Disney Springs has seen LOTS of changes lately!

Disney Springs has welcomed a few new restaurants recently like EET by Maneet Chauhan and Summer House on the Lake. But with so many stores closing there lately, too, how are the restaurants that have been around for a while? We took on the challenge to find out!

If you’ve found yourself wandering The Landing at Disney Springs, you’ve probably passed right by this allergy-friendly, vegan bakery. Erin McKenna’s Bakery NYC is a fairly small quick-service restaurant that specializes in sweets and treats made to serve, “…the underserved people with gluten, dairy, egg and soy sensitivities, the heath-minded, and, most importantly, allergic kids who are often unable to indulge. Our goal is to make eating vegan and gluten-free fun and delicious.”

The restaurant is named after Erin McKenna, the founder of Babycakes NYC (a sister location outside of Disney Springs), and can be found near the neighboring Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company and The Boathouse. Most folks who are familiar with Main Street Bakery at Magic Kingdom and Les Halles Boulangerie Patisserie in EPCOT can easily find themselves venturing here to pick up a treat or two.

And of course that’s us, so we decided to pop in for a (few) quick bites to see how their options compare to our past reviews.

Atmosphere

This really is a quaint little bakery hidden in Disney Springs. While there’s not a lot of space on the inside, there is quite an extensive selection of pastries, bakery sweets, and a few savory options (we’ll come back to that later!)

So when you step into this space, you’ll really only have room enough to see the selections, order, and pay at the register to take your items “to-go” with you. We didn’t mind this as it gave us a chance to go elsewhere and find a quiet spot to sit and enjoy our treats!

Menu

Ah, you’re probably wondering what exactly is on the menu of a vegan-friendly bakery, and the short answer is, lots of things! The bakery menu offers everything from donuts to bagels…

… and even cakes and cupcakes!

There are even a few beverage options like tea, water, and coffee, with a few select merchandise items you can pick up as well.

After we had time to browse the menu selections, we made our final choices and then took them by the water to sit and review them.

Eats

Sorry to keep you in such suspense … you’re probably eager to find out everything we chose! We tried to play this fairly and have a mix of sweet and savory options so we grabbed the Brownie Bomb Cupcake, Vanilla Dipped Cookie Sandwich, Cinnamon Roll, and Veggie Bomb.

First up, let’s talk about the Brownie Bomb Cupcake. We picked this up for $8.10. This sweet treat is made of a chocolate-flavored cupcake, with cream cheese icing as filling and topped with a brownie piece in caramel icing. The brownie piece on top of the cupcake was pretty moist. There wasn’t too much of a vegan or gluten-free flavor or texture to it that was noticeable, but the cupcake seemed to be made out of a similar batter, if not the same. This treat was made much better by the frosting which acted like a filling throughout the whole cupcake.

The frosting on top tasted like caramel, and the frosting in the center of the cupcake tasted like a vegan cream cheese. We have to give you a warning though because with all the different elements to this cupcake, it easily falls apart — which it did all over us. We didn’t mind, though, because it was delicious. We’re now convinced the entire cupcake is actually a brownie, and we liked it a lot!!!

Then we moved on to the Vanilla Dipped Cookie Sandwich, which cost us $14.30 and tasted AMAZING if you love insanely sweet treats (hi, that’s us — we’re sorry.)

The cookie is undetectably vegan and gluten-free and honestly so is the frosting (which we don’t usually think about Erin McKenna frosting).  We think there’s something about the way the chocolate dip, the chocolate chip cookie, and the frosting all work together to create a texture that really worked for it, and at the same time made it seem like a treat made with dairy and eggs, except it wasn’t.

This was another overwhelmingly sweet treat, so if you don’t like sweet things, it’s best to try something else. This one was sweeter than the cupcake we tried. If you like frosting cookie sandwiches and like a generous chewable chocolate coating on one side, you will love this.

Up next on our list was the Cinnamon Roll we snagged for $9.70. We’re sad to report this was drier than we would’ve liked. We think it could have benefited from being heated up a little bit before serving it.

The icing is really delicious, and we don’t want to sound like a broken record again, but they seem to have really honed in on the recipes here because none of the treats we’ve tasted so far taste like they are both gluten-free and vegan.

This treat was shockingly close to a regular non-vegan, non-gluten-free cinnamon roll. It’s just a tad on the dry side, and we think our recommendation could have fixed that. But even as it is, we would totally buy a couple of these to take back to our hotel room for a quick breakfast on vacation.

To round out our feast of sweets we opted for a savory selection. We picked up the Veggie Bomb which cost us $9.20. This Veggie Bomb was delicious, and we’re in love with it. This is a crave-worthy savory snack for sure!

It is said to be like a biscuit, but we got total veggie pizza vibes and were instantly obsessed with it. It smells like pizza dough and tastes like pizza. It’s like a pizza in the shape of a biscuit; like something from a dream. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?! The texture on the inside definitely looks a little weird, so we started getting the “vegan gluten-free vibe” from that texture initially.

The inside looks kind of almost like Play-Doh but when you bite into it, that texture doesn’t actually materialize physically in your mouth. This very easily was our favorite snack we tried today out of everything — with the cookie sandwich a close second.

Overall

In the past, we’ve had bad personal experiences getting sweets and treats here, and we weren’t really looking forward to giving it another go. We think they know how to make amazing things at Erin McKenna’s Bakery NYC at other locations before, but maybe this location was lacking in that past experience and now they are popping off!

While not everything totally knocked our socks off, the recipes that have been created to feel and taste like regular treats really left an impression on us. It appears that Erin McKenna’s has really stepped up their recipes and changed the game for alternative eats and we’re here for it.

Nosh or Not?

We recommend stopping by if…

• You’re looking for allergy-friendly eats. That’s literally this restaurant’s mission — to provide sweets and treats to those who need allergy-friendly options.
• You’re looking for vegan eats. If you’ve adopted a vegan lifestyle and feel like you’re having a hard time finding quality treats, give this restaurant a try — we don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

We would recommend stopping by another sweet shop if…

• Your taste is sensitive to “normal” sugar snacks. The ingredients used in all of the recipes at this restaurant are going to be allergy-friendly so you might find them tasting a little “off” or lacking compared to other treats you typically taste.
• Your diet doesn’t allow for sweets. That’s the bulk of what’s served here. There are a few savory options you can choose from (like the Veggie Bomb) but it probably won’t be your first choice for super savory things.

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Have you ever picked up a treat from Erin McKenna’s Bakery at Disney Springs? Tell us what you got and what you thought of it down below!