What Makes Deliciousness
{Sweet To Lick Vegan Bakery}

I have traveled many a-mile to eat vegan food. A tradition that began 15 years ago when I went vegan still living with mom and dad here on Long Island. I used to drive to East Setauket to go to Wild By Nature. Two hours round trip in my 1981 Chevy Citation that was prone to overheating. Food that I could enjoy was well-worth it. And the stocked mini-fridge in my bedroom kept my goodies safe and separate. Since my early vegan roots, I’ve branched out significantly, finding vegan eats all other this great country and beyond. So I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued learning of Sweet To Lick, a Long Island based vegan bakery stelling goodies  right here where I grew up. Besides being easier to find, vegan eats, especially baked goodies, have come a long way. Since I don’t think I’ve griped about since 2008, I’m going to do it again right now… inspired by the deliciousness of Sweet To Lick, a Long Island born and bred vegan, just like me.

Sweet To Lick’s stand at the Lynbrook Farmers Market, every Thursday.

The most important element to a vegan baked good is texture. There I said it. Whipping up a super-sugary buttercream and piping it on a wet sponge or a dry brick, and it’s largely still edible. But it’s not delicious. Texture stands as the determinant of true deliciousness. It is important in any baked good, but in vegan baking, more so as it is seemingly more difficult to achieve as evident by the many dry/dense bites I’ve sampled. The way your teeth find each other through a bite as they press the treat to your tongue–that is the most important sensation. How enticed your taste buds are comes after this experience. And I’ve found that it is the latter experience, the taste, where a treat becomes “pretty good.” After all, it’s rather easy to overcompensate for bad texture with sweet; processed food actually has most accustom to this, actually!  Though I am a bit critical, it is kinda rare when texture and taste unite in the cause of knocking socks off. But Sweet To Lick did so… both with their cookies and their crumbcake.

The famous Ginger Ale Crumb Cake

Let’s look again at this beautiful piece of… cake. You can just see how great its texture is.

Taste: check! Texture: check! And an added bonus: creativity! Michael Sabet, Sweet To Lick’s head honcho, has raised the bar even higher. Besides mastering the traditional bites, creating a mere perfect chocolate chip cookie, he’s also got some very unique and playful flavor combinations. I bought the Elvis cookie made with fried banana and peanut butter. He also had chocolate cookie chip cookies, chocolate cookies with pieces of Oreo-type cookie inside!

I mentioned the chocolate chip cookies–the true measure of deliciousness. Sweet To Lick makes an amazing cho-cho chip cookie. Soft, subtle salt, not too many chips… perfecto. 

Find Sweet To Lick’s stuff around the Island and help push Michael Sabet into a storefront!