Artistic Bake Shop [International Correspondent]

Bakery: Artistic Bake Shop
Address: 6820 104 St NW, Edmonton AB 
Website: http://artisticbakeshop.com/
Style: German
Price: $$-$$$ 

Artistic Bake Shop is more or less your typical German-Canadian bakery with cakes, tortes, and European-style breads. I was supposed to go here last year, but it was closed on Sunday and then I just never had the time. [Editor's note: Well, at least he redeemed himself...] This year, though, I went and finally got a chance to try the reason why this was a highlighted location from the very beginning: the 7-layer Furst Puckler Torte, which seems to have some buzz around it and which, based on name and description alone, I also wanted to give it a try.

The 7-layer Furst Puckler torte

To be quite honest, I think I was expecting something a lot more exciting and elaborate. The kind of thing that you spot and you instantly want to try. The tortes are only available whole ($28.50) and are covered  in dark chocolate so you can't see inside. For the price, they're pretty small. The piece pictured is 1/4 of the cake. Slicing it open, I was a little disappointed to find that it was little more than a traditional sponge and cream cake with no real "pizzazz". The layers were white sponge cake, chocolate sponge cake, chocolate cream, white cream, strawberry (pink) cream, another white cream, and I'm not sure if the bottom crust or chocolate coating was supposed to count as the seventh layer?

The torte was rich without being heavy, which was nice for all that cream. The other correspondent ate his slice for breakfast and "felt sick" afterwards, so maybe he doesn't agree, but that's his own fault. It was good; however, not amazing and not really what I was hoping for. Next time, I would probably try something else.

Rating: ***