Sweet Mandy B’s

Posted by Edmund in Bakeries & Sweets, Chicago, Featured Articles | 0 comments

Dec 03, 10

Cuisine: American Baked Goods.
Specialty: Cupcakes.
Location: 1208 W Webster Ave, Chicago, IL 60614.
Price: $1.95-$2.25 for standard-sized cupcakes, $1.10 for standard-sized cookies. Jumbo sizes cost a bit less than twice as much.

Back when I was a kid, I used to love walking into colorful bakeries, seeing all the sparkling treats laid out in bright colors, and then getting a sugar rush as I bit into some overbearingly sweet frosting. Back then, it was all about two things: looks and sugar. As long as the treats had those two, I was a happy camper.

I feel a bit of nostalgia, then, when I walk into Sweet Mandy B’s, one of the most colorful, playful, child-centered bakeries I’ve seen in years. While most bakeries these days try to come off as trendy or mature, Sweet Mandy B’s takes it back a few years, instead capitalizing on the very memories of childhood that made sweet treats so great.

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As you walk in, you notice a pretty simple, plain bakery with large displays of goods showing off everything from brownies to cookies to cupcakes. It’s deceptively simple, without much decoration at all. But that’s just where the products are sold. Inside, there is actually a large colorful eating area/café, where you can just go to relax and have a treat. The room is like a playful, childish take on a tea-room, giving me the impression that Sweet Mandy B’s is really aimed at the kids, or at least that it tries to be. The chairs are all mini-sized, the colors are all bright blues and purples, pictures of dogs feature prominently on the walls, etc. In turn, I wouldn’t say this is the best place to actually have the cupcakes, though it’s convenient.

The taste and presentation, too, are somewhat on the kiddie side, as Sweet Mandy B’s overloads its treats with sugar, to the point that every single thing I tried was too sweet for my taste. The frosting on the cupcakes is, in fact, so thick and gritty that it’s more reminiscent of candy-like, artificial icing like what you would find on sweet, store-bought treats from your childhood. Not surprisingly, the presentation of the treats is also aimed at a younger audience, emphasizing bright, rainbow-like colors, with everything from red to green to pink represented in the frosting.

Even so, Sweet Mandy B’s actually produces some pretty good/great treats, depending on what you get. While the cupcakes are too sweet, the cakes are always moist, and the frosting is actually very flavorful in general, tasting like what it should, except for the sugar. The main problem is in the balance. The red velvet is just too weak, as the cake doesn’t really have much of a bold flavor, while the banana cupcake is far too strong, overpowering even the sweet chocolate frosting on top. Still, I do like that the banana cake at least tastes very much like a good banana bread.

The other treats I tried—an iced molasses cookie and a PB chocolate chip brownie—fare about the same. The cookie is literally overshadowed by the icing, while the cake in the brownie is just clumpy, though the fudge is very well-done and intense. Moreover, the brownie is overloaded with different kinds of chocolate and PB chips, adding the bold flavor that is missing from the other treats. It is, in fact, good enough to nearly recommend it.

The prices are fair, too, with standard-sized cupcakes coming in at $1.95-$2.25 and most treats running $1-$2. The sizes aren’t too large, but they’re still big enough to give you enough of a sugar rush.

Overall, though, Sweet Mandy B’s doesn’t have enough to charm me. The treats aren’t bad, but as far as baked goods go, there’s far better to be had at the price point.

What I Tasted

1. Iced Molasses Cookie: Just so moist. As soon as I picked it up, I could feel the buttery, smooth texture. It’s more of a cake than a cookie—buttery, but not crumbling, so that it feels almost gooey as you rip it off. The cookie/cake portion itself is great. Like I said, it’s buttery, but it has a nice gingerbread taste with a hint of cinnamon or spice that gives it some flavor, though it’s not too strong. The majority of the flavor actually comes from the icing, which is really just slathered on so that it’s as thick as the cookie. The problem is that it’s just way too sweet, to the point that you can feel that gritty sugar crunch in it, as you do with really sweet, store-bought icings. The gingerbread spice is too light to survive that assault of flavor. A nice extra touch, though, is that there’s a mini-cookie placed right on top of the frosting in the center, adding an extra, firmer sugar cookie crunch and taste. 2.5/5.0
2. Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Brownie: This treat is, like the last, just too sweet, but it’s not as bad, especially because it has a really strong, delicious peanut butter flavor, since PB is infused both on top with PB chips and in the batter with PB mixed in directly. Moreover, the texture is kind of odd. It feels like it’s a cakey brownie trying to be a fudgy brownie, as the cake is on the firm and clumpy side (in a bad way), while it has tons of softer chocolate integrated both on top in a layer of fudge and within through numerous soft chocolate chunks. I think that the cake itself is actually a PB-flavored cake with chocolate pieces integrated within it, which would explain the clumpy texture. But the top of the brownie is fantastic. It’s a layer of melted but slightly hardened fudge, topped off with tons (and I mean TONS) of dark chocolate, white chocolate, and PB chips. The effect is great: gooey and very crunchy, with a very pronounced flavor boost from the barrage of toppings. And the chocolate chunks within the cake only add even more to that flavor. 3.8/5.0
3. Red Velvet Cupcake: When I saw the amount of frosting, I thought this would suffer from the same problem as the iced molasses, and I was right to an extent. It’s not quite so sweet, as the frosting is creamier and lighter, and it has a slight cheesiness to it (cream cheese frosting obviously), but it is still too sweet and candy-like. Nor does the cake compensate with a ton of flavor. It’s very moist and has a slight cocoa/spice accent to it, but it really doesn’t assert itself too much, becoming overshadowed by the frosting. To be fair, though, the problem is mostly one of sweetness and not of quality. Plus, it has great texture all-around. 3.2/5.0
4. Banana Cupcake with Chocolate Frosting: I’m not a fan of the flavor combo, but you can get it with vanilla, which would probably make it taste even better. Still, the components are right on. The cake is very moist, and it actually looks and tastes like banana bread, with small chunks of nuts/banana incorporated throughout and a banana flavor infused directly into the batter. In fact, the flavor is so strong that it overpowers the chocolate icing, which is saying a lot. The chocolate frosting is a bit too sweet and yet again has that icing-like artificial, gritty sweetness to it (i.e. you can taste the crunch of the sugar). Still, with the dark chocolate flavor in there, the sugar doesn’t come out as strongly, and you really do taste the cocoa. 4.0/5.0

Scores

Ambience: 3.0/5.0. 4.2+ if you’re coming here with children. (Not factored into overall score)
Taste: 3.3/5.0
Value: 2.5/5.0
Verdict: 3.0/5.0