Ding Dong Pastries

 Bakery: Ding Dong Pastries 
Address: 321 Spadina Ave, Toronto ON
Website: n/a
Style: Chinese 
Price: $

I'm somewhat returning after a bakery dry spell with two new entries and the promise of amazing things to come: the most ambitious World Tour to date, right in the hotbed of Scandinavian baking and hopefully a few more obscure, where-on-earth-is-that bakeries. Denmark and Sweden (with a mandatory stop in my beloved Iceland ^-^). Two months. Wow. ((if you have any suggestions, especially for Copenhagen and Stockholm, now is the time to let me know! :)))

Ahem, anyways, I was going along Queen Street W this past Saturday and thought that I might as well pop into one of the many Chinese bakeries in Chinatown that I have yet to visit, and so Ding Dong it was. And thanks to one of my visitors (you know who you are ^^) who helped me out and told me what are the best things to get!!

Now: Ding Dong Pastries is, essentially, just another Chinese bakery along Spadina with not as obvious storefront as others and less crowds and madness than say, Furuma (they are, it is to be noted, a little north of the Chinatown bustle). One reason for this is, perhaps, that they're not just another 3/$1 place. At $0.70/each or 6/$3 for their meat/sweet buns, they're a little more expensive (lol, and I'm referring to mere cents here, by the way..) than their competitors, but seem to make up for it with larger baked goods and an impressive variety of both Western-inspired and traditional Chinese baking, the latter including stuff that I can't remember seeing elsewhere like trays of 'rice-roll cakes' or bags of cookies and intricate little well, pastries.

On my trip, I got four items, so let's jump right into it, shall we? :) First up was the recommended sesame seed balls (at least, I assume these were the ones) (2/$1), denser dough balls stuffed with red bean paste and *coated* in sesame balls. These were a big hit with everyone at the house and the highlight of this bakery, though ha ha I guess the description says it all... good stuff!

Second were the egg tarts. These guys had three options and I was a little unsure of which ones to get: milk tarts (2/$1; with what looks like a custard-like filling), small egg tarts in a more flaky shell (3/$1) and larger butter egg tarts (2/$1). I guess it was the "butter" that decided it (what a shameless, shameless thing to say XD). These are without a doubt available at all Chinese bakeries though I've never tried them (perhaps the 'egg' has scared me off), so I guess I'm not really sure how they're supposed to be, but the dough shell was really tasty with a nice bit of flakiness, but still soft. The texture and topping of the filling were also quite nice and creamy, but the filling was just... really eggy. Maybe it just takes getting used to or... I wonder what's supposed to make a good egg tart?? Perhaps the itsy bitsy ones are better (if only for the reason that they won't have so much filling :P). I'll have to keep sampling, widen the range a bit.. ^^;;

I took a little... artistic freedom with the last two and picked out one sweet bun (the good old doughnut -- 2/$1), which proved to be a little soggy and lacking the nice crispy outer layer of well, Chinese deep fried goods. .__.;; Good, but not the best.

Lastly, these wee taro pastries available next to the cash were freshly baked (as in still warm on the tray) and, at $1/each, were surprisingly costlier than any of the buns or meaty pasties, but they looked neat and tasted quite good, with layers of slightly flaky dough folded over each other and interlaced with taro (purple yam) -- perhaps it were these intricate little things that the guy was so studiously making behind the window of their open kitchen? ;)

Overall, Ding Dong turned out to be pretty good and is definitely one of the preferred bakeries in Chinatown (so far) and beats the others I've been to on Spadina, at any rate. Pop in, if only for a treat and the amazing bag. ^-^;;;

Rating: ***