Address: 257 Scarlett Road, Toronto ON
Website: http://www.jadrankapastries.com
Style: Bosnian
Price: $$
Jadranka is a teeny tiny pastry shop (with the most adorable red and white heart decor!! ^-^;;) tucked in the corner of a small plaza along Scarlett near Eglinton. Fortunately, I found this place online while bakery hunting in the area and knew exactly where to expect it... and we still managed to drive past this little place and had to turn around. :D
Anyways, these guys are perhaps smaller on the inside and all their goodies are housed in a single glass case (with the exception of a tray of baklava on the back counter and two 'squares' sitting on top of the refrigerated goodies). Inside the glass case, you've got perhaps a dozen different, individually cut cake slices and squares, ranging in price from $1.99-$2.50. The vast majority are
multi-layered torte-like creations with various creams, some chocolate, some looking like nut or coffee and pretty much all of them possessing the original Bosnian names (the price list was therefore not very useful for me and I have no idea what was purchased; I just picked out what looked good and different), so it seems like you have to be in the know. Or, well, you can ask, which I didn't do. ;P So, I came out with three items (two for $1.99 and one for $2.25, I believe). The first came from that 'squares' compartment, since I didn't want to take all cakes (I must admit I'm not the biggest fan of creamy cakes, although these guys may change this a little XD). This ended up being a somewhat strange thing made up of cracked meringue on top and with a filling that no one could accurately place. All anyone could say was that it was pretty gooey: nuts and caramel, maybe? Like I said, no one really knew anything for sure besides the meringue, but it was nonetheless quite good.
The next was this itzy bitzy square
which was close to impossible to split up, but managed to be the biggest hit with the brothers: layers of chocolate cream, crushed nuts and nut/chocolate sponge cake in between. The sampling of this one, I gotta admit, was followed by a, "why on earth don't you more of this stuff?!?!" So this one proved to be popular with one brother, at any rate. (it was too small for me to get my bite of it though :/) My personal fave was the pink cake (and that has nothing to do with the colour of the icing either, though yes, it *was* hard to resist its adorable double-pinkness. :P)
Like the meringue one, I had a hard time figuring what this was. In the store, it looked like some sort of fruit pieces from far away, but looking at it (and eating it) in more detail, I found that the dark pieces were also dough. This was pretty much a mish-mash of sponge cakes -- maybe a little like the torte version of bread pudding? All I know was that this thing was good, really good! Mmm... dark pink ganache, light pink icing with soft and moist sponge cake made all the more moist with the fact that this was soaked in liquor. Ohhh, the pink did not deceive! *-* Overall, seriously there are so many Eastern European (ahem, Polish places should especially get the hint >.>) bakeries who need to take Jadranka as a great example: slice up your cakes in small pieces, make them interesting and unique from one another and you've got yourself an amazing cake shop! You're not scared of taking more than one (versus these giant slabs sold by kilo) and it still turns out affordable (an old man was in front of us and he got probably 12-14 different pieces and paid the same as you would for one cake) and you can just sample a little bit of everything -- great idea and well, it tastes great too. :3
Rating: ***1/2
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