Imagine how it goes, I believe in sweet surrender

So I get this grand idea. I notice that within a 2 mile radius in Beverly Hills there are 6 bakeries that I really want to go to. What are the chances right? So I call up my accomplice and laid out this idea to hit all 6 in one fell swoop. Because she is pregnant, she is down with idea.

We start off the day early on Beverly south of Wilshire at Paulette Macarons. It's gorgeous in there. White. Minimal. Just how I like it. And the bold macaron colors really offset the clean lines of the space.

Packaging always gets me and they have nicely designed things here, but it's not about the containers, it's about the sweets. And these French macarons are FANTASTIC. You can really taste the flavors and they have just the right 'bite.' We could have spent all day there but we were only at our first stop. Time to move on.
Moving on, we headed north up Beverly to Fritteli's for L.A.'s best donut. Wouldn't you know it, the economic crunch has gone too far and this place is no longer. Fitting that an article about the closure was published the DAY we do this thing. Lame. Will someone get a stimulus plan for donuts, dammit?

Walking one block north on Beverly at little Santa Monica is Fulfilled. Now as any avid food blog reader can tell you - this place has been written up big time. It is a twist on the traditional Japanese street food, imagawayaki - red bean in a pancake, basically. But having grown up with the real thing in J-Town, well - I was skeptical.Wow was I amazed. Cooked to order, there are a variety of options on the menu, chocolate immediately catches your eye of course, but really, anything with mochi is not much of a hard sell for me.

You could get savory or sweet, and me the lover of all things sweet actually preferred the savory - the feta+spinach+tomato combo. The batter was lighter than the traditional imagawayakis, and really complimented all the fillings.The owner, Susumu was there, and he was very friendly and we had a nice conversation about how his business is growing, all while we watched him flip the little cakes. That's where all the entertainment is.

We ate A LOT of them. And even went back for more later in the day, but let's move on. Moving west on little SaMo we stopped at Crumbs, but were too full (slightly disgusted?) at the sight of those larger than life cupcakes.

So we headed west even more until we hit Sprinkles. After waiting for 30+ minutes (yes, there is ALWAYS a line) we were finally ready to eat again.

As a designer, the packaging is always a selling point for me. If you take care in how the food tastes, please take care in how it looks too. You will win over your clients every time. That being said, the only cupcake I really adore at Sprinkles is the milk chocolate. But I bought an array to take home to the kids. No chocolate for the Kid, of course.

Turning and heading south on Canon we were headed towards Boule, and wouldn't you know it - also shut down. That was fine though, we were stuffed. While we only hit 4 bakeries and didn't even eat at all of them, it was enough. The walking definitely helped.It was nice to be able to spend time in these little places, rather than just pick up and go. I am thinking of doing this again in other parts of city, because there are so many other great places to check out. Hell, I should charge for tours of people to come with me, but who would mindlessly want to follow around two women obsessed with pastries, around the city? We'd be like a revival of The Two Fat Ladies except she is pregnant while I have no excuse. ~sigh. Oh well, at least one of us would get to ride in a sidecar.

More pictures, here.