Dinkel's, Angel Food, or Swedish, which would you choose?

If you had the choice of choosing among these three, and only these three, bakeries for cookies and pastry's which would you choose...

Angel Food, hands down. The cookies and cakes from Swedish Bakery I find flavorless. The cookies are all the same type of butter cookie. The cakes are decent, but I think the quality of ingredients shine at Angel Food.

Dinkels...I love their chocolate covered custard filled donuts....yum.

I am one of the few detractors of Angel Food's pastries. I put them on the very long list of bakeries who's wares look better than they taste.

Of those three, I'd choose Dinkel's in a second, although I can't recall ever tasting their cookies.

Best,
Michael

I also find AngelFood's wares either ok (cookies & pastry) or quite sub-par (cakes).

Dinkel's has by far the best cakes/pastry of the 3.

Dinkels service never fails to underwhelm me. In fact, it sucks. At least the people at angel food arent rude.


(edit: I really wish i liked dinkels, its a great shop and is a few blocks from my house. but they are huge jerks every time i have been there. never again.)


Erik.

I like both Dinkel's and Swedish Bakery, and have never had a serious complaint with either. But for the record, I've not tried Angel Food Bakery.

I can add this to the mix, tho - whenever I've brought good from Dinkel's to a social gathering, there isn't much of a reaction from the crowd unless I've brought birthday cake. And then everyone mentions that the cake tastes just like old fashioned birthday cake ... and this is cause for much rejoicing! If it is anything but birthday cake, everything gets eaten, it just doesn't inspire much discussion.

Whenever I bring goods from Swedish Bakery, people go nuts and ask me where it is from, then tell me that "they don't usually like things like blahdiblah, but ..." and there is never anything left over. The people I work with now fight over the coffeecakes when I bring them in. Literally fight.

I know Swedish Bakery has a heavy hand with the butter ... but I think al ot of people don't eat that kind of rich pastry/cookie every day - and to them, it is the epitome of decadence.

Just my two cents, anyway

I ordered my best friend's birthday cake from Angel Food last spring and it was the loveliest, sprightliest looking cake I have ever seen. And then we cut into it--it was the driest, worst-tasting piece of cardboard I've ever had. And at $60 I expect pretty and good-tasting. I have to give it up to the owner, I called her on Monday to let her know about the cake and she sent me a credit for $30. A friend of mine who is a caterer said AF's cupcakes are much more consistent. So in January I ordered $30 worth of chocolate cupcakes for a birthday party and they were rich and good.

So for my birthday this past weekend my husband ordered a dozen of yellow cake cupcakes with chocolate frosting from Angel Food (it's close and open Sundays). The day of the party I realized that more like 30 people were coming so in a panic I made a batch of yellow cupcakes from a Betty Crocker mix and frosted them with "vanilla" (yeah right) flavored frosting from Pillsbury. I dyed the frosting blue and figured the kids would go for the blue and the grown ups would eat the AF cupcakes.

What ended up happening was a cupcake taste-off of sorts. One mom took a bite of her cupcake, then a bite of her sons and declared to the entire party that the blue ones were far superior. So then all the other parents started taking nibbles out of their kids cupcakes and they all concurred. It was then that I told them all the news. Betty C prevailing over made from srcatch? shocking! Oh well, it made lively conversation with frosting on lips.

Anyhow, there you go.

I would put Dinkel's at the top of the three, but I have only ever had the yellow cake with chocolate frosting and cupcakes. Swedish Bakery second OVERALL not for cakes per se (I think they make lovely, moist bundt cakes and their Andersonville Special, which is always back on the racks is a nice coffee cakes for all tastes, not too gooey and not too dry) and Angel Food last for inconsistency.

good luck

bjy

Cookies: I really don't care for the traditional white butter cookie. It's a step up from styrofoam as far as I'm concerned. That said, at Christmas if I'm going to Wichita I'll buy a box of that stuff at Swedish Bakery and take it with me for other people, choosing Swedish Bakery because you can get other, much tastier and more interesting things there as well-- the Swedish coffee cakes and some of the other kinds of cookies like the pepperkakor are the stars for me. So Swedish Bakery is an easy winner there, but I'm not eating the main thing that prompted the question.

Pastries: Swedish Bakery has some pretty good and interesting European style pastry stuff. My experience has been pretty good, if not quite so good that I feel the urge to get it on a more regular basis.

Dinkel's does the traditional American fruit danish and such, all of it two steps up from the same stuff at Jewel. Is it great? No. Is it good enough? Yes. Is it good enough when you can also get some of their chocolate bismarcks, which as far as I'm concerned hold a permanent seat, like France at the UN, on the list of ten best Chicago foodstuffs? Yes, yes, yes. Could they improve the service, which has probably cost them a few birthday cake purchases from me when it takes me two or three years to get over how unhelpful/borderline hostile they were in guiding me through the selecting and decorating process the last time? I think that question answers itself.

I have not had much from AF that I liked. Most of all things from Swedish are good, but not worth the drive and at times an hour wait.

I'm not familiar with the Angel Food options, but I'd choose Dinkel's over Swedish Bakery in a heartbeat.

I realize this does not address the OP's question, but why not just go to Bittersweet or Selmarie?

I have come to love the chocolate-frosted donuts at Dinkel's so much that I begin salivating within a two block radius. It's cruel irony, too, that it's only a block away from the Y where I (theoretically) work out -- like some mean-spirited Sisyphean prank. That said, I am crazy about the cakes at Swedish with the whipped cream and fruit topping -- so light, fresh, and tasty, although recently I've been indulging in specialty cakes from Cakegirls on Belmont. Last year for my birthday I had a cake created that matched my dress, and more recently, they designed a Hammer and Sickle cake for a little Bolshevik-themed get-together. By the way, the first cake was lemon with lemon curd filling, and the second was devil's food with chocolate mousse. Both were yummy delish.