No Cookie Left Behind

As part of the Share Our Strength Great American Bake Sale, my friend Connie invited me and Burtis to her friend's 2nd Annual No Cookie Left Behind bake sale. In my head, it was a sleek, Billion Dollar Babes-esque sample sale of a bake sale. It was in Silverlake, after all. In truth, it was a darling/charming ("darming?") normal, normal bake sale on a sidewalk.



But first, Burtis, bless his heart, started whining for tacos. Every dirty, divey taco stand we drove by he would start crying like a very cute puppy. He kept asking Connie "But what are we going to eat for LUUUUNCH?" and she would keep saying, "CUPCAKES!" and he would keep replying, "NOOOOOOOO TACOOOOS!"

So we set out on foot, away from the bake sale, to score some tacos first. We walked around a couple blocks and then, like the clouds parting to let through glorious sunlight, we saw it.

Que Ricos.

It was a cross between a McDonald's and a taco shack. Love it. The menu, pictured above, is not me inadvertently stretching the picture out width-wise. That was literally their menu. (The same thing happens on their business card, I see. Someone should teach them to click "lock aspect ratio.")



It was one of those places where they have mysterious desserts that have likely existed for decades, untouched, by the register. The marshmallow-ey things on top piqued my interest, but good sense overruled this train of thought and I stuck with an asada taco with a side of rice y beans.



Drinks, made from pure cane sugar. Mmmmm. I wanted to save my cash for the baked goods, so I declined the tamarind soda, but seriously tamarind is like crack, no? I did help myself to copious amounts of their homemade salsas. They had those pickled carrot things that I really love, too.



I'm sure you could imagine exactly how this tasted. Like every other taco truck taco - fresh and perfect. The rice was freaking yum, too. It had CORN and POTATOES! I loved it.

Over our taco lunch, Burtis happily chattered away about how he had learned the art of hypnosis, and we talked about what craft he should learn next. I believe we agreed on American Sign Language for the both of us so we could (a) talk shit about people during seminars across the room at each other; and (b) go to bars and "game" girls, with he acting the part of a deaf guy and me being the translator, making girls' hearts melt with his gentle sensitivity and poeticism in his eyes.


Back to the bake sale. Why is it that the homemade goods are so much more appealing at bake sales? There were cakes and cookies from profesh shops, but the things that went first were the big cookies in good ol' ziplock bags. That's what Connie got.


I settled on three items. 1. Baklava; 2. Carrot Cake Cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting (they should call it the CCCCCC); 3. Sour Cream Fudge Cookie.

All three were winners~! I have been on a crazy workout schedule this summer, and I believe my body is screaming at me to consume more glucose, and my usual salt-tooth was gone and replaced with a normal person's tooth. The baklava - what's that seasoning baklava that makes it baklava? Tinx says cardamom. Whatever it was, it was SO INTENSE that it went straight up my nose into my brain pleasure neurons.

The sour cream fudge cookie was tiny (the size of a silver dollar) and was neither fudgey nor cookie-ey - almost cakey, but velvety smooth and with a nice sticky sour cream smell.



Connie says this bundt looks huge and that we should have held up a dollar bill next to it for scale. This bundt cake is actually TINY, thus making the baby baby bundt cakes behind it squealingly microscopic. These were on sale courtesy of a new bakery called Kiss My Bundt bakery. Whatever you need, we've got your BUNDT covered! is their tagline. Love it.



All of this took place in front of Scoops, a gelato joint. So after the sugar bomb on the sidewalk, we went inside to explore the crazy mindfuck gelato flavors that they had to offer. Behold:

-Brown Bread
-Chocolate Guinness
-Lemon Hefeweizen
-Avocado Vanilla
-Blueberry Lychee
-Salty Dulce de Leche
-Horchata
-Pear Champagne
-Watermelon Triple Sec
-Maple Oreo
-Orange Rootbeer
-White Chocolate Jim Beam
-Raspberry Balsamic
-Almond Honey Ginger
-Green Tea Irish Cream

I sampled the salty caramel and my eyes rolled back into my head. Burtis got a scoop of the watermelon triple sec from one of the two hotties behind the counter, which was refreshing, though I'm not a fan of triple sec. I appreciated that refills were a mere $1.75, which we were going to exploit by eating multiple flavors among the three of us. But...the insulin spike was killing me, so we didn't.

While we lounged around, nursing our sugar comas, I turned to Vani and said, "These gelato attendants are SO freaking adorable!" From all the way across the fucking store, one of them looked up and smiled at me and half-waved. Eagle ears! I was embarrassed.

I don't know why. I should have owned it. Like "YEAH MOTHERFUCKER YOU HOTT!"

End childhood hunger by donating here

Que Ricos
712 N. Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029

Kiss My Bundt
8104 West Third Street
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Scoops

712 N. Heliotrope Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90029