A Little Bit About a Lot of Things

How can you go wrong with a bakery that’s named after two of my favorite things? This little bakery is located in Newton, just off Washington Street. I parked on the street, which can sometimes be hard in this area, and walked over to the bakery, dreaming about the doughnut muffins I had seen on Chronicle. They didn’t have any, but no worries, there were plenty of other good looking choices in the display case. Cupcakes, brownies, cookies, oh my! SO many choices, there is something for everyone. The cupcakes looked delicious, and if I liked chocolate cupcakes or coconut frosting, I may have opted for one, but if I’m going to consume an obscene amount of calories, I want to be in love! I made a selection of a few choices to bring home and have over the next few days: a cream cheese brownie, a double chocolate brownie, a chocolate chip cookie and an oatmeal raisin pecan cookie (cost me under $10).

The cafe is sunny and warm, small but charming. I love it. I have already envisioned myself sitting there on Sunday mornings with the newspaper and my breakfast. The service was very good, attentive, friendly and ready to answer any questions I had.

Don’t be a square. I don’t think that I’ve ever had a brownie that was a circle, made in a muffin tin. I’m thinking to myself, what? How can this be? It’s like biting into an apple and tasting orange. When I was a kid I would never eat tri colored pasta because I was convinced that the red and green ones tasted different than the white ones. I think that my senses were confused. When I took my first bite into this dense, moist, chocolate-y brownie, I was sort of expecting a light fluffy muffin. After I get past my hangup on the shape, I am finding myself falling in love… with a brownie. The cream cheese is smooth and sweet, and what’s so perfect is that there is a perfect cream cheese to brownie ratio. All too often you get 90% brownie with just a thin coat of cream cheese that leaves you wishing for more, not here my friends!

The chocolate chunk cookie is about 10lbs, no seriously, it could be used as a deadly weapon if you threw it at someone. It’s hefty. It is crunchy on the outside and still manages to have a soft inside. The chunks of chocolate are enormous and there are lots of them. Make sure to have a large cup of milk near by in case of chocolate emergency.

The oatmeal raisin pecan cookie is like the chocolate chip cookie in that it’s soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside…but not too crunchy-when you break it in two is folds, it doesn’t break. I have to admit that I love my oatmeal raisins even softer than these, so this wasn’t my top choice at the bakery. You can smell all the spices that were in the cookie, and the raisins were perfectly tasty. The nuts were just fillers for me, I could take them or leave them-they didn’t add anything earth shattering to the cookie itself.

I saved the best for last. The double chocolate brownie. At first glance, it doesn’t look like much. Take one bite and you think that you’ve died and gone to heaven. They are so moist and delicious! You know when you break apart a rice crispy treat and you see the stringy marshmallow? That’s just how moist this brownie is. And just when you think you can’t have any more chocolate, there are chocolate chunks INSIDE. So good I almost forgot how much I wanted to try the doughnut muffin. Just another excuse to go back!

They do serve light lunch. I’ll be interested in going back and trying it sometime soon.

Bread and Chocolate Bakery Cafe

108 Madison Avenue Newtonville MA

617-243-0500

www.breadnchocolate.com

Mon-Sat 7am-4pm; Sun 8am-2pm