Doughmonkey pastry shop in Dallas’ Snider Plaza reopens

by PegNews wire

DALLAS — Doughmonkey, the pastry shop in Snider Plaza owned by chef Rhonda Ruckman, has reopened, reports Belo's Eats blog.

Ruckman, whose desserts are as impeccable to look at as they are to taste, closed the retail portion of her business last year in order to focus on building the wholesale business (i.e., baking cakes and pastries for restaurants and other businesses).

"We didn't want to spread ourselves too thin, but now that we've got the wholesale business going, we're trying to slowly grow," she says. She re-opened on Wednesday, with one change: She'll no longer be doing birthday cakes.

"I'm working on chocolates mainly, so we're not really doing the birthday cakes anymore," she says. "Chocolates are my new passion -- caramels, molded, dipped, candy, confections, chocolate-covered almonds, we've got some homemade marshmallows with exotic honeys. I really want to make chocolates. I've always loved chocolate, the more I got into it. I've been discovering these American-made manufacturers, you read about these guys and the artisan work they're doing, so we're bringing that down here, and I'm using their chocolate to work with a couple of things."

For example: extra-brut cocoa powder chocolate cake with a poured ganache made from Patric chocolate, a new darling within the chocolate cult. She's also doing au courant drinking chocolate: This week's flavor features Valrhona Araguani chocolate and is topped with a housemade Tasmanian Honey marshmallow.

Posted by T.G.