Cake Quest Complete and a Super Target Surprise

 A birthday party run to Super Target yesterday led me down the cleaner aisle. Our floors see a lot of Murphy’s wood oil soap, thanks to our backyard loving wheaten. We are about to have a bunch of floor dwellers crawling around at the party, and now’s not a good time to be low on Murphy’s. The cleaner aisle at my ST has been relocated and swapped with the paper plate aisle. (You memorize these things when your baby is a fair-weather shopper with strong vocals.) While discovering this, I spotted Seventh Generation dishwasher detergent *pacs*. This is my Super Target surprise, emphasis on my. I didn’t buy any, but the SG packs come in boxes of 15. Maybe my wheaten can run our dishwasher afterall.

Birthday Cake With REAL, SAFE Ingredients

My other exciting bit of news is that my birthday cake quest is complete, with not one, but two happy endings! Shaina is privvy to my site and happened upon my Quest post. Being the extraordinary person that she is, offered to make my baby a special, whole foods cake. This was an exceptional offer that couldn’t be refused, and we are lucky to have such a generous and thoughtful friend. We’re beyond excited to see what she comes up with and can’t wait to taste her trans fat-free and food dye-free creation. We’re even more excited to see our baby dig in.

My quest didn’t stop here, however. We’re expecting a house full of guests, many of them miniature ones still in diapers, an appetite for a slice of birthday cake in tow. We’re looking for a plethora of CAKE. Besides, I was attempting to locate a birthday cake that met this simple criteria: tastes delicious, no trans fat, affordable, bakery bought, and no artificial food coloring. All but bakery bought had fallen into my hands. My quest resumed with phone calls to neighborhood grocery stores and bakeries. I live in the Twin Cities, and the following information may not exactly peak your interest if you live elsewhere, but here goes.

Lunds/Byerly’s and Kowalski’s were both friendly and helpful on the phone, and give a free “smash” cake for first birthdays. They both offered to print me an ingredients label if I came into their store. I did, and read that This started a long and sorted internet search for natural bakeries. I get a little hung up on affordable, and limited my specialty bakery pursuits. The Twin Cities has a LOT of bakeries and it was fun reading reviews and looking at various websites, until I hadn’t found what I was looking for yet, and had other things to get done. But happening upon two places at the end of my search turned up two rare gems.

Both places use partially hydrogenated oils as well as artificial flavors in their cakes. So, this knocked the four major grocery options of Lunds/Byerly’s, Kowalski’s, Costco and Super Target off my list.

Super Target Cakes and Costco Cakes

Costco (half-sheet cake priced at $17) and Super Target cakes contain partially hydrogenated oils as well as artificial flavors, too, and I didn’t contact them any further.

I called up Wuollet Bakery and Whole Foods, and felt a need to raise the roof at what I learned. Both places use NO partially hydrogenated oil and Whole Foods uses NO artificial food dye. Wuollet will use food dye, unless you ask for something different. I did, and they agreed to use a hot fudge icing on our cake instead. They also use a shortening which does not contain partially hydrogenated oil. Both places were comparable within $9.01 for a half sheet: Whole Foods pricing it at $37.99, and Wuollet coming in at $47.00. For this quest, Wuollet got my order. Next time, I may give Whole Foods a spin, which also tortes their cakes, so it has some filling in it as well. I love knowing there are a couple of solid people-conscious bakery options close to home. This quest concludes as a success and our party guests will be able to sample a couple of REAL birthday cakes. I couldn’t be more excited about serving and eating cake.
No part of this post was compensated or sponsored in any way.