It has turned into a very busy summer for us, especially the month of July. We've had parties, visitors, lots of trips to the beach and I've even managed to do a few things around the house and even fewer crafty projects. So much to share, I'm not sure where to start!
So I'm going to go with pastry ;-).
This past weekend I took Ebby and her visiting bff Amanda from North Carolina into Boston. One of our stops was the North End.
For those of you who don't know, the North End is basically Boston's Little Italy. There were several things I wanted to see but the thing that was the easiest sell with the girls was visiting a couple of bakeries.
Go figure.
On our initial walk through the North End, we stopped into Modern Pastry.
It's a surprisingly small shop, but packed with lots of goodies.
The party line, so to speak, is that the locals go to Modern and the tourists go to Mike's (located just across the street). I've heard this first hand from our friends who actually live in the North End. Once inside however, we decided that it was too early for pastry and promised ourselves we'd come back after lunch and shopping at Quincy Market.
On our walk up Hanover Street, we passed by another bakery, Lyndell's.
While we didn't go inside, I was impressed with the cakes they had displayed in the windows.
Had I know they're world famous for their Half Moon cookies, I might have insisted we stop. Next time.
While waiting for the girls, who were shopping at Abercrombie & Fitch at Faneuil Hall, I was dreaming of the cannoli I was going to get once we walked back to the North End. I was thinking we'd go to Modern because surely, I didn't want to seem like a tourist in the city I was born in, but then again...So I googled on my iPhone. I typed in 'Mike's vs. Modern cannoli' and got plenty of results. Basically my 5 minutes of exacting research showed that even though Mike's is crowded and filled with tourists, they have the best cannolis. At least according to 3 out of the 4 food bloggers I read. These people are serious after all, doing side by side taste tests. I decided on Mike's.
Mike's was crowded, as expected on a hot summer afternoon during festival season.
At least the a/c was cranking.
After much hemming and hawing, Ebby decided to forgo a treat altogether (it may have been that there was almost too much to choose from: gelato, cupcakes, cannolis, cookies, pastries...).
Amanda and I showed no such restraint and each got a $3 cannoli.
I chose pistachio and she settled on chocolate chip.
We weren't ready to actually eat at that point so I carried our iconic Mike's Pastry box along the waterfront, into the Aquarium and finally to South Station. Though Ebby managed to drop the box on the ground at one point, our desserts were in tact enough to be eaten, albeit with a spoon. While they may have been slightly better in their original chilled state, I must say, my cannoli was delicious. And large. And stuffed full of ricotta filling. With the ends covered in artificially green but nonetheless tasty pistachio pieces.
Heavenly. And good to the very last bite.
