Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

After our lunch at Nam An, CAB wanted to check out Big Joy Bakery which was a few strip malls down...

This is the bakery right next to Phuong Trang in the Convoy Plaza strip mall.

It's been at least five or more years since I've been here. They must have remodeled because everything looks so much nicer. They also have more desserts choice than I remembered as well.

They had a big selection of wrapped goodies - cookies, buns, breads, and such. Their prices for some (like the hot dog roll) were a bit pricier than other bakeries. I end up buying a round bun that had cream inside and powdered sugar on top (seen at the middle bottom of the photo). CAB on the other hand, got a few packages of their sweets.

What I saw on the counter really made me excited...a macaron tower! I ended up buying one of each of the flavors they had available (pistachio, chocolate, hazelnut, red velvet, strawberry, cappucino,  vanilla, and blueberry). I was bummed after reading Kirbie's post (she had gone there literally a few days before us)and saw that they had sea salt caramel macarons, which were gone by the weekend. Depending on the flavor, they range from $1.75 to $2.25 each. I think they are worth it. Bouchon's are $3 each and they're smaller.

Here were some cute cupcakes:

Plus amazing cake slices...

Aftewards, we stopped by Pangea because I wanted to buy the hot dog thing for me, I mean TC.

My tray...Got a couple of taro mochi buns (2 for 1), one hot dog thing and a couple of other sale items (one had longans in it the other had pork).

If you look closely, you can see Nam An's "Grand Opening" sign across the street.

C and I shared some of our pastries. This was the one with longans in it. I wasn't too crazy about that.  It kind of tasted like a prune. Ugh. Ooh, I need some fiber. Not.

This was another pastry with dried bits of pork in it. I forgot what it was called but C knows and hopefully she'll post on it. [Update - Read CAB's post here]

The pork bun...it was kind of dry.

You can see a piece of the hot dog bread below.  The other pastry was a sale item: A green tea and walnut bun. At least I think it was a bun but it was too dry to be a cake but too big to be a bun. I didn't really like this one. The nuts had a cinammony taste to them. The other one I bought was an "osmanthus" bun. Bert and I ate that the next day and liked it much better. There were sweet walnuts in that one.

Here are some shots of the macarons I got from Happy Joy:

I just love their cute candy colors!

My favorite was the blueberry while Bert's was the pistachio:

I guess it was safe to say that we enjoyed ALL of the macarons that evening! Bite that!

Who else went to Big Joy Bakery?

Mary from Foodies - A Southern California Foodblog went here back in 2008
Darwin and Ange from Eat, Darwin, Eat! went here last year
Cathy from Mmm-Yoso went here in 2008 and in 2009
Plus the gals from the blog Convoy Conquest
and Kirbie from Kirbie's Cravings went here just a few days ago! (The impetus for our visit)

And because I want to take you back to the 90's, here's a little bit of Ren and Stimpy:

I'm sure I'll be going to Happy Joy again really soon!