One of my favorite pastimes while doing shopping "research" is bakery-hopping. I'm always looking for the best of my favorites – poppy seed cake, brownies, Russian teacakes, chocolate chip cookies, breads, cinnamon rolls, croissants ... well, you get the picture.
As luck would have it, one of the best bakers around, Mo Gaffney, is right down the street from my office in Madrona – at the Hi-Spot. It's becoming more difficult to fend off mid-morning scone cravings or afternoon breaks for one of her signature creations.
Mo began baking with her grandmothers at an early age and later completed a professional program. But it's really her intuitive way of combining fresh Northwest ingredients and her love of baking that make her scones, biscuits, cookies, brownies and cakes so deliciously addicting. She'll wax on about butter cream, and anthropomorphize chocolate. "It's almost human," she says. "You have to be kind to it and gentle. You have to work with it, or it will seize."
Stop in the Hi-Spot any morning for breakfast or coffee and you'll find Mo's dense (but never dry) scones, such as the whole wheat hazelnut with raspberry jam, or one of her daily special scones with seasonal fruit ($2.25). The enormous biscuits ($2.25) have an almost crispy buttery crust – but don't let that stop you from slathering on more butter or jam. The savory biscuits are chock full of ham chunks and cheddar, sausage and mozzarella, and other savory nuggets of meat and cheese.
In the afternoon Mo brings out the cookies, brownies and cakes (I know this because I time my visits accordingly). The brownies ($2.75) are generous in size, and so dense and moist you can slice them -- try one with peppermint tea. However, it's Mo's unbelievably moist, rich Mocakes that can drive one into a rapturous state. Cupcakes, schmupcakes – these perfect little gateauxs are divine. The mini cocoa cakes come with toasted coconut or combinations of roasted almonds and ganache, and hazelnuts and ganache ($3.50 each). Technically, you could easily share one, but who in their right mind would?
For more of a good thing, order a whole cake. Mo makes cocoa cakes, yellow butter cakes and white cakes with fillings such as toasted coconut cream, lemon butter cream, lemon mousse, white chocolate mousse and fresh seasonal berries in whipped cream. The towering four-layer cocoa cake has more than three pounds of bittersweet chocolate, at least a pound of butter and heaping cups of Dutch process cocoa. Cakes run about $75.
Or you could stop by The Chapel Bar [0] on Capitol Hill on Friday nights. Mo makes a seriously dark cocoa cake every week for this funeral parlor turned hip watering hole. Sounds good, but I'll opt for the sunny Hi-Spot, a cup of coffee and chatter from the friendly baristas.
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