Malta Bake Shop

Bakery: Malta Bake Shop
Address: 3256 Dundas St W, Toronto ON
Website: n/a
Style: Maltese
Price: $

Looking for new locations in Toronto to go cake touring, I made it to Dundas St between Runnymede and High Park and well, it was one of the most successful Cake Tour trips I've made, certainly in Toronto... and certainly the most satisfying! Ethnic bakeries get me VERY excited and what could be more exciting than not only one Maltese bakery, but two.. and Serbian poppy seed heaven at that. Wow, my mind is still reeling! *-*

Honestly, I don't think I ever imagined that I'd be able to find something so... obscure as a Maltese pastry shop and I wasn't really expecting anything thrilling either, perhaps very similar to Italian (which isn't one of my fave baked good countries, to be honest with you), but Maltese stuff, besides the cookies or other more universal treats, was extremely interesting: the majority have strange (for the linguist in me, at any rate), almost Arabic sounding names (I had to research the names on Wikipedia, because there is no way I'd remember them all ;D) and middle eastern-influenced ingredients like dates, almonds and more savoury spices such as allspice and cloves.

And the amazing things about Malta Bake Shop in particular are that, 1) every pastry has an explanation with what's in it (very helpful), 2) the prices are amazing, 3) you have the choice between a smaller pastry ($1.50) and a larger version ($2), 4) it's sooooo good! ;)

So, let's get started in order of how I ate these delectable goodies. First of all, I got two imqaret ($0.70/each): deep fried pieces of dough stuffed with dates and very aromatic spices (the most obvious being allspice). I really think this was my first reason for super excitement. These were so delicious and almost too small (then again, you shouldn't have too many as dates and deep fried is not the most lo-cal combo; there is a healthier version in the other Maltese pastry shop I went to...); the dough was both crunchy and soft, the dates just so good. Mmmm....

Another big discovery was the qaghaq tal-ghasel ($1.50; a large one is available for $2), a pretty unassuming ring of slightly hard dough baked in with, as the sign said, molasses. The description didn't sound all that good; I thought it would be the consistency of caramel, but it ended up being more of a moist, super chewy spice cake with, of course, the taste of molasses and gingerbread spices. If I thought the imqaret were my instant faves, this made me rethink that. ;D If it's not poppy seed, I can be such a sucker for gingerbread-spiced goods... <3 <3

Lastly was the trizzi (this I remembered... and could pronounce ;)))! -- $1.50 for this small version, $2 for large) , a chewy chocolate-cherry-almond cake wrapped in hard dough and topped with some crumble. Admittedly, I ate this three days later because I had so much to sample, so it wasn't too fresh, but it hadn't gone stale either. Ha ha I had a hard time actually trying to distinguish all three main ingredients in the brown mass (unless the almond was actually in the crumble O.o), but it was tasty nonetheless, though perhaps a tad too doughy. To be sure, I preferred the other two better, but I still can't say anything bad about this either; there is a non-chocolate option (strizzi) as well.

But hmm, after all that ranting and raving, do you really need to know the rating? And I all I know is that... I need to go back to this place, heh heh heh! :P

Rating: ****