Max's Market

Bakery: Max's Market
Address: 2299 Bloor St W, Toronto ON 
Website: http://www.maxsmarket.ca/
Style: European, North American 
Price: $ 

Years ago, I could have sworn I went into Max's Market (this being pre-Cake Tour days) and that they had a whole array of in-house pies and pastries behind the glass, but the selection now doesn't match with how I remembered it. Which means that either they changed things around or I'm simply very, very confused. O.o Nonetheless, yes! I randomly decided to pop into Max's Market, hoping to get something for the Cake Tour and came out quite pleasantly surprised in terms of the interesting treats I picked up... and how little I paid for them!

Well, perhaps I should begin with a better introduction than that? :P Max's Market is more or less a higher-end deli and your source for gourmet prepared foods, from quiches to salads to meat pies. They also have something for dessert, both behind the counter in the form of cakes and individual tartlets (courtesy of the perennially popular Dufflet) and some made by them, such as lemon meringue pies or (I recall) some sort of mousse cake. In addition to this, they feature two self-serve cases filled with goods from Tartistry (on my to-visit list), but at more than $3 for a butter tart, I'm not sure if it's necessarily worth the price -- though the samples they were offering that day *were* good. ;) What's more, they have two racks of baked goods of their own sitting next to the entrance. With everything sweet priced at $1.49, they're really well priced. I paid $3 on the dot for two items -- that's great value, especially considering the quality of the ingredients, like buttery croissants, wild blueberry (yes, you read right) danishes or something in between a chocolate danish and a pain au chocolat. Everything has this mildly European feel to it, though you can't really attribute it to one country or style.

So I had the latter two. The first was the wild blueberry danish ($1.49), resembling more of a pasty than anything else with a slightly flaky, pie-like dough on the softer side with rock sugar on top. Some had kind of collapsed in the middle due to too much filling/too thin dough, so it took some searching for one that wasn't punctured through. Tasty dough and a wonderful filling -- and really, how often do you find anything made with wild blueberries? What a (tasty) steal! :)

And speaking of tasty steals: the chocolate danish ($1.49). Again, yummy dough on the outside, but the highlight is definitely the delicious filling of chocolate and hazelnut. Sometimes the filling in chocolate baked goods resembles more syrup than anything else and it's so sweet too. This was.. I don't know what they used, but was it ever good! I swear, they had to have melted Bacio chocolates or something. O_O Yummy, even for someone not that into chocolate like I am!

Max's is another great addition to the Runnymede bakery strip and I can't believe I didn't think of popping in again the last well, two times I've driven here. Good stuff yet again!

Rating: ***