vegan baker

This afternoon I drove about 25 minutes north to Rutherford, NJ to visit Sweet Avenue Bake Shop, a totally vegan cupcake and sweetshop that’s been around since the fall. This was my first visit.

I had two cupcakes, one of which was the Little Cutie: chocolate cake with a chocolate pudding filling and chocolate frosting. As you can see, it had a little pink dollop on top, which I was pleased to discover actually tasted of strawberry.

I also had a Sexy Sadie, which was a fairly traditional red velvet cupcake with knockout frosting. This is apparently their most popular flavor.

I have to make an embarassing admission: I don’t really love cupcakes. I think they’re difficult to eat because they upset my OCD. (It is hard to get the same ratio of frosting to cake in every bite.) Yes, I do realize that I am crazy. But, given that I am crazy, this is still a awesome new place to go and it is actually in Jersey.

The storefront is adorable, all pinks and browns, and the painfully cute counter girl was the right kind of nice without bubbliness (I’ve worked as a clerk for too long to be patronized by other clerks.) They had Latin in the window, which appealed to my inner nerd (“Love Conquers All”), though I took Greek, not Latin. I like that I talked directly to one of the owners, who was washing dishes himself. I really liked the brown wrappers on the cupcakes, which showed an attention to detail that was charming. They have other sweets in addition to cupcakes, and the prices are pretty decent. What am I saying here? You should go. You should go eat cupcakes at this place if ever you are in Bergen County, NJ and need a sugar fix.