First of all, thank you so much to all those who applied to Cinnaholic over the last few weeks. We were lucky to have so many qualified, passionate people apply. We wish we could have hired you all!

After hours of reading through resumes and interviewing the candidates we felt to be most qualified, we think we’ve found the perfect team!

Are you ready to meet the new faces of Cinnaholic?

Here they are!!!  Here’s what they had to say…

Ashley

“I have deep love for all animals, and I believe that we do not have a right to kill, consume, test on, or use them for our benefit. Becoming vegan and living cruelty free has had such a great impact on my life and it has taught me so many important lessons that I will never forget. I like to educate others and myself on vegan and animal rights topics,  peruse vegan and animal rights blogs and websites, read books on veganism and animal welfare, and I always do my part to be the voice of animals since they do not have one.  I enjoy cooking and baking all things vegan, supporting local vegan businesses, riding my bike, attending vegan events, doing my part to save the environment, discovering new vegan eateries, making homemade kombucha, meeting new people, drinking fair trade coffee, and being in nature. I enjoy going to shows, vintage and thrift stores,  farmers markets,  and Oakland’s art murmur. I also foster kittens, and I rescued my two cats: Old Man and Bat Boy.”

Lilly-Marie

“My story at Cinnaholic begins at a body modification conference in Las Vegas. It was there that I met my husband-to-be and fell in love with both him and his knack for vegan baked goods. With each and every cruelty-free treat I had, I found myself not only craving more, but yearning to learn everything I could about this interesting culture. Before I knew it, I had adopted a vegan lifestyle, quit my job in Arizona and shipped out to Long Beach to pursue my love for my fiancé, veganism, baking and California dreamin’. Six months later, a friend of ours told us about a bakery opening in Berkeley that was looking for an eager and dedicated staff. Within 48 hours the decision had been made to pack my things and head north to take the golden opportunity that was working at Cinnaholic! I’m so excited to be here and assist you with any of your sweet tooth needs!”

Justin

“I’ve been vegan for about four years. I could not be more excited for the opportunity to work at Cinnaholic! I have a strong love for animals and people alike which is why I find so much joy in organizing community events like vegan potlucks and waffle parties. If you happen to see me riding through the streets on my Fuji Track Pro be sure catch up and say hello!”

Chelsea

“Generally speaking, I consider myself to be a sort of professional housewife. I spend most of my time either in the kitchen baking vegan pies and making sauerkraut, or at my sewing machine whipping up dresses and fixing friend’s jeans. I am also a member of Rock Paper Scissors Collective in West Oakland, where I help coordinate gallery shows, volunteer orientations, sewing classes, and events like the annual Vegan Cupcake Bake-Off. I could not be more thrilled to have been added to the Cinnaholic team, and look forward to spreading the good word on delicious vegan pastries!”

Jennifer

“I’ve been vegan for around seven years and professionally baking for about the same amount of time. Living a vegan lifestyle is the best choice I’ve ever made and I’m extremely passionate about animal rights. I have a degree in commercial photography and literature as well as ASA certification (lets go sailing!). When I’m not at work baking, I’m probably at home baking. Being really into art put being completely unable to draw anything but a straight line I have found that food is a great creative outlet. A few of my more nerdy pursuits include records, books, puzzles, entomology, fixing my weekly flat tire and picnics in the sun. I am super excited to be the newest member of the cinnaholic team! hella.”

Last week was INSANE for us! Especially this last Saturday!

We decided to offer samples for our grand opening day so that everyone could get a taste of a few different flavors. The best part? It was only $3.50 to fill up a box of 4! We had a steady line of people waiting outside from 12-4pm which our friend Karine Brighten helped to organize. By 4:00pm, we were SOLD OUT! Covered in frosting and toppings, we all beamed with excitement. Despite the crowd, everything went pretty smoothly. The Cinnaholic staff joined the Veg News crew next door at Saturn Cafe for lunch afterward. It was also their opening day. A quick burger and some fries later, it was back to the shop for clean up. We decided to take a breather on Sunday to replenish our stock and soak our feet.

Rested and rejuvenated, we were up bright and early on Monday morning. 4:30 am to be exact! Throughout the week we seemed to have a pretty steady flow of people. We had our rushes, our slower times, and of course our dead times. Our staff did an amazing job managing everything and everyone.

Because this is our first business, of course we made some mistakes which resulted in learning… a lot. There was a point in time where during a rush, we might have forgotten to add the “butter” to the recipe, maybe we ran out of a few ingredients a few times and maybe our POS system was acting up. Despite the difficulty we had with some of our suppliers, our deliveries, our equipment and… eh hem…operator error, we are really proud of our staff and ourselves for managing to get through everything without pulling our hair out.

We know that every business that’s starting up has some kinks to work out. We took a lot of notes and listened to a lot of suggestions this week. We hope that everyone who stopped by was satisfied and for those who may not have had a life changing experience, we hope you were forgiving. We are so thankful for our staff, our investors, our vendors, our friends, family, and most of all, for YOU! Our customers.

We REALLY appreciate all the positive Yelp reviews and we’ve taken all of your suggestions into consideration. We’d love to hear anymore feedback that you might have. Please send us a message or leave us a comment here on the website.

Thanks again for all your support. We look forward to seeing you in the shop!

Love,

Shannon & Florian

Cinnaholic is proud to announce our grand opening!

Assuming our final inspections pass next week, we plan to officially open up shop on Saturday, July 17^th!!! Please stop by from 12pm – 4pm and check out all the delicious treats we have in store for you.

We bake everything on-site and allow you to customize your own cinnamon roll! Feel like a Pina Colada or a Rootbeer roll? Perhaps a Rocky Road or a Banana Nut are more your style? Whatever you like, you got it!  And you know what the best part is? As a thank you for celebrating with us for our grand opening, we’ve decided to offer you any roll for just $3.50!!!

We couldn’t have fulfilled our dream of serving you tasty treats without the help of friends and family. We are so grateful for our investors who made this all possible, to our grand opening organizer Karine Brighten of Karine Brighten Events, to our new staff, to the press for spreading the word, to those who have supported us by attending local bakesales and events, and to YOU for your kind words and business.  We are honored to be the Bay Area’s first gourmet cinnamon roll shop (and vegan ta’boot)!

For the latest updates on our offerings and specials, please sign up for our newsletter! You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

We look forward to meeting you on Saturday, July 17^th!

A couple months ago I was fortunate to meet Annie Shannon through mutual Facebook friends. I quickly realized we shared a mutual love of fashion, had a passion for animals and more importantly, an immense love for FOOD! When Annie started her blog ‘Meet the Shannons’, I was beyond stoked! It was a relief to know I wasn’t the only one who could strangely relate to the movie Julie and Julia.

As I read through her recipes, of course, the Caramel Sticky Rolls stood out. The challenge was on!

I followed the majority of the instructions on Annie’s blog for the most part.

I found the dough to be much tougher when kneading it than the dough I’m used to working with. However, this made the dough very easy to handle as far as rolling went. Skeptical, I pressed on.

When it came to making the caramel sauce, I realized I was out of powdered sugar. Crap. I substituted regular cane sugar instead. The first time I boiled it and let it cool, the margarine separated from the sugar. I boiled it a second time and it blended just fine. I also added a half teaspoon of Madagascar vanilla bourbon extract for extra flavor once I removed it from the heat. YUM.

Much to my dismay, I realized I was out of cranberries for the filling as well. I ended up using a half cup of crushed pieces of sweet, candied pecans instead. I also found that the brown sugar filling wasn’t enough to cover the area I was working with (about 10″x15″). I added an additional 1/2 teaspoon on cinnamon and 1/4 cup of brown sugar.

After they were baked, it was judgment time! They came out much softer than I had anticipated but also much more flakier than I’d hoped. I guess I had expected them to be more chewy since the dough was tougher than I’m used to. Overall, they came out really good. They were evenly baked, soft, not too much filling and just the right amount of sweetness.

The caramel sauce? OMG. This stuff is no joke! I made the mistake of drizzling the sauce over the rolls while they were still hot resulting it 90% of it sliding down the sides and forming pools on the parchment paper. Thankfully, once the sauce had cooled, I was able to scoop it up, lay it on top of the roll again and watch it form a perfect shiny glaze over the top.I think next time I may even melt a few chocolate chips into the sauce.

I definitely recommend you try this recipe!

Thank you Annie for sharing your blog. You are an inspiration to those without a clue how to veganise “normal” food. If you ever decided to put out a print version of your recipes, reserve me 5 copies!!!

.

Thanks for inquiring! Our open positions have been filled.

We’ll be posting an update with an introduction to our team soon!

Cinnaholic is looking for a highly motivated staff who can do it all! Must have a passion for baking and excellent knowledge regarding the vegan lifestyle.

This is a part-time position.

Kitchen duties include preparing all aspects of products for consumption. This includes food prep, packaging prepared products and final sales. Other duties include: maintenance, inventory control, counter help & maintaining cleanliness of shop.

Detailed description of duties:

Baking: Prepares dough by measuring and mixing ingredients, forms dough into rolls, proofs, dough, bakes dough, cools dough, decorates finished product with prepared frostings and toppings. Adjusts drafts or thermostatic controls to regulate oven temperature.​ Packages baked goods to ensure freshness.

Prep Work: Prepares and measures topping ingredients each morning and fills containers for quick serve. Prepares and measures multiple flavored frostings for quick serve. Refills products as needed.

Maintenance: Maintains cleanliness and operation of mixing and baking equipment by following operating/cleaning instructions. Maintains cleanliness of store as needed including mopping, sanitizing food prep area, routine dusting and general disinfecting.

Inventory Control: Receives, signs for, and stocks product orders from suppliers. Maintains and replenishes quantity of inventory.

Counter Help: Greets customers, serves customers, knowledge of POS system, handles all sales transactions, prints daily reports and balances.

Miscellaneous duties: Cleans, disinfects, and stores baking equipment such as dishes and utensils properly according to health requirements. Prepares proper boxes and packaging for product consumption and sales. Maintains safety of establishment through awareness of hazardous situations such as wet floors, oven temperatures and basic security routines.

Skills/​Qualifications:

Friendly, team player, focused, dependable, thorough, works well under pressure & reliable. Must be customer service oriented, have knowledge of basic food sanitation and safety management, ability to multi-task, verbal communication skills; basic mathematic skills; written communication, must have ability to lift 50 lbs.

Click HERE to apply!

This Saturday we will be selling our tasty treats at the East Bay Vegan Bakesale! The profit will be going to  Walk Oakland Bike Oakland and the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society. Remember that horrible fire that killed 15 poor little kitties and destroyed part of their building last month? Awful. That’s why we’ve stepped up to bake and you should come out and eat! Humane society’s do so much for our community, we need to help keep them up and running and saving lives!!!

The bakesale takes place in front of Issues from 11-3pm. It’ located at 20 Glen Ave. (@ Piedmont Ave.) in Oakland. There will be several amazing professional bakeries contributing as well as a great mix of home bakers. For more info on baking, eating or whatever… you can email them at EBVeganBakesale[at]gmail[dot]com or find them on Twitter @EBVeganBakesale.

Feel free to leave us a comment if you would like to request a specific flavor.

See you Saturday!

Hey all! The chaos has finally subsided for a moment. For those who were wondering… our wedding was perfect! We’ll post more pictures later.

I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking when we expect to open up. As of now, we are still getting our permits signed off with the city of Berkeley and remodeling the shop. Here’s a little glimpse at the disaster that’s taking place as I type.

After construction is complete, hopefully in about 3 weeks, our next step is to install our bakery equipment. Once everything looks all nice and pretty, we need to get it approved by the health department and fire and safety. Once all that is squared away, they hand us our official business license! We don’t really have an exact opening date just yet but we’re hoping to be up and running within a month or so.

In the meantime… we’ve decided to pair up with PETA for SF Pride this year! We had so much fun dressing up at “lettuce people” and handing out vegetarian starter kits last year, we decided to sponsor the truck this year! Grab a veg starter kit packet this year and find more info on our shop as well as a 25% off coupon on your first purchase!

We’re getting super pumped about everything coming up in the next few weeks! We hope to see some of you at Pride on Sunday, June 27th. The parade kicks off at 10:30 a.m. at Market & Beale and ends at Market & 8th St. in downtown San Francisco.

If you can’t make it to Pride, we hope to see you in the store very soon!

Sorry for the lag on posting. So much has been happening lately! If you are reading this, you know that last week we launched our new website and had a photo shoot with Kat Spoer. Miss Rockwell De Vil did an amazing job on my hair and makeup! Here’s one of the pics…

On a personal side note, we have been mad crazy busy trying to organize all the stuff for our “traditional” wedding on Sunday. I FINALLY got my dress from Fairy Goth Mother in London and my custom-made (ridiculously cute) shoes from Iron Fist Clothing. *squeal*

The last few days our house had been a madhouse. People in and out, and sleeping on couches. Not to mention we all have different sleeping habits and some are still jet-lagged from the trip here from Germany. Throw in 2 cats and a chihuahua and you got yourself some restlessness.

It’s been busy, but it’s been fun. Tonight we plan to stuff our faces full of Gracias Madre and drink like our livers don’t exist. Well, except for our straight edge friends. They get to be our designated drivers by default. I’m betting by midnight at least 5 of us will be screaming Journey and/or Queen ballads while hanging out the window. I’m sure it will be a night to remember and a hell of a day to pay for tomorrow. Yay weddings!

As for the business, we finally got our building permit, bought our equipment for the bakery and had the retaining wall put in. There are a few more things we need to check off our list in order to get our official business license but we’ve been busting our butts to get it done. We still don’t have an official opening date but we’re getting closer to our goal. We hope the rest will go smoothly. Think good thoughts!

I hope you all have a great weekend. Now let’s get this married thing started!

As it turned out, I ended up taking the day off work on Friday. I figured since I had the day off, I would just make the cake myself. I went through a couple recipes and found a chocolate raspberry ganache one that had been given to me about a year ago.

You can see the full recipe HERE. Thanks Karen!

For the filling, I folded a carton of fresh raspberries into the raspberry butter cream recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

The cake came out really moist and dense. Just like I like it. It was super chocolatey with just the right amount of raspberry kick to it. My husband said it kind of reminds him of a classic dessert from Vienna called Sachertorte. It’s been 3 days and we’re still raving about it!

Mission birthday cake, accomplished!

My next mission? Tackling my own version of the infamous Vegan Treats peanut butter bomb! YUM.

I have 3 weeks until the wedding. Up until last Monday, I was eating a ton of sugar, more fatty foods than usual, and consuming coffee like it was going out of style. I asked my PETA Pack coach if he would create a pre-wedding diet/workout plan for me to cleanse my body of all the crap I was putting into it.

Part of the plan consisted of a spirulina smoothie type drink. 

My goal was to drink only the smoothie for 5 days and then start on the actual food portion of it on day 6. I totally failed. I made it through 2 days of the spirulina drink and ended up eating mac n’ cheese cause I’m a sucker for pasta. BUT today is a new day. I’ve decided I can handle the spirulina drink for breakfast and lunch but my body needs some kind of actual food for dinner. I just need to watch what I eat. NO MORE MAC N’ CHEESE! At least, until after the wedding. Then, I’m bathing in it.

I decided to research spirulina and see what the big deal was. I found some pretty interesting facts on various medical and health websites. Spirulina.org seemed to sum up all the info that I’d found pretty well. After researching, I definitely plan to incorporate spirulina into my diet on a regular basis.

Here are a few reasons you should too!

• Spirulina is a type of blue-green algae that is rich in protein, 14 vitamins, 12 minerals, and carotenoids (a type of antioxidant that can help protect cells from damage). It contains nutrients, including B complex vitamins, beta-carotene, vitamin E, manganese, zinc, copper, iron, selenium, and gamma linolenic acid (an essential fatty acid).

• 60% of spirulina consists of protein. This is about three times as much as an ordinary piece of meat. Protein is very important for a lot of processes in your body, like metabolism, cell construction, and muscle building. Spirulina also contains all the amino acids that exist making it a complete protein. 

• Spirulina is one of the few plant sources of vitamin B12. B12 is primarily found in animal products. Thus, vegans should take note to add spirulina to their diet. Lack of B12 can cause fatigue, problems concentrating, anemia and can even cause dementia.  

• Spirulina is a rich source of anti-oxidants, particularly beta-carotene. This nutrient mainly protects against mutations in the DNA, which can cause cancer.

• Spirulina protects against the formation of cholesterol in the blood vessel walls and against arthritis. 

• Spirulina protects the endothelial cells which cover our veins and against degenerative processes in the brain that lead to Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease.

• Spirulina contains loads of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll has a cleansing effect and gets rid of toxic substances in our bodies. 

• The most common sugars in spirulina are rhamnose and glycogen. The body absorbs these sugars very easily, providing quick energy. Because spirulina supplies energy quickly, it is suitable for gaining energy during sports and restoring your muscles after strenuous effort.

• Some researchers claim that spirulina is useful in helping diabetics control their food cravings and in decreasing their insulin intake.

• Spirulina is a very rich source of gamma-linolic acid (GLA), this is one of the famous omega fatty acids. A study at the Nottingham University Hospital showed that GLA can also play an important role in the fight against breast cancer. To show the overall importance of GLA, here is an overview of it’s functions: slows down inflammation reactions; slows down thrombosis formation; reduces the blood pressure; slows down the production of cholesterol; stimulates immune cells; reduces pre-menstrual complaints (hey ladies!); reduces skin diseases and also appears to have a positive result on MS.

• It even seems that spirulina has an HIV-inhibiting effect. As early as 1998, it was published that spirulina could halve the HIV production in the main cells of your immune system. More recent results on AIDS-patients in Africa have also shown hopeful results: people feel more energized and fall ill less rapidly.

Crazy, right? To be honest, I was terrified of it at first. It’s definitely not the most appealing looking drink, but I went for it anyway. Surprisingly, it has a very mild taste which makes it easy to slip a tablespoon into any smoothie. You can find it at Whole Foods or most health stores. It comes in powder and capsule form. Go for the powder.

It’s doubtful I’ll feel “transformed” after this smoothie/raw diet thing but I’m pretty stoked to have learned more about such an amazing little plant. If anything, I can say that on my third day of this diet, my skin looks better which is a plus.

I also read somewhere that it can be sprinkled into baked goods? I’m super down to give it a go. Don’t be surprised if you see us at the next bakesale with a chocolate spirulina muffin!