Niagara Home Bakery

Bakery: Niagara Home Bakery 
Address: 66 Queen St, Niagara-on-the-Lake ON
Website: n/a 
Style: Canadian, English
Price: $$-$$$

I've officially surpassed 300 bakeries... and still going strong! :)

A little more than a month ago, the brother went to Niagara-on-the-Lake for some reason. Seeing as I don't go there very often, I commanded him to bring back some baked goods. And he delivered, for once. :) This is one of two stops that day.

Niagara Home Bakery is right in the heart of Niagara-of-the-Lake and is more or less your typical, run-of-the-mill English-Canadian bakery with a few more unique and noteworthy treats such as the ones the brother picked out. Think pies, squares and cookies; in a word, simple, old-fashioned baking that's pretty tasty, although it didn't manage to beat the guys across the street (look out for that one in a future post). Given the location, high prices seem almost a given; if he remembers correctly, he paid over $7 for two, not too elaborate items. Still, to the sampling we go~~

He picked out, as he said, the two most 'interesting' offerings: the first was the apple dumpling (which he can never resist taking whenever he gets sent out for baked goods), which could also be considered a baked apple: entire apple coated in a fairly thin layer of piece crust-like dough and topped with a smattering coarse sugar. The concept was a good one -- and sometimes it succeeds; in this case, we encountered a very common problem: the apple was uncooked in the middle. Too hard and crunchy in texture, this was very difficult to eat as the centre made cutting into the thing with a fork pretty much impossible. The dough flaked off and the apple was downright unmanageable. Good idea, faulty execution.

Better than that was, well, this thing. :P Yes, no one exactly knows what this is supposed to be, but I think cream-stuffed baklava can get the idea somewhat across. Folded filo dough wrapped into the shape of a cone and then stuffed with nut-encrusted pastry cream. Yup, it probably tastes as exciting as it sounds; it was certainly an interesting find; perhaps the filo was a bit dry in places, especially in the areas with no more filling, but it was a great concept. One brother likened it to a Purdy's ice cream bar -- in case you're wondering. ;) It was definitely the highlight from these guys; perhaps the bakery didn't necessarily blow anyone's mind, but it was still worth visiting. Of course, in my quest for bakery domination, it had to be done eventually. :D

Rating: **1/2