H&A Bakery [RIP]

Bakery: H&A Bakery
Address: 3290 Midland Ave, Toronto ON
Website: n/a
Style: Chinese
Price: $ 

[Erm, yay? I finally got down to updating my layout a little bit. Not the greatest work of art, but I tried. *sighs* Given it's the first time I actually changed anything since opening this thing two years ago, it should still count for something. Right? ^.^]

H&A is (yet another) Chinese bakery located in east Toronto and whose baked goods I found in both T&T and Oceans. For whatever reason, they have only two options in either store, so I'm a little confused as to why they go through all that trouble for two cakes (both of which have been tried) and which aren't necessarily that good either.

Nonetheless, at Oceans, I got their steam cake ($1.19), which I was curious to try as I hadn't had this nor seen it anywhere except T&T and was curious how a smaller bakery would fare. As can be seen from the picture, it was pretty huge and instead of being nice and moist, as any sort of steam buns almost always are, they pretty much crumbled upon contact. The texture was sandy and oddly greasy; there was also this lingering taste of vegetable shortening. Not sure why, but that was the only thing you could really taste and that wasn't really a good thing.

A week or so later, I spotted their "egg white cake" ($1.49.. or was it $1.29 O.o Don't remember..) at T&T and having read that there was no shortening (like in the steam cake) on the ingredients list, but rather eggs and lemon jam, I thought it would be a tastier treat. It certainly seemed like it and through the plastic wrap, it was definitely much moister than the former. In this sense, I was right. It was definitely tastier with that ever so slight hint of lemon and moist mass of sponge cake. Taste-wise, it was nice and refreshing, but I thought it way too doughy and again, despite the moistness, it was crumbly, so just eating it plain was a little like eating sand. The taste was *exactly* like the dough in fruit flans (of the sponge cake variety, not a flaky crust) or fruit and cream cakes, so I can't say there was anything definitively "Chinese" about it. Going with that, I think it would turn out pretty well if you were to halve it lengthwise and just add your own berries or custard; it wouldn't be so doughy and you'd make yourself a yummy cake for under $2! :D

Overall, it was exciting to find something different at the supermarket, but I'm really wondering why, of all Chinese bakeries, they chose to stock these guys, as there really isn't anything all that unique (or overwhelmingly good -_-) about them.

Rating: **