Disappoint of Cupcakes

(Sweet Box Cupcake Food Truck)

The perfect cupcake is a moist cake with a sweet and smooth buttercream icing on top. The flavor of the cupcake should be tasted in the cupcake and the name should be appropriate. I checked out Sweet Box Cupcakes which is a Cupcake food truck. It was a disappointing cupcake. The flavors I tried were supposed to be were Tiramisu, Red Velvet, and Chocolate Peanut Butter and it was lacking. The cake part was very dry and the cake just crumbled apart when you bit into it. The buttercream they use is just off. The buttercream isn’t smooth and is dried out on top of the cupcake like it’s been sitting or refrigerated for a while. It was kind of a disappointing because I love cupcakes. The service that you got from them wasn’t good either. The girl was sitting in the truck on a chair on her cell phone it took her a couple of minutes to notice we were standing there waiting to order. Total Disappointment!

(From left to right, Tiramisu, Chocolate Peanut Butter, and Red Velvet)

Sweet Box Cupcakes

https://iheartsweetphilly.com/

Emeril’s Italian Table

(Outside the Restaurant)

On a recent trip to the Sands Casino in Bethlehem I looked up what restaurants they had and was hoping to try the Carnegie Deli but they are closed on Wednesday which was the day I visited. So I got try Emeril’s Italian Table which was good. I always loved watching Emeril on television when I was little. During the summer my grandmother and I watched the Food Network and back in the day he was one of the starts. That is one of my fondest memories from when I was a child. It was pretty awesome to get to try one of his restaurants, finally. The idea of this restaurant is Italian and it makes you feel that you were at home with just how the restaurant was set up. They offer some rustic ciabetta bread when you first sit down with some regular butter and some garlic butter. The garlic butter is to die for. It has that nice roasted garlic taste to it like the garlic was roasted for hours. The bread was nice and crispy on the outside.  I ordered a classic Caesar salad. I love when Caesar Salads have the long romaine leaves on the plate verses being cut up. The best part was the whole anchovies on it which is an essential part of a real classic Caesar salad. The main entrée that I got was of course a pasta dish because I was in a Italian restaurant (Duh!). I ordered the linguine, sausage, clam and rapini pasta which was really good. The sausage was nice and crispy which I love. The linguine was lightly coated in an olive oil and spices sauce which was nice because it wasn’t so heavy. It had a nice balance of heat to it with the sausage and the spices. But the pasta dish was so big that it could have definitely been split between two people.  The atmosphere inside is so rustic you feel that you are escaping the everyday flashing lights of a casino. They have a wood oven pizza that is huge which is pretty cool to check out. The other cool part is that they a bar where they slice their cured meats and cheeses.

(Inside Emeril's Italian Table)

(Ciabetta with regular butter and garlic butter)

(Caesar Salad)

(Linguine, Sausage, Clam and Rapini Pasta )

Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem

77 Sands Boulevard

Bethlehem, PA

www.pasands.com

Where Ingredients matter

(The Lucky Old Souls Food Truck )

On a recent trip to Love Park to check out some food trucks, I got to try food from Lucky Old Souls.  The first thing that attracted me to their truck is that they list on the menu where they get all their ingredients from. You can tell where they get their ice cream from, where they get their vegetables from, and where they get their burger buns from. This really struck me as awesomeness and where menus are going. Their menu lists how you can build on your own burger or you could go for the LOS Burger. They use Lancaster County Grass Fed Beef for their burger and they have a veggie burger for vegans. They offer different cheeses, sauces, and veggies. The one thing I love about the veggie part is for tomato and in parenthesis it says “if in season” which is funny because tomatoes are always on everything year round but most people don’t know they have a short season.  I opt to get the LOS Burger. The LOS Burger is the Lancaster County Grass Fed Beef, with house-made bacon, smoked cheddar pickled tomatoes, sautéed onions, and the LOS Sauce.  All the burgers are served on Wild Flour Bakery Challah Burger Buns which are awesome and have so much flavor. When they are served on them, they soak up their sauces and fat from the burger which makes the burger great. It has that perfect balance. This is one of the best burgers to date I have ever had. I also got the hand cut French fries and Salty Caramel Milkshake. The French fries were so crispy for being hand-cut . That is very rare to find. Their milkshakes are to die for. The Salty Caramel Milkshake combines the perfect balance to salty and sweet. I fell in love with Lucky Old Souls that day. They have the best burgers to date.

(Lucky Old Souls Menu)

(LOS Burger with Hand Cut French Fries)

(Salty Caramel Milkshake)

Check out Lucky old souls @ www.luckyoldsouls.com for their stops during the week

To get the Challah Burger Buns check out Wild Flour Bakery at :

-Fairmount Farmers Market on Thursdays from 3pm to 7pm

-Rittenhouse Market on Saturdays from 9am to 3pm

-Bryn Mawr Farmers Market on Saturdays from 9am to 1pm

-Collingswood Farmers Market on Saturdays from 8am to 12pm

-Headhouse Farmers Market on Sundays from 10 am to 2pm

Combination of two awesome things together

I will admit it I have an obsession with trying every donut from Federal Donuts. Another thing I support is Art in the Age which was started out of Philadelphia. Art in the Age produces craft spirits that are different that I have never ever seen any other liquor producer produce. Art in the Age produces Root, Snap, and Rhuby. The idea behind Root is the idea of Root beer. The idea behind Snap is ginger snap cookies. The idea behind Rhuby is Rhubarb.  Federal Donuts used these flavors in donuts. I mean how could you go wrong with that? . These donuts were only featured for a week at the end of April. Root was became a Root Beer Float donut. Snap was a great Gingersnap Cookie donut and Rhuby was a sensational Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie. The Root Beer Float has a root beer glaze with vanilla ice cream icing. The Gingersnap cookie has a ginger glaze with gingersnap cookie crumb. The Strawberry- Rhubarb Pie has a rhubarb glaze, pie crust crumble and strawberry icing. I will admit all the donuts tasted like you were drinking a root beer float, eating a gingersnap cookie, and have a piece of strawberry rhubarb pie.  My favorites were the Root Beer Float and the Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. My mom’s favorite was the Strawberry Rhubarb Pie.  I personally have a soft spot for Root Beer Floats and I never think you could go wrong with that. The Strawberry Rhubarb Pie was great.  You really felt that you were eating a pie. The pie crust crumble was so buttery. The one thing I love about Federal Donuts in general is that their donuts are not sweet. They just have that perfect balance of sweetness in each and everyone that they produce.

(Last row on the left is Root Beer Float, next row is

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie, next row is Gingersnap Cookie,

and last row on the right is Chocolate Banana)

Best Cupcakes EVER !

On my recent trip to New York City, I got to pick up some of the best cupcakes to date.  The perfect cupcake has a moist cake on the bottom with a flavorful icing on top. The perfect idea for the cake to stay moist was to put a filling inside the cake. These cupcakes came from Crumbs Bakery. They have many locations throughout the United States. Even though they mass produce cupcakes they still put attention into every cupcake that they make.  The flavors that I picked up were Cherry Blossom, Cookie Dough, Dulce de Leche, Apple Cobbler, Blackout, and Cosmo. Cherry Blossom is vanilla cake filled with cherry preserves, topped with their signature vanilla cream cheese frosting mixed with cherries and a candied cherry. Cookie Dough is a vanilla cake with chocolate fudge filling covered with their signature vanilla cream cheese frosting mixed with soft chocolate chip cookie pieces and topped with a chocolate chip cookie. Dulce de Leche is chocolate cake filled and topped with caramel cream cheese frosting drizzled with caramel and chocolate. Apple Cobbler is an apple cinnamon cake with apple preserves filling topped with vanilla cream cheese frosting and covered in streusel crumbs. Blackout is a rich chocolate cake filled with fudge mixed with vanilla custard, topped with chocolate cream cheese frosting and chocolate crumbs drizzled with chocolate. Cosmo is raspberry cake with lime accented cream cheese frosting with pink sanding sugar around the rim. It’s Crumbs Bakery’s form of Sex and the City. I will admit I had no specific one that I liked because I loved them all. Their cupcakes are massive and you definitely share them with a friend. They are definitely worth trying and sharing. The shop is very small and when I walked in there was a long line out the door. It was a place that everyone was stopping in when in New York City. The only sad part about their display was they list how many calories are in each cupcake because they have more than 5 locations. I have heard they are opening a location in Philadelphia which I am super excited about.

                    

Check out their website at www.crumbs.com because they have so many locations you can go to.