Mabel's Bakery & Specialty Foods

Bakery: Mabel's Bakery & Specialty Foods
Address: 1156 Queen St W, Toronto ON
Website: http://www.mabelsbakery.ca/
Style: North American, Organic
Price: $$

Out Christmas shopping one Saturday and somehow ended up visiting this stretch of Queen St. I'd gone up to Ossington and then from Lansdowne westwards, but never in this stretch. One reason for this omission was that Google told me that there were no bakeries; no, I no longer have faith in its skills, since I encountered two (one will have to be saved for next time). Unbelievable! I've been deceived this entire time...

Anyways, Mabel's is a bakery who's headquartered on Roncesvalles (for quite some time I've been driving to Roncesvalles and, as such, haven't walk up far enough to visit it there) and who opened a second location on Queen W a few years ago. I don't know about the original, but judging by the customers, this seems to be more a light lunch spot than anything else, with sandwiches and rustic breads. There are a couple shelves of homemade grocery items, but this isn't very big and it's clear that the bakery is the main attraction here, although  there weren't that many items to choose from (I had a hard time picking) with just one or two varieties of cookies, squares, cupcakes as well larger items like cakes. It's all quite simple and unpretentious in style: put simply, Canadian homestyle baking. While not strictly organic, they seem to try and bake with as many organic ingredients as possible, such as local organic oats in my square. In addition to clear, helpful labelling, they also highlight whenever something is locally sourced or baked with organic ingredients.

That out of the way, I picked out two items for myself. ^^;;The first was their ginger cookie. ($1.99) I'm not that big a cookie fan, so they always come as a last resort; however, I'm always appreciative of a good spice cookie. Large and buttery with sugar sprinkled on top, this wasn't as gingery as I like it, but at the same time it had the right level of chewiness and was quite good. Actually, it tasted exactly like my mom's "Swedish spice" cookies, so not sure if I'd get them again, simply because I can get my mom to bake a whole batch for me. But I suppose there's a compliment in there as well...  ;D

The second item was their date square ($2.75), baked with organic Ontario oats and stuffed with unsweetened dates. This was excellent. Big, whole pieces of oat almost resembling granola clusters with a great filling; normally, date squares are filled with more of this date paste, but this was just whole dates smushed open, skin and all. This may not sound that appetizing as the processed product, but the idea of fresh dates was so tasty! It wasn't nearly as sweet as date squares tend to be and I loved the texture. One of my favourite date squares -- I definitely have to say that.

So, my little exploratory trip turned out to be quite the success (both in terms of the Christmas present and the Cake Tour ;))!

Rating: ***1/2