Undercover Baking Agency aka Criminal Baking Company
463 Sebastopol Ave, Santa Rosa, CA 
http://www.criminalbaking.com/
Review date: Oct. 21, 2014

One of our friends had offered to grill some steaks for dinner during our visit, and I suggested we would bring dessert. I asked if they had ever visited Undercover Bakery as it rated pretty high on Yelp. Yelp isn't reliable when it comes to bakeries, and as he lives in the area he helpfully stopped by prior to our trip to check it out.

He gave them pretty high marks, so we stopped in the day before our dinner to order some mini-pies for pickup the next day. Undercover is a tiny operation on a dead-end street amongst a row of houses. It's necessary to stop by and pick up a pastry menu, because their on-line menu only listed the breakfast and lunch sandwiches/pastries. The in-store selection varies daily.

For pick-up the next day, we selected a mix of the chocolate custard and the coconut cream minis. Although the owner Dawn described the chocolate custard as a "mix of custard and ganache", it's merely a chocolate cream pie, topped with whipped cream and sprinkled with chocolate mini-chips. 

The coconut cream mini is topped with whipped cream and unsweetened coconut shavings. All cream and custard pies come in shortbread crusts. Undercover's shortbread is salty, not sweet, and about average quality on the quality of butter and flour. It's fairly tough, and somewhat thicker than it should be.

The size of the minis is generous, however. The quality of the chocolate and the cream is reasonably good. The fillings are a bit sweet, which is counteracted by the crust.

They are not anywhere close to the quality of Pietisserie/Oakland, but Undercover is head-and-shoulders above Petaluma Pie, whose pies look similar but have an especially awful pastry crust that is close to inedible.

Prices are reasonable. Mini-pies are $5, and Dawn gave us a 10% discount for the order of ten mini-pies.