80 W. Michigan Avenue, Suite BYou gotta have sweets on your birthday, right?
J and I both had the day off for her birthday a couple of weeks ago. The kids were doing a Spring Break camp at The Civic and Friday is show day. I would never have been able to skip out of work to catch the show and J had the week off for Spring Break anyway.
We had the day to ourselves so I let J pick where she wanted to go for lunch. I threw out a couple of options but she ended choosing New Holland Brewing in Battle Creek. The restaurant was opening that day so we got there early to make sure we could still get a table.
I told her as we were talking to the restaurant that I had an idea for dessert. There is a bakery right down the street and it was a nice enough day, we headed down for a treat after a delicious lunch.
Simply Sensational Berries is on West Michigan Avenue north of McCamly Street in downtown Battle Creek. The small restaurant is part of the street level retail space below the city owned Michigan Avenue Parking Ramp.
The bakery is pretty small but they pack a lot in to the space. There’s an order counter next to the kitchen. I was somewhat surprised to see that in addition to their sweets, they also do hot beverages and a small lunch menu.
There are a couple of dine-in tables as well along the windows if you’re eating lunch and want to get away from the office for a little bit.
We were there for the sweets though so our eyes immediately went to the large refrigerated display case with all of the baked goods.
Obviously, with berries in the name, there are a lot of items with berries in them. I’m not much of a fruit guy so I found the cupcakes without fruit and picked one of the Cookie Dough Cupcakes. This cupcake was a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting with pieces of chocolate chips mixed in to it. It was topped with a ball of cookie dough and chocolate ganache. The cake was super moist and frosting, despite being vanilla, still had that chocolatey flavor with the chips. The cookie dough ball on top was a great add on adding another little bit to a delicious cupcake.
J was intrigued by two things so she got two things. The first thing she got was a cookie sandwich. It looked like two giant chocolate chip cookies with sweet cream between them but it turned out, it was actually a giant marshmallow between them. I was leaning towards this but I don’t really like marshmallows so I’m glad I didn’t. J said it was delicious. The cookies were soft and marshmallow was super stringy.
The other thing she got was a giant Rice Krispy Treat. She didn’t eat this right away and had to hide it from the kids. The snack is a typical Rice Crispy treat…on a much larger scale…with bits of cookie and mini marshmallows added in.
The cost for our dessert was right around $13.
I’ve worked in Battle Creek many times and thought of stopping for something sweet to bring home to the kids but it’s never worked out that way. This shop will actually be moving across the street in the next couple of months after several years at their current location so you know they’re doing pretty well. Knowing they have a lunch menu gives me all the reason to go back…although the cupcake was a reason in itself.