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Xs to Os Vegan Bakery in Troy

Xs to Os Vegan Bakery

It's getting better and better to be a vegan in the Capital District.

Not only is there now a vegan catering company, there's also a new vegan bakery in Troy.

Xs to Os has only been at its new digs on Fourth Street for about a month. Prior to that, Sarah Preston's goods were only available through mail order and in a few other places, including the farmers market at the Empire State Plaza. Amy checked out some of her goods last year and gave them high praise.

Sarah has been a vegan herself for eight years and has been baking sans animal products for almost as long. She says her business grew out of her own desire to eat delicious vegan sweets and it's basically evolved from there.

Her new shop is a combination of retail and wholesale, so the hours are a little weird right now but will hopefully be extended. Sarah says she wanted to open a bakery, but she also needed a place to bake goodies for her rapidly expanding number of orders. She says that basically, it had become "way too crazy trying to bake a hundred 'Twinkies' in my tiny apartment kitchen."

It's a large, airy space, decorated in a sort of an updated 1950s way with cool retro bakery cases, vinyl chairs and vintage kitchen tables. It's a little sparse right now, but it's only been open a month so I'm sure it will be filled out soon. The selection each day isn't huge, but you can definitely count on a good sampling of cupcakes, pie, brownies, cookies and more. Sarah says she's been getting more and more walk-in customers all the time, with last weekend being one of the best. And this week she's busily working on Thanksgiving specialties like pumpkin pies and pumpkin chocolate chip cake.

She's been doing a lot of gluten-free baked goods as well, including a version of her specialty, canoe boats, which are basically like vegan Twinkies in various flavors. I've tried a funfetti one and a plain vanilla, both of which were quite tasty. Sometimes vegan frosting seems a little gritty to me, but hers is much creamier than I expected. On a recent stop there with my mother, she tried the vegan mini Boston cream pie, which was really cute _ and good. I didn't taste it myself but I'll take her word for it.

Another bonus: her stuff's pretty affordable. Canoe boats will set you back $1.50, cupcakes are $2.50 and a slice of vegan cheesecake is $4.

Her Etsy shop is on a little bit of a hiatus while she gets the brick-and-mortar bakery running, but she's currently doing about half-wholesale, half-retails sales. Her goods can also be found at online vegan store Pangea as well as spots in Brooklyn and Ithaca, amongst others.

So how's running a business as a full-time job going? Well, Sarah says that she typically works 13-14 hours a day and sometimes bakes up to 200 canoe boats a day, but in her words, "it's totally awesome."