Amadeus Fine Cakes

Bakery: Amadeus Fine Cakes
Address: 7380 Bathurst St, Thornhill ON
Website: http://www.amadeusfinecakes.com/
Style: European
Price: $$$

Not wanting to drive all the way to Richmond Hill for a cake, the brother decided to give this place a try after having driven past it once by chance (avoiding traffic on Yonge...). So, he returned and we broke up the years of going to What a Bagel in trying this place out. Was it worth the upsetting of a tradition? Well, not really. Ha ha I might as well state it outright: it certainly did not beat my favourite cakes.

Amadeus is, as the name suggests, a cake place first. Rows of shelves are dedicated to their fancily decorated and delicious-looking cakes; even what they call their pastries resemble miniature versions of their larger cakes, although they lack the more interesting flavours of the full-sized counterparts. The cakes (and pastries) all seem to be based on the same premise of a single layer of sponge cake smothered with mousse and then decorated on top. As far as cakes go, they're rather... short and quite expensive for the size -- an 8-inch? cake was $30.  Most are chocolate or a combination containing chocolate; while ordering, the most popular choice was their individual tiramisu.

Two people not being chocolate cake fans (myself included), we ended up with the vanilla cake with a jolt of red currant sauce on top. The dough inside was vanilla sponge cake and then the mousse was likewise vanilla. Seeing as all cakes are based on this same formula, I'd say that they lacked complexity, both in terms of texture and taste. If you were lucky enough to get some of that red currant, you got some yummy sourness in there, but otherwise it was pretty boring. The dough was nothing special and pretty run-of-the-mill sponge cake, but the thing that really set it apart from your usual supermarket mousse cake was the mousse with its pieces of vanilla beans which was really tasty, especially with that aforementioned red currant sauce. Mmm... that was some fantastic mousse! I personally think some sort of flavoured sponge cake would have made this more exciting. Yes, it was good. And yes, it mostly likely beats 80% of cakes out there, but it somehow didn't live up to my expectations of cake glory and everyone agreed that in the end the cake was just... meh.

Rating: **1/2