The Victorian Bakery
512 N. Park Street #BAs a husband who’s really bad at presents, the first half of the year hits me hard. There’s about a two month gap between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, then about another month and half to J’s birthday, then about another month and a half to Mother’s Day.
J is the kind of person who just buys what she wants when she wants it so I really just have to ask, “What do you want? Send me a link.” Yeah…super romantic.
We do always try to find some kind of sweet treat for any of our birthday’s though in addition to presents. We’ve done cakes from Boonzaaijer Bakery, Bert’s Bakery, and cupcakes from a number of places including The Cupcake Zoo when they were open several years ago and last year at Holland Cakery ‘n Sweets last year when we took a spring break trip to Saugatuck for J’s birthday.
Somehow, in all these years, we have never been to The Victorian Bakery.
I was trying to figure out where I was going to grab a cake from while I was sitting at work yesterday. I was about ready to drive down to Boonzaaijer when I realized I was pretty close to Victorian Bakery. I had actually picked up some of their cupcakes from Midtown Fresh one time for one of our special occasions and figured I should just go straight to the source.
The Victorian Bakery is on the northside of Kalamazoo on Park Street just north of the railroad tracks. It sits in the same building as Park Street Market and shares a parking lot with them. It actually takes up three store fronts in the building
The retail part of the shop isn’t very big despite taking up a large space. . The majority of the space is taken up by the large production kitchen. In addition to the shop here on Park Street, you can find breads and some of their sweets at grocery stores in the area. There is a small area just inside the door with the bakery cases and some racks of bread.
There is quite a lot to choose from and a lot more than I was expecting. To say everything in the case looked good would be an understatement. I went in with the intention on just getting a few cupcakes and it was harder than I thought not to stray from that intention. I mean….there was cheesecake. You try walking away without any cheesecake.
I actually didn’t even see the cupcakes at first. They were on the bottom shelf. I asked for two vanilla and two chocolate…but then I saw some really pretty decorated ones and figured I should grab two of those as well.
I got 6 cupcakes total because I didn’t know if J’s parents were coming up for her birthday. They just got home from Florida this week and we were going to see them the following night at the kids’ theater performance but I wanted to be prepared in case they surprised me. The cost for a half dozen cupcakes was right around $25
We ended up taking the cupcakes to Valhalla for dinner but I’ll get to that in another blog.
J and L both took the really pretty decorated ones. Those were white cupcakes with a lemon filling with a lavender vanilla buttercream. I hate lemon filling so I was glad to see the two of them grab those cupcakes. L broke off a little piece of her frosting so I could have a taste. I was really curious about the lavender. It was surprisingly strong but not overpoweringly so. There was no doubt the frosting was lavender but it was lavender in a good way.
B, to my surprise, grabbed a chocolate. He’s not a huge chocolate fan. He’s more of a sour candy guy and doesn’t really eat chocolate bars. I asked to make sure that’s what he wanted and he said yes. He went for the cake part first eating it from the bottom up. The chocolate buttercream frosting is pretty thick so he knocked some of it off and ate some of it without cake. He had went to town on the pizza we brought from Godfathers so he wasn’t super hungry. He ended up leaving a few bits of cake which L gladly finished off for him.
I don’t have a really big preference between chocolate or white cupcakes. I like them both and usually just pick last so everyone gets what they want. I took a white cupcake with vanilla buttercream leaving a chocolate and a white for later. The cupcakes are so moist and light and the buttercream is so rich and delicious. There’s a little bit of a chill to the buttercream which makes it just hard enough to hold together but just melts in your mouth.
The Victorian Bakery was such a huge success. I really can’t believe we have never been in there before. I shop at the Park Street Market occasionally after work so it’s not like I’m never in the area. I guess I always assumed they were more of a traditional bread and pastry bakery similar to Sarkozy. They do those things but they also have a huge selection of sweets and everything is so incredibly good.
SW Michigan Dining 