfast.

The ones I was able to taste include:

Raspberry Bismark Filled Doughnut. A decadent doughnut plump and heavy because it’s filled to bursting with raspberry filling.

Salted Caramel Old-Fashioned Doughnut. One of Top Pot Doughnuts most popular variants, this doughnut is crumbly on the outside and moist on the inside, which sets off its salted caramel topping quite nicely.

Pink Icing Feather Boa Doughnut. One of the store’s signature cake doughnuts, this has the exotic combination of sweet pink icing and coconut shavings.

These lovely treats were a sweet start to the day!

And here’s a cute bit of trivia for you: Top Pot got its name from an old, rusty vintage neon sign that the owners bought from a boarded-up Chinese restaurant named “Topspot.” After years in storage before being repaired, the “S” fell off, leaving the words “Top Pot.” They decided to adopt this name, as a way of blending the old with the new.

This Top Pot Doughnuts branch is located at 18001 Bothell Everett Highway, Bothell, WA 98012, open weekdays from 6am to 6pm and weekends from 7am to 6pm. For inquiries, call 206-631-2061.

Other branches are located at:

609 Summit Ave E, Seattle, WA 98102 (Tel: 206-323-7841)
2124 5th Ave, Seattle, WA 98121 (Tel: 206-728-1966)
6855 35th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98115 (Tel: 206-525-1966)
325 West Galer, Seattle, WA 98119 (Tel: 206-631-2120)
10600 NE 9th Place, Bellevue, WA 98004 (Tel: 425-457-7440)
1235 Maple Street, Issaquah, WA 98027 (Tel: 425-270-6161)
720 Third Ave, Seattle, WA 98104 (Tel: 206-454-3694)
1416 NW 46th Street, Seattle, WA 98107 (Tel: 206-454-3767)
590 Terry Avenue North, Seattle, WA 98109 (Tel: 206-995-8296)
16095 Cleveland St, Redmond, WA 98052 (Tel: 425-497-8002)
815 N 10th Street #F, Renton, WA 98057 (Tel: 425-291-7483)
1206 Madison Street, Seattle, WA 98104 (Tel: 206-708-7244)
888 Western Avenue Suite E, Seattle, WA 98104 (Tel: 206-466-1729)
11701 97th Lane NE, Kirkland, WA 98034 (Tel: 425-307-1540)
2758 Alki Avenue SW, Seattle, WA 98116 (Tel: 206-466-6839)
101 Stewart Street, Seattle, WA 98101 (Tel: 206-269-5066)
2724 N Proctor Street, Tacoma, WA 98407 (Tel: 253-433-3852)
150 Sunset Ave S, Edmonds, WA 98020 (Tel: 425-582-2579)

For more details, visit www.toppotdoughnuts.com.

Check out the other restos I’ve tried in the Washington state area: