Holiday Hours and Gift Certificate Sale

As usual around Christmas, we have some shortened hours and a few days that we will be closed to let you know about. Our staff works hard through the holidays and most of them take vacations for Christmas, so we’ll be a bit short staffed, hence the shorter than usual hours.

Dec 24th: 8am-2pm

Dec 25th: CLOSED

Dec 26th CLOSED (for repairs and maintenance)

Dec 27th CLOSED (for repairs and maintenance)

Dec 28th – Dec 31: 8am-6pm

January 1st: 10am-4pm BRUNCH FROM 10am-1pm

We’re also having a Gift Certificate sale, so snag them up for Christmas presents! You can call us from far away and buy one over the phone, and we’ll mail them to your Portland friends for you.

$20 for a $25 certificate

$43 for a $50 certificate

$65 for a $75 certificate

Get them now through Dec 24th!

Hello summer!

What a great year it’s been so far! I think we can hesitantly say that we are coming out of last year’s horrible slump, and things are looking up. We been working on expanding our offerings a bit, and that should be really obvious in our pastry case this summer, with lots of new items, and the return of some old ones. We can also announce the return of iced tea, and iced toddy coffee!

Most excitingly, we’re now offering more options for special order cakes. We are adding a line of erotic cakes, which we’ve actually been making for quite awhile, we just haven’t really advertised it. There will be more info on our Bakery Selections page very soon! Now even your bachelor and bachelorette parties can be vegan (and even gluten free)! (I want to post a picture of one SO BAD, but I’ll let you just head over to our Flickr photos to see them instead.)

We are also expanding our decorating options for all special order cakes, so your birthday, anniversary, bar mitzvah, or arbor day cakes can be like one of those fancy cakes you see on the TV. Well, to some extent anyway. We are now offering stacked cakes and fondant decoration options! Please call us with your ordering and pricing questions, because of the added time it takes to make fancier cakes, we are handling each one individually as far as pricing and design is concerned.

We have lots of great new pictures on our Flickr page, of recent cakes as well as the start of our wedding season. Please take a look! We still have some summer wedding dates open, so call to set up a free tasting as well.

4/23, big day!

We’ve been looking forward to tomorrow all week! Tomorrow is the Food Fight edition of the World-Wide Vegan Bake Sale, where you will see me being really excited to eat other people’s baked goods, which at 9.5 months pregnant I can eat as many as I want. It’s at the mini-mall in the Food Fight warehouse, which is around the back in our parking lot. I made batches of my biscuit mix to sell at the bake sale, with instructions for how to make our delicious biscuits from the mix. MMMM. More bake sale info on the Food Fight page here. Or you can look at this adorable poster that Mr. Kurt Halsey made for the event.

Coincidentally, tomorrow is also time for the huge Earth Day event that happens across the street at the park. We are in no way involved/associated with this event, but it’s there, and apparently very kid friendly. More info on it here: earthday.cityrepair.org

We ordered extra bagels for tomorrow, and made a whole bunch of grab-and go sandwiches in case you just want to pop in and out, as well as easter items, like sugar cookies, and other fun stuff!

PLUS, if you are one of those “I like the rain” fakers and haven’t been checking the weather every single day to find out where the sun is, it is supposed to be 68 DEGREES AND SUNNY tomorrow. Oh, and we got some new outside furniture for you to try out. And I will be working in the morning hours tomorrow, so please come by and tell me how to get this baby out of me, because I am READY.

Valentine’s Day

Oh man, who hasn’t updated the blog in forever? When I find out who it is, they’re so fired.

Valentine’s day is in 3 days! We’ve been making heart shaped sugar cookies for weeks, and the rest of the fun starts tomorrow. Here are your options:

Flowers! My friend Leela from Bright Designlab is bringing us roses again. A single stem, wrapped with greenery will be $6. I believe we will have a selection of lovely colors to choose from.

Cookies! Our oh so delicious heart shaped sugar cookies are $1.50 each, as always. This year, we will write whatever you’d like on them, if we can fit it on the cookie. Call ahead with your order and we’ll have it ready to pickup, or you can walk in and ask, but if it’s after 3pm you might have to get the messy handwriting of the on-duty barista. Who doesn’t need an “I’m pregnant!” or “It’s over!” or “Yo Boo” cookie?

Box ‘o’ chocolates Cake! These are so cute, it kills me! A heart shaped vanilla or chocolate cake, decorated to look like a little box of chocolates. Filled with cake ball truffles. You can eat everything but the ribbon. And I imagine that the paper truffle liners are probably edible, but I wouldn’t recommend it. They serve 2 people, and are $18.

eat your heart out

Sorry for the blurry cell phone photo, Katie will send me a better “real camera” photo soon I hope. We’ll have some other random Valentine’s day stuff as well, like cupcakes, 6 inch heart cakes, mini heart cheesecakes, homemade caramels, and lots of pre-made sugar cookies, both mean and nice. Drop in and get something for yourself, or your sweetie. I bought myself a box of chocolates from Food Fight, but they didn’t make it ’til Valentine’s Day. And did you know that Herbivore has SHOES now?! They’re so great, stop in there and check them out!

Cake Decorating Class

Whoa, this is short notice! The holidays made me forget about this, which is sad, because it is going to be fun! I’m teaching one cake decorating class through PCC next Wednesday, the 19th of January at the bakery from 6-8pm. I think there are still 3 or 4 spots left, so jump on it! It’s only $35, and you’ll go home with recipes and probably too much cake and cupcakes for one person.

Katie decorates like the wind.

Anniversary Day!

Today is our Anniversary! Six great years as a bakery, and 3 years here at the mini-mall. Come by and high-five us today! We’ll be giving away free treats all day, along with some free coffee drinks to random customers, and $20 gift certificates to our 1st, 20th, 40th, 60th and 80th customers today.

We want to say thanks for supporting all of us here at Sweetpea all these years, and let you know how much we appreciate you all being our customers.

xoxo

Lisa, Ben, Ryan, Jeff P., John, Laura, Katie, Jeff W., Erica, Rylie, Kati B., Dustin, Bobby, Tyler, Kim, and Matt

Wedding season approacheth

Our last wedding of 2010 was merely a week ago, and here we are, jumping in to weddings of 2011. June and July are already filling up, so call soon and book a free tasting. I’ve updated our wedding page with all of the current info.

We still deliver within Portland for free, and to all McMenamins locations.

We definitely accommodate food allergies, just let us know when you call. Gluten free, soy free, and nut free are all available options.

Christmas pre-orders and holiday hours

Here is pre-order info for Christmas week! It’s a trimmed down version of Thanksgiving, mostly because I have lots of employees on vacation at Christmas and we can’t handle as much. They deserve to go home and be showered with presents for all of their hard work this year!

Pre-order by Tuesday Dec. 21st, Pickup Dec. 22, 23, and 24.

Combo deal – Seitan Roast, pumpkin pie and dinner rolls $21

Pumpkin pie $10

Seitan Roast $8

Dinner Rolls $5

And that’s it folks! We’ll have lots of other stuff available in the bakery of course, drop by anytime! Between 8am-6pm anyway.

We also always have a week of short hours after Christmas, because again, this is when everyone tries to squeeze in vacations and family time, plus it’s always super slow. Here are the holiday hours/closures:

Dec 22nd and 23rd – regular hours

Dec 24th – 8am – 2pm

Dec 25th CLOSED

Dec 26th 9am – 2pm

Dec 27 – 31st 9am – 3pm

Jan 1st – 10am – 4pm

Oh, and also! January marks the Mini-Mall’s 3 year anniversary, and 6 years for the bakery (damn!!). It sounds like a big anniversary party is being planned, so pay attention! We’ll announce more soon.

Vegan mofo FAIL

I’m a big enough person to admit it, I FAILED miserably at blogging every day. I will also admit that I was seriously kidding myself with pretending I was going to be able to blog through Thanksgiving week. The upside to that is, it means we were REALLY busy! I don’t think we could have squeezed in many more orders for Thanksgiving stuff than we got, and we had a lot of fun putting it all together this year. I have such a wonderful and amazing group of employees right now, I get that weird heart swelling feeling in my chest when I think about how hard they work and what a great job they do and how much I love them all. Spending an insanely busy 13 hour day in the kitchen with them was by far my favorite part of the holiday!

We couldn’t have made it happen without Katie M.’s amazing ability to bake anything and everything, Katie B.’s willingness to take on any task, no matter what, and to get it right on the first try, and Erica’s tenacity and lack of fear at starting a new job during the craziest week of the year (seriously, she kicked ass). Ben and John came in for their wholesale shift and spent the whole day making pumpkin pies and cheesecakes instead without a single complaint, and John smiled the whole time and Ben entertained all of us with silly questions.

The real stars of the show ended up being my front end staff – Riley, Bobby and Jeff. If there is one thing I will change for next year, it’s adding an extra person up there – they worked all day with barely any breaks and kept smiles on their faces through all of it. Anyone who works customer service knows, when it’s REALLY busy and you don’t get even a second between customers to stop and breathe, it takes a whole lot of energy to keep smiling and stay upbeat. Those three made it happen, all day. Poor Bobby was wrecked after non-stop sandwich making, and Jeff stayed 3 extra hours, just to help and make sure people got breaks.

Ms. Katie Marggraf managed to take a few pictures during all of the craziness, so here is a photo rundown of our Thanksgiving.

vat of pumpkin pie filling, and feet

oh snap! (ginger snap)

gluten free soy free not delicious free

that's actually a thumbprint in the middle

(This next photo was taken by Josh Hooten, and I will ask his permission to use it later today, I swear.)

what? no pumpkin pie?

We may be busy with Thanksgiving, but our regular work doesn’t stop! Did you know people get born around holidays?  I have a little sad spot in my heart for those people born close to Christmas who just get one birthday/Christmas gift.

i bet lexi was stoked

we love Alena and her mom Bea

we love Otis and his mom Jess too

don't get it, but still funny

I’ve been dying to post this photo, and I know Katie B. is gonna come in here on her day off and kill me for it, but how can you resist this face?!

um, i think you need to shave

Hope everyone had a great Holiday, and for everyone that ordered from us, a huge THANK YOU for helping us to save the lives of some turkeys this year. They can’t say it, but I know they appreciate it! Because I speak gobble.

As a bonus, here is a picture of my Thanksgiving meal, cooked by Michelle Herbivore and Kile California (Kile, I just named you that) which was every bit as delicious as it looks. (Photo by Josh Hooten)

it's okay, i'm eating for two

Pecan Custard Tarts

Everyone likes tiny things. Plus, it always feels special to get your own dessert instead of sharing with everyone. It might take a little longer to prepare, but consider making individual sized desserts for the holidays. If you’re making your own pie crust, it’s super easy, just cut the crust in smaller circles and fit into cupcake tins. Leave the edges rough, rustic is the new…. ummm…. not rustic.

We took our pecan pie filling and scooped it on top of some vanilla custard in these little tart shells.

You can do something similar with almost any dessert, like  bite size cheesecakes or individual trifles – layered into glasses or mason jars. Use what you have, and think small!