Alice Bakery

Bakery: Alice Bakery
Address: 13321 Yonge St, Richmond Hill ON
Website: http://www.alicebakery.ca/
Style: Russian
Price: $$

[Well, I return. I hit a sort of dry spell and was feeling a little down/not in the mood for cake-touring, but I am indeed back with a few additions to my little site. :) I was actually thinking the other day of a Great Canadian Cake Tour and how amazing that would be (I can already envision the cheesy logo for that! *-*); perhaps it would be chance to make this a little more.. pro. Better photos, better stories -- not sure. This was inspired by the fact that I'll be in the Maritimes in a little more than a month and the possibilities are exciting me, though I'm slowly beginning to realize that you don't realize travelling within Canada isn't cheap until you're actually planning it. :/ A couple of sponsors, maybe a column in a food and living mag -- now, that would solve the problem! :DDDD *wakes up from her daydreaming*]

Ahem, the first of these additions is Alice Bakery, in North Richmond Hill (another trip the brother took; in fact, he went to Aurora, but as the bakery scene isn't exactly sprawling, he made the small detour to this place), a Russian bakery that seems to pride itself especially on its multi-layered cakes and cake slices, veritable pillars of nutty and chocolatey sponge cake and cream. In addition to this, they also have more French offerings, such as fruit tarts, as well as some traditional baked goods like... the good old-fashioned poppy seed strudel. ;) Ahh, imagine my delight when he came back with this nondescript log in a plastic bag labelled 'poppy seed'!

The strudel was particularly delicious: very heavy and generously filled with a rich poppy seed mass. The dough was denser and complimented the poppy seeds perfectly. It reminded me most of Hungarian-style poppy seed strudels, especially with the humble exterior (hiding all the good stuff inside ^.^). Mmmm....

This was certainly the highlight, although the cakes came out a fairly big hit as well, in particular the Queen Bee cake square (the darker one) with honey cake, chocolate on top, and a white cream in between the layers of cake. This is recommended. The caramel cake, although good, was simply too rich and one-dimensional -- it was after all caramel cake and caramel cream -- for one to just keep eating it. The first bite was tasty, but as you continued, it got to be too much.

The only real disappointments -- not really, but in comparison to everything else -- were the two French-styled tarts: the clafoutis with raspberries and blueberries and the apple tart. For the first one, I guess one disadvantage was that I had gone to Clafouti two weeks prior (and they know clafoutis ;)); Alice's clafoutis are good in taste, but just way too doughy. The tart shell was not only quite thick, and almost double the thickness of the walls on the bottom, but the glaze on top was also thick and overpowering. You taste the dough and glaze, but nothing of the filling.

I encountered a similar problem with the apple tart, which did look lovely with its flower of apple pieces. The thing is, it's visually appealing, but impossible to crack open with a dessert fork. The shell was too thick and grabbing one apple just brought them all down, so it ended up being better to just divide everything up on the plate. It was yummy: the shortbread shell was good and there was a vanilla filling and well, one must remember I'm a sucker for apple cake with vanilla sauce. ;) It was frustrating that you had to massacre it before sticking it in your mouth. The apple certainly beat the clafoutis.

While Alice Bakery has a variety of pan-European goodies, I'd definitely say stick to the more "Russian" options: delicious strudels and decadent tiered cakes, especially if you'd like to sample the best this bakery has to offer.

Rating: ***