Two of the most distinct movie memories from my childhood were from the films Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and A Christmas Carol. Willy Wonka, for the childhood fantasy scene where the kids enter that magical room filled with candy forests and chocolate rivers. (Ok, maybe it’s not just a childhood fantasy.) And from A Christmas Carol, I remember one of Scrooge’s dreams where he visits the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come…there’s the big jolly guy amidst a cornucopia of delicious looking food.  Mmm…like it was yesterday.

And whilst in New York City a few weeks ago, one of those things that seem to only happen in the movies…happened to me. Better yet, I could eat all of it!

Now for someone for whom sugar, dairy, eggs, wheat and soy are recipes for bodily disaster, I really had to pinch myself a couple times to check if I was not, in fact, dreaming.

Nope. This was the Real Deal.

And all it took was listening to some little elves and a trip to the Lower East Side.

The fantasy land? BabyCakesNYC

The dish? All vegan, wheat-free (lots’a gluten-free), agave-sweetened morsels of heaven.

I am literally a kid in a candy store.  What’ll it be? Gluten-free blueberry crumb cake? GF Agave-sweetened brownie gems? Spelt lemon cupcake “tops” with icing? I take the “when in Rome” approach and try all three.  I do, however, decide to forgo the “frosting shots” (Yeah, basically just a small glass of frosting that regulars allegedly knock back like it’s their 21st birthday.) That one had stomach ache written all over it.

kid in a candy store...see what I mean?

Now frosting shots aside, since the stuff is all “free” of everything purportedly bad for you, then does that mean it’s actually, dare I say, healthy? With bean-based flours (read: protein), coconut oil (read: great for the thyroid, digestion, and complexion), agave nectar (read: the lowest glycemic sweetener out there), rice milk and even the odd vegetable, maybe it actually is! BabyCakes owner, Erin McKenna, would have us thinking so…given that this full-time baker and no doubt tester is rail thin and her website actually states “BabyCakes is good for you.” But if that’s the case…then what’s the story behind that “Triple Chocolate Fat Pants Cake” I see over there in the corner? I turn a blind eye.

I drop about 15 and gain about 1 in the heavenly forty-five minutes I hang around the place, making conversation with fellow blissed out customers and gleefully photographing my treats as if they were trophies. If this isn’t feel good food I don’t know what is. The place definitely exudes the warm and fuzzies. Retro décor, a bulletin board full of happy customer comments, and signs like “we can’t please everyone but we can try” make we customers wanna pinch its cheeks instead of our waistlines.

Lemon cupcake "top" with that illicit frosting

Now the good news is that if you’re dying for some of this stuff here in Canada, you can special order it with overnight delivery for probably the cost of a year’s supply of chocolate. Oh wait, I guess that’s the bad news.  The really good news is that they recently released a cookbook that lets you take a piece of the BabyCakes pie home with you. Or maybe that’s bad news too, since I haven’t been able to stop trying its recipes since I got back.

So if you’re in the neighbourhood, drop on by for a brownie! Without your gracious help, I’m afraid I won’t have the strength of character to resist knocking ‘em back like frosting shots.