Last night I tuned into Food Network’sThrowdown With Bobby Flay to watch chef Flay challenge Dessert Truck to a bread pudding bakeoff, and I sorta expected to see the truck vanquished. I’ve dissed Dessert Truck’s chocolate bread pudding with bacon anglaise in the past, for while it is definitely smooth and chocolatey, and its charms have grown on me, real bread pudding is NOT about smooth. Bread pudding is about spongy layers soaking up egg and butter, like having your favorite french toast for crumbled up dessert. The version chef Flay made (or rather, that his two assistants made while he yammered in the background), was a chocolate-coconut bread pudding with passion-fruit sauce. It looked fantastic, if a bit busy (I wonder if you could taste the bread pudding under all those flavors), next to the relatively homespun pudding cups from the truck. The crowd taste-tasting on the street seemed split, but the two gals they plucked from the audience to judge the winner went with Dessert Truck! One of them had never had bread pudding before though, so there you are. Maybe Dessert Truck is really great, unless bread pudding happens to be your favorite dessert.

Interestingly, this episode showed the Truck’s chef making the bacon anglaise with real chunks of bacon that are subsequently strained out. I could not taste the bacon at all when I tried it, but the crowd claimed they tasted… something. All I can say is, if you promise me bacon, there better be bacon in there!

While we’re on the subject of bread pudding, Whole Foods on the Bowery sells a classic, plain bread pudding by the pound at their dessert bar. Although I usually stretch my arm muscles reaching for the unbroken bits in the back and cringe when I have to skim the skin off the neighboring caramel sauce, this is a decently delicious bread pudding when I can’t find it anywhere else.

Dessert Truck
Day – Park Ave and 52nd St. Monday – Friday: 12:00PM – 4PM
Night – St. Marks Place and 3rd Ave. Monday – Sunday: 6PM until about midnight

Damn you Dessert Truck.

Not only have you infiltrated my evening stomping grounds in the East Village, as well as my work-days in Midtown, but just as I was growing immune to the lure of your chocolate bread pudding you’ve unleashed something even more irresistible.

Like the creamiest of pie fillings topped with toasted marshmallows and crunchy sugar-roasted pecans, this pumpkin custard is the perfect autumn snack. It’s a good thing it’s jacket season too because soon I might need to camouflage my many, many indulgences in this treat.

I promise to shut up about Dessert Truck now.

Dessert Truck – Park Ave and 52nd St. Mon-Fri 12pm-4pm and on Third Ave and St. Mark’s every day 6pm-midnight

Fans of Magnolia Bakery’s famously sweet cupcakes, rejoice. Now you no longer need to schlep downtown for a dose of that toothache-inducing buttercream frosting. Magnolia has just opened an under-the-radar outpost (no signage yet?) on the corner of 49th street and 6th avenue–tourist central and spitting distance from about a million snackish office workers.

There’s a bit more selection here than I remember in the West Village location, and I’ll probably check out the promising-looking cheesecake, cookies, and various other treats when I’m craving something sweet. My peanut butter bar with heath candy bar crumbled on top ($2.50) was a delightful, if intense, post-lunch pick-me-up. But unsurprisingly, all the action here is around the cupcake window. I have to be honest: I never understood what made these cupcakes so damn special, besides the shout-out on Sex in the City, but at least here they are behind a pane of glass. In the downtown location, shoppers graze their coat-sleeves through frosting as they serve themselves in a kind of dog-eat-dog cupcake frenzy. Also, there wasn’t a line out the door in the 49th street spot–not yet, anyway. I think that is what bothered me about Magnolia in the West Village; not that people were eating those cupcakes, but that they would stand in a line wrapped around the block for half an hour in the freezing cold to eat those cupcakes. I was fooled once; I got in the line, thinking there might be something unbelievably delicious hidden under all that pastel frosting; there wasn’t. It was a cupcake, no more, no less. Needless to say, I haven’t recovered from my disappointment.

Magnolia Bakery 1240 Sixth Avenue, at 49th Street

They must have read my mind. I’d been wishing that Dessert Truck, my favorite mobile dessert concept, would pull up the stakes and cruise on over to the East Side. Just last week the Dessert Truck sent out an alert to their Facebook fans saying that because there’s reduced foot traffic on University Place since NYU closed for summer, they’ll now be parked on Third Avenue and St. Mark’s Place.

Yessss. Now not only is the truck convenient to me, and the subway (and who doesn’t have to ride the 6 train at some point), but it’s joining a little snack-peddling caravan in Astor Place, including the Mud Truck, Mr. Softee, and the Wafels & Dinges truck – which is usually up on 14th street but two recent sightings near the Cube point to a possible new locale Update: The waffle truck parked at Astor Place is not Wafels & Dinges. It is a knockoff Wafels & Dinges.

The downside–Astor Place sucks to hang out in, unless you’re skateboarding, playing a saxophone, or selling glass bubblers (nymag.com’s has an article about the total mish-mash that the public space around Cooper Union has become). Your best bet if you’d like to sit and snack might be to find a quiet stoop on 9th or 10th street, or meander up Stuyvensant Street to St. Mark’s Church.

Original Snackish post about Dessert Truck

Dessert Truck, Third Avenue and St. Mark’s Place, 6pm-12am, every day (except when it rains, usually)

Doughnut Plant is probably the only eating establishment I have visited twice in one day. It’s that good.

First, there are the yeast donuts, in glazed, jelly-filled, and creme-filled varieties. They’re squarish, faced-sized and unbelievably light, with airy, melty dough under a sticky layer of sweet glaze ($2). Perennial faves are vanilla bean, Vahlrona chocolate (messy), and peanut butter and jelly. There’s a rainbow of seasonal flavors too, including fresh strawberry, pomegranate, pumpkin, and banana pecan. Vanilla is simplicity perfected if you usually find donuts too sweet or too fried. Often there’s one fresh from the oven on a baking sheet poking through the kitchen window, and they’ll drop that one in your bag instead of the one on display in the shelves.

Then there are the cake donuts–smaller, round with a hole, with a more condensed, doughier middle; a closer relative to the traditional donut (think Krispy Kreme). Tres Leches ($2) has a ring of sweet custard running through it–a phenomenal improvement over Boston Creme, because you get just a little bit of creme with every bite. If you must try only one donut here, get this one.

There are the cinnamon rolls, huge doughy spirals encased in a crackling glaze, spiked with swollen raisins, and cinnamon-sugary filling growing more concentrated as you eat your way into its sticky heart.

And finally there’s the dude behind the counter, who is pretty much the embodiment of the happy gourmand donut shopping vibe. He’s always smiling. I love buying donuts from that guy.

There’s only a couple of seats, so count on getting your donuts to go, and munching your way down Grand Street. Plan to get an extra one, so you don’t have to make that second trip.

Doughnut Plant, 379 Grand Street (also sold at Dean & Deluca, but best to go to the source)
Tues-Sun 6:30 am – 6:30 pm