Small Bites: Looking for Thanksgiving pies, cakes, galettes and cannoli? Try Village Bakery, Cake Monkey or Platine
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Looking for Thanksgiving desserts you can pick up or have delivered? Here are a few bakeries that are doing all the work for you. There’s not only pumpkin pie but double-decker pecan and pumpkin, apple and brown butter galettes, pecan dacquoise cake, and cannoli too.
Holy cannoli! Over at Village Bakery & Cafe in Atwater Village (the bakery that has taken over the former LA Bread space on Los Feliz Boulevard), Barbara Monderine (who was a founder and baker at Auntie Em’s in Eagle Rock) is baking three kinds of pies for Thanksgiving. There are apple, chocolate-pecan and pumpkin pies. But don’t miss out on her pan forte or cannoli (she fries her own cannoli shells) or maybe the individual lemon-olive-oil-rosemary cakes. Anyway, it sounds like you can’t go wrong. Place orders by Monday. Open ‘til noon on Thanksgiving for pickups. 3119 Los Feliz Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 662-8600, www.thevillagebakeryandcafe.com.
Fake-it-and-bake-it: Jamie Cantor at Platine Cookies in Culver City is offering take-and-bake pies: apple, apple cranberry, pecan, and pumpkin for $25. You need only pop them in the oven; meanwhile, it will look like you’ve done all the work (rolling out the dough, preparing the filling ... ). It gets even easier: Fully-baked pies are $28 to $30, including a double-decker pecan pumpkin pie. And if cookies are required (who doesn’t need cookies?), Cantor’s twist on the old-fashioned oatmeal raisin cookie has rolled oats, zante currants, granola, chocolate chips and walnuts (the classier compost cookie!). Place orders by Saturday. Pick up on Wednesday (delivery can be arranged); closed Thanksgiving. 10850 Washington Blvd., (310) 559-9933, www.platinecookies.com.
Did you say toasted marshmallow? Online bake shop Cake Monkey‘s quirky, refined-retro aesthetic extends to its Thanksgiving offerings. Honey braised pumpkin tart with heirloom pumpkin custard in a graham cracker crust is topped with toasted marshmallow ($40, serves eight). Mini galettes are made with rustic pastry dough filled with either cranberry preserves or roasted apple with brown butter and Vermont cider jelly ($3.75 each, or $37 for a 9-inch that serves eight to 10). Pecan dacquoise cake is layered with brown butter cake, pecan dacquoise and caramel buttercream (individual, $7; 9-inch serves 12 to 17, $68; 10-inch serves 18 to 24, $80). Apple crumble cake has layers of burnt-sugar cake, roasted apple filling, crumble and burnt-sugar buttercream (prices and sizes same as pecan dacquoise cake). Order by Monday. Pickup or delivery. Call (877) 640-CAKE (2253) or (818) 841-0202, www.cakemonkey.com.
-- Betty Hallock