One beautiful Friday afternoon, I had guests visiting us in Green Bay. We stopped at a local favorite, the 1935 relic Al’s Hamburgers, for a cheap and filling lunch. The beauty of having visitors even in this time of COVID-19 is their willingness to explore and find things with you that you hadn’t thought to visit before without them. Masks on and ready to find something sweet to help wash down beautiful burgers, my friend Jill directed us to Monzu Bakery and Custom Cakes from her searching of google maps. I drove past it three times, even with my GPS on to help guide me. If I had any idea what I would find inside its walls, I wouldn’t have needed the GPS. I will ALWAYS stop for macarons. I’m so thankful for Jill’s sweet tooth for guiding us to Monzu and fulfilling a deep craving that I’ve had since I was last in Cleveland. A good macaron is hard to find even in the biggest cities, but Green Bay has been blessed with pastry chef Jennifer Bukouricz working some making with almond flour and meringue. As you can see in the pictures I took of my bounty, the foot of the cookie is perfectly formed, and she has managed such lovely decorations on each and every one while maintaining the integrity of the cookie itself. She offers a variety of flavors and seasonal specials, not the least of these were my two favorites: the butterfinger flavor and the mint chocolate. They are as advertised. I tasted a butterfinger-- not just peanut butter and chocolate. And my god, that mint chocolate. It was a fucking thin mint macaron in my mouth, the most holy combination I could ever imagine in a cookie. I wish I had got more than two of them.
She does an excellent job of advertising these macarons into a special case of twelve for twenty USD, which hooked myself and Jill right away. We both got a box filled with the most tempting flavors to each of us, but there is always more where that came from. If you’re interested in what the pastry chef has to offer, their website has a full workup of their capabilities with macarons-- including a macaron tower and little gift boxes for guests. To me, these are the flagship items of Monzu-- easily accessible to someone walking in off the street but also capable of being upsized for big orders. Also available are a variety of mini cakes, one of which we saved for our evening of boardgames: the Triple Vanilla Creme Brulee. It takes a deft hand to manage the sweetness of a butter cream against the delicate nature of a good cake, but they did it. We split that little sucker between three of us, and it made me wish we had gotten one of the bigger ones from the other case. Her decoration work is fucking divine. I wanted the strawberry shortcake one you can see at the front of the case so badly, but it wasn’t a purchase I could justify without having tasted the rest of her work. Knowing now what I do, Monzu Bakery and Custom Cakes will be on the list of places I want to share with other visitors in the future. Few trips are complete without a sweet treat anywhere you go, and I believe I have found a crowning jewel of this great city tucked away on Broadway street. If you are a Green Bay area resident, you can order her creations through Eat Street for delivery if you are maintaining a limited amount of exposure during COVID-19. She also offers in store or curbside pick up at her website, which I highly recommend anyone take a look at. Send her some love, and tell her Eating Normal sent you.
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