Andersonville Dessert Crawl 2018!

[dorchadas]

Well, technically it's the "Sweetish Stroll." Last year's dessert crawl was supposed to be the last dessert crawl, after which it was going to be combined with the Taste of Andersonville as a single event. I guess a lot of people complained, because they brought it back under a new name and with slightly fewer participants than last year. I think it was cheaper, though, and especially since I got a discount as a repeat customer.

I only decided to go at the last minute and invited a bunch of people, and of them, pinandstutter, kelachris, and liszante responded, so at 2:30 we gathered at the Swedish American Museum in Andersonville, picked up our dessert passports, and set out.

Swedish American Museum

The very first stop was conveniently in the same room as the spot to pick up our tickets, so after everyone showed up we walked over to the sweets table. We each got one cookie and one piece of cake, so I picked a jam cookie and almond cake. The others picked different cookies and cakes--fortunately, since we didn't coordinate beforehand at all--and we shared them around. kelachris picked a toffee cookie that was extremely good, and which I kind of wish I had picked. The jam in my jam cookie was called "Queen's Jam," and when I asked about it at the table, the woman giving out the cookies described it as a mix of berries from northern Sweden. The almond cake reminded me of the almond cakes I always used to get from the Swedish Bakery, back when it was still open and I could do that. It makes me wonder if the Swedish American Museum, which I've never been to see the exhibits in despite living around here for seven years, has cookies for sale? I should check on that.

FRÍO Gelato and Andersonville Wine and Spirits

This is actually two locations, because we went to Andersonville Wine and Spirits first and the person giving out the wine suggested that we come back with gelato, so we did that first. I got Malbec and Fruit gelato, and the wine was Sauternes, a dessert wine from France. The gelato was good and I'd be willing to go back, but it didn't blow me away. The wine did, though--it was sweet and thick without being either syrupy or cloying. It's the kind of thing where I could pour a glass of it and sit drinking it for half an hour or so while staring out at at the Atlantic and watching the rain roll in.

I was really tempted to buy a bottle right then and there, but I would have had to carry around with us everywhere and that would have been too annoying. So I'm taking note of it for later.

Candyality

Candyality has a lot of what are, to me, excessively sugar sweets that I'd never eat and a few delicious chocolates that I really like. It's a bit of hike so I almost never make it out there, but I really like their caramels. This is a dark chocolate caramel (the other options were milk chocolate and pumpkin spice) with a bit of caramel whiskey to go along with it. They also had chocolate whiskey, chocolate mint, and "bourbon ball." pinandstutter got the chocolate whiskey and said that it just tasted like whiskey, kelachris got the bourbon ball, liszante changed her original chocolate mint for bourbon ball when she discovered that mint and caramel weren't very compatible flavors. The caramel whiskey was pretty good, but not exceptional. I thought it tasted nicely like caramel, but it's hard to say whether that was the whiskey or whether it was the fact that I was eating caramel as I drank it. I've had a lot of whiskey this weekend, for reasons that you can probably guess if you're watching the news, and this didn't really stand out as anything special. The caramel was good, though.

Grownup Kid Stuff

Not a great picture since it doesn't show the actual food, but while we were at the Andersonville Galleria they were giving out samples of Grownup Kid Stuff sauces. They make good sauces--I used to buy their butterscotch sauce to put on ice cream a lot--but the passport listed chocolate-roasted almonds. That's what's in the box, or at least, two words of it are. Chocolate-roasted pecans, since I guess there was a swap at the last minute? Well, I like pecans too.

I didn't read the "roasted" when I was glancing over the stops and thought we were getting chocolate-covered almonds, but they were more interesting than that. I'm not sure if they were dusted with cocoa powder or what they did, but they were pecans with a bit of that dark chocolate richness. It makes me want to look up how it was done to see if I can replicate it.

Andes Restaurant

Andes Restaurant has a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet that they put on every Sunday in the winter, and I've been there a lot for their delicious feta, asparagus, lamb, and the platters of baklava. Well, this was a taste of that, since they had baklava and pumpkin cheesecake on offer. The baklava was as good as it usually us, flakey to the point of crumbling, and it actually broke when I tried to pick it up which is why it's in two pieces in this photo. The pumpkin cheesecake had just been taken out of the refrigerator, or maybe the freezer, since it was pretty solid. That made it almost like an ice cream cake, though, and I liked it a lot better because of it. I'm not usually a big fan of pumpkin anything, but my love of cheesecake won out in this case.

Octavio Cantina & Kitchen

Would you believe that this was the first time I've ever had tres leches cake? kelachris certainly didn't. It was a new experience for liszante too.

It was really good! I could take or leave the frosting, as is usual for me with frosting, but the actual cake part was soft and melty and delicious. I've never had that kind of wet cake before, since I usually don't like any cake at all that isn't a spice cake or a cheesecake, but I guess I can add this to the list of cakes I actually enjoy.

As we were sitting, we all started talking about Japan, and pinandstutter and kelachris told me about Kizuki in Wicker Park, where the waiters apparently pronounce everything wrong thanks to a game of telephone from old staff to new staff and talk about their "ramens" and their "izakayas" as two varieties of dishes, not realizing that it's not a direct trranslation of "tapas." I asked about the food and they said it was okay, which, well, I can get okay Japanese food anywhere in Chicago. And usually, I do.

deFloured

deFloured is a gluten-free bakery on the way home from a lot of things I go to in Andersonville, and every once in a while I'll stop in and get an oat bar or a bit of flourless chocoalte cake. I've never actually tried anything they sell that has a substitution for flour. And I think this cupcake shows me why, though maybe it's just because I don't really like cupcakes. Nothing else to say, really. I'll stick to the oat bars.

First Slice Pie Cafe

First Slice Pie Cafe is one of my favorite places to go in Andersonville. Since Green Sky tragically closed, they bought the rest of the building and turned it into additional seating, so now there's a quiet place in the back to get work done or study. At least, there is on weekdays. When we were there today, nearly every seat was full. We took out cherry pie bites and went to the back and got two small tables next to each other and chatted for a bit. pinandstutter and I ended up having to eat a bite and a half, since the others were too full at this point to finish their desserts. It was good, they said, but it was extremely filling and too much sugar at this point. I would have preferred the cheesecake, since they have a delicious blueberry chocolate cheesecake, but I guess that might be harder to easily put into bites? Or maybe cherry pie is more what people will expect at a pie cafe, which is fair enough.

Colectivo Coffee

The final stop on our trip, we were all pretty full at this point. The passport said that there were mini kouign-amann, but as the photograph shows, it's a somewhat generous definition of "mini." kelachris immediately said that she was going to save her cake for later, and I think liszante did the same. I ate mine, because I had a small lunch precisely to prepare for this event, and pinandstutter ate his as well. I feel a bit bad, because I like the kouign-amann from Whole Foods better. It's more buttery, which is exactly the opposite of what I would expect. Or maybe they put honey on it because it sits out for hours and they're trying to compensate for that, and I ate it first so it's what I'm used to and now I can't appreciate the simplicity of a real Breton kouign-amann? Well, it was still good. Don't know that I'll get one again, though. It's very rare that I have a reason to go to a coffee shop at all, so.


After that, stuffed, we walked out in the rain back to pinandstutter and kelachris's car, where liszante also borrowed a ride since they're much closer to her apartment. I walked home, got my heat working again, and here I am.

I did eat dinner, but not much of it.