Bakery Review: Isabel's Bakery

Isabel's Bakery - visited February 2, 2019

I still have so many posts to catch up on. And hopefully I will now be able to as I wrap up my last days at my full-time job. Did I mention I was retiring? Or trying to. Or semi-retiring. It’s a bit muddled right now. But I will have several glorious weeks of full-time do-nothing-ness coming up. Not that I’ll do nothing, of course. But I won’t be working! 

So I’m hoping that means I’ll have time to be able to do something more with my blog. What exactly, I don’t know. I’m losing interest in blogging about the same ol’ same ol’ and I’m sure people are losing interest in reading about it as well. Problem is, I’m not sure what direction to take next. Truthfully, I need/want to lose 20 pounds. I’ve lost 8 already. But to turn this into a weightloss blog seems like a hard 180-degree turn, not left or right but rather upside down and inside out. I mean, hello, the past 9 and a half years of blogging about sugar, butter and flour but now let’s talk about working out 4 hours a day and drinking Skinnyfit tea? Okay, maybe I won’t go quite that drastic.

For now, let’s talk about Isabel’s Bakery, a local bakery in Sparks, NV that I visited about 8 pounds ago.  I was still in my phase of ferreting out local bakeries to try in my neighborhood (have car, will drive to any yelp-rated bakery). I visited on a Saturday afternoon. Like many places in Reno, I could easily find parking and while the bakery had a fair number of customers, there were no ridiculous crowds like they have in the Bay Area. I got in line and, while I waited for my turn, snapped pictures of every showcased dessert I could see, which is par for my course.

A couple was seated at one of the café tables with one of the bakery workers, perhaps even the owner. They were doing a wedding cake tasting so now I know Isabel’s does wedding cakes. As I perused the display cases, I noticed a yummy-looking slice of layered marble cake individually packaged that had a sign saying it was 50% off as a “Saturday special”. I’m always up for a bargain so that was one of my purchases.

My other splurge was a mini red velvet cake that wasn’t quite so mini but wasn’t so huge that I couldn’t finish it in a sitting or three. They had mini lemon cakes in the same size and I waffled a bit between the two but ended up choosing the red velvet.

I tried both cakes when I got home. That day’s lesson: when a bakery offers something 50% off, it’s typically because it’s “day old”. I should’ve remembered that. Not that there’s anything wrong with day old (most of the time) but if I’m trying a place for the first time and only make two purchases, I shouldn’t have one of those purchases be a day-old piece of cake as it’s unlikely that’ll be the bakery’s best offering on which to base a first impression. 

If properly packaged, day-old cakes can be just as good as freshly made. But proper packaging means tightly wrapping all exposed areas of the cake with plastic wrap and, if the climate is cool enough, not putting it in the refrigerator. Air and refrigeration are a cake’s enemy (wrapped in the freezer is fine but not the fridge). They dry the cake out easily so even a well-made, freshly-baked cake can dry out the same day it's made if left exposed to air. Which is what happened to this cake. And that was a shame because the few bites I could find that hadn’t been exposed to air (meaning I scraped aside the outer parts of the cake slice to find the unexposed bits) were quite good, tasty and moist. But the slice wasn’t large enough to yield that much unexposed cake so I didn’t get more than a few bites before I had to toss the rest. Penny-wise of 50% off became pound-foolish of wasted cake. Lesson learned.

I did better with the red velvet cake. The main downside is it was covered in so much frosting that I had to peel away most of it to get to the cake. At least it was “so much frosting” to me because I’m not a frosting person. The upside is once the frosting was pushed aside, the actual cake itself was much smaller and I didn’t feel as piggish eating it in two sittings. Winner. The red velvet was also good and had a great cakey texture. I could probably bake something like it myself, however immodest that sounds, but I may not be able to make a better one and I’ve certainly made worse ones.

Overall, I’d like to go back to Isabel’s Bakery and try more of the delicious-looking offerings. And I’d stay away from 50% off bargains. Spend for full-price. It’s worth it.