Petit four

[Mom2jacknjess]

Originally Posted by lumbollo

I used to know someone who owned a small bakery in downtown Mooresville. They told me once this was the dirty little secret of "local" baked goods in Charlotte. Almost every store buys frozen pre-made dough because they don't have the business time and/or skills to do it properly onsite. There are apparently a number of commercial vendors that cater specifically to this market. Your local baked good might have been mixed up and frozen months ago 1000s of miles from here.

This is very common with pastry and yeast products. Not so much with cakes but I do believe that most of the grocery stores do not bake their own cakes anymore.

You are correct. The grocery stores DO NOT make their cakes. They come in frozen. Lowes Foods gets in prepared batter and bakes their chocolate and yellow cake for their whoopie pies, pineapple upside down cakes, and their behives. Everything else comes in frozen. They are probably the only store that assembles their specialty cakes, meaning their coconut cake is filled and assembled at the store, but the filling comes in premade. But there most definitely are quite a few bakeries, some of which have been mentioned in this thread who make their stuff from scratch ON PREMISE. The key is when you inquire about baked goods anywhere, don't ask to you bake them here? Well, they'll tell you yes if they are getting par-baked or already made batter from US Foods or anywhere else. Ask do you make your stuff from scratch on premise? Some things are definitely not worth making from scratch and the biggest things are croissant (and yes I'll would bet Amelia's gets theirs from a vendor and bakes them off even though she is French), bagels, donuts, many breads or yeast products, and petit fours which are a pain to make and they are very labor intense like Italian pastries, especially sfogiatella and cannoli shells. Anything that has to be deep fried like donuts, cannoli shells. Bagels are a business in itself. You have to make the dough, let it rise, form the bagels, boil them and then bake them. Bread is a business in itself also. If the place is not specifically a bagel store or bread store, I would bet money that they do not make them at their bakery but import them in and either defrost them or par bake them. Some stuff is not worth making b/c the amount of time it takes vs. the amount of sales just does not add up to a profit.

But there are quite a few bakeries in town, mostly cakeries, that do make all of their stuff from scratch such as Sinfully Sweet, Decadent Designs (they have an assortment of pastry-type treats in addition to cake all made from scratch except the croissant and cannoli shells. The ginger lemon scones are to die for.), Tizzerts, Cloud 9 Confections, Edible Art, and a few more that I can't quite recall at this minute.

Amelia's might make fresh made petit fours. The Fresh Market and HT both get them from other vendors which are quite good.

I would offer to make them, but like I said, they are a PAIN to make.

Good luck.

[CharlotteGal]

Originally Posted by Mom2jacknjess

Amelie's might make fresh made petit fours.

All the sweets at Amelie's are made from scratch there, I think that includes the croissants. Most of their other breads are baked & frozen off-site, but it's Amelie's own recipe, baked only for them. Everything else? Fresh-made, from scratch. It's why they're so good!! That plus superior-quality ingredients.

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn the desserts at Crave are mostly mass-produced, they get their cupcake batter shipped in, etc. It seems like if you're going to have a place that specializes in desserts, you should have a pastry chef & make it fresh.