Sweet Cakes Sweetening Up Damen Ave

By Laura Oppenheimer in Food on Jun 28, 2007 9:30PM

Wicker Park and Ukrainian Village have no shortage of places where Chicagoist can satisfy its sweet tooth. We love Alliance, Milk and Honey, Letizia's and Bleeding Heart Bakery, to name a few of our favorites. But one thing we've learned is that there is never too much of a good thing, especially when it comes to desserts. When we heard Sweet Cakes, a new bakery on Damen and Augusta was open we went over to check it out.

On a random weekday morning, the father-daughter team that run the place were welcoming hipsters and elderly Ukrainian women alike into the bakery We tried two items and both were fantastic and interesting at the same time. Our first item was a savory corn muffin with an entire hardboiled egg inside. The muffin itself featured a bit of asiago cheese, with chewy corn kernels dotting throughout the tender crumb. The unusual addition of the egg was appreciated, as it made the muffin filling enough for a small lunch. We also tried out a brioche aux amandes for dessert, a small brioche soaked in almond syrup with a frangipane on top. If Chicagoist could eat one of these every day for, say, the rest of our life, we don't think we would ever get sick of the tender pastry, perfectly sweet almond flavor and delicious crunch of the toasted almonds on top.

Sweetcakes is the latest in a string of small, independent shops to spring up on Damen in between Augusta and Chicago. In addition to Sweetcakes, we've seen A Vision reinvent itself as a wine shop, Dodo start serving dinner, and a new Italian restaurant called Piccolo preparing to open. If these newcomers do what they do as well as Sweet Cakes does what it does, we envision spending a lot more time on Damen.

Sweet Cakes is located at 935 N. Damen Ave (next to Dodo, behind an imposing fence). (773) 772-5771.