Mimi's Cake Tour: August 2016

Bread and Butter Bakery

Bakery: Bread and Butter Bakery

Address: 1530 Bath Rd, Kingston ON

Website: http://breadandbutter.ca

Style: Canadian

Price: $$

Seeing as my (currently) only bakery review from Kingston decided to close down on me, so I had to make up for it by visiting something else. Naturally. Anyways, Bread and Butter bakery is probably the first, or at least one of the first, bakery that pops up on any search for bakeries in the city, and with good reason. At first glance, these guys look like a run-of-the-mill Canadian bakery, serving buns, squares and cookies like the rest. I was therefore surprised, downright stunned to find an interesting and somewhat eclectic selection of baked goods ranging from Vietnamese sub buns, French dough treats to... mini-pulla, as in Finnish sweet bread. I swear, this has to be the only place west of Toronto that has pulla! O.O This was a surprise I had to take!

So, first of all, I took the pulla ($1.75), an individual sweet roll with the characteristic rock sugar and hint of cardamom in the dough. The texture was a little too airy, reminiscent of white bread, and it needed a little more cardamom, but it's pulla in a non-Finnish bakery. Total gem. ^^

In addition, I got these blueberry lemon buns ($2.25... or thereabouts; I didn't make notes for this trip and that was very dumb of me), which I thought unique. Rolled and iced like classic cinnamon buns, the filling was not the blueberry gloop I was very afraid of, but a homestyle jam-like filling of whole blueberries with just a hint of lemon in the generous dollop of icing. Again, dough could have been better, but tasty stuff.

Overall: my (new) current fave in Kingston! :)

Rating: ***

Croque Madame [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Croque Madame
Address: Nowy Świat 41, Warsaw
Website: n/a
Style: Polish
Price: $$

A few doors down from Blikle, there's Croque Madame, a pretty nice-looking, French-inspired patisserie which tries to step things up by looking a bit like a more European version of Starbucks with limited selection of baked goods and fancier cakes. For me, it still had that café or coffee shop, not bakery, vibe. I think the French factor was mostly seen in the menu: you can buy "famous French toasts": Croque Madame, Monsieur...

I took the fruit crumble. These kinds of baked goods are usually dry, but this was fresh: crunchy, fruity, sour, and soft. This is the best I've ever had from this style of baked good. Very good. I would definitely return here.

Rating: ****

Boulangerie Panetier Baluchon [RIP]

Bakery: Boulangerie Panetier Baluchon
Address: 762 rue Saint-Jean, Quebec City QC
Website: n/a
Style: French
Price: $$

My second stop in Quebec City is the bakery I think of when I think of bakeries in the city. After all, back in the day when I actually travelled to Quebec City on a semi-regular basis, this was the only bakery I ever had something from, mostly due to the fact that it was open the longest and closest to our parking spot. :/ Yeah, those were some fun times....

Panetier Baluchon is a modest bakery, especially in comparison to others in the area, especially in or near the old town, but they make a bit of a smaller selection of classic French baked goods (croissants, danishes, etc), breads, and a quite limited variety of more fancier tarts, cakes, and macarons. Coming there in the evening, I was a little... annoyed at finding everything in saran wrap and having to pay full price for it; it gave it the effect of buying muffins and loaf cake slices from a cafeteria and the raspberry square in particular did not handle the plastic wrap that well. The square was smushed (sic), flattened, and took on a sort of plastic sheen in some areas from being compressed so much.

Nonetheless, I did grab two items: the pear and almond danish ($2.95), a nicely sized bit of French dough with large pieces of pear in the middle on a bed of almond paste. This actually was one of the most memorable French baked goods on the whole trip: absolutely delicious, buttery dough that was flavourful from the first bite to the last. Perfect consistency, flaky exterior with a slightly chewy, soft inside. Pears were properly cooked and almond paste was delicious, this guy was better than the competition down the street, at least in this department.

The next item was the raspberry square ($2.49) which, sadly, looked a little worse for wear. I'm sure it wasn't supposed to look like it just went through the compressor.... The taste resembled, or rather the idea was similar to a date square with crumble on top and a fruit filling. Great fresh fruit filling. A little too oily in my opinion and it probably would have been better had it not been in saran wrap, but a simple, tasty treat.

Rating: ***

Kökulist [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Kökulist
Address: Fjarðargata 13-15, Hafnarfjörður (inside Fjörður shopping mall)
Website: n/a
Style: Icelandic
Price: $$

I've always been planning on a day trip to Hafnarfjörður, seeing as it's a few minutes' drive from Reykjavik (and shares the same public transit system, therefore making taking the bus cheap and easy) and only really had the chance when I had access to a rental vehicle. Well, I had actually visited the small town connected to the capital before, but for a very short time and not during bakery opening hours -- the most important, of course -- so that didn't count.

Anyways, the goal was one bakery which I had heard was very good: Vort daglegt brauð, but looking for a bathroom at what could hardly be called a mall, I found not only a small bakery inside, but the most wonderful of baked goodies in Iceland: poppy seed buns! *-* Oh boy, I could not help it. I had to have it. Of course the bakery had quite the selection of the usual culprits (danishes, cinnamon buns, etc. And, in accordance with their name, cakes!) but not every bakery has these delectable poppy seed rolls (around 350kr), this time rolled in a cinnamon bun shape with a delicious and flavourful poppy seed filling and topped with caramel icing and a smidgen of crumble. Not the ultimate best, but it's up there.

Oh yeah, it is so the same thing every year I'm back in Iceland: the bakeries with the poppy seed buns end up on top. How could they not, looking and tasting like that? Mmmmm.... I love poppy seed buns so much! *___*

Rating: ***1/2

Panaché Bakery

Bakery: Panaché Bakery and Café
Address: 162 King St. E, Gananoque ON
Website: http://www.panachebakery.net/
Style: Canadian
Price: $$

My goal, or rather one of my lesser Cake Tour goals, is to plot the route from Toronto to Montreal (and beyond?) and this bakery is just getting it one step closer. Panaché (perhaps meant to rhyme with Gananoque) is the local bakery and is located on the main street. Hard to miss. Not only that, it's a really busy place, or was when I was there, though without a doubt the vast majority come in for their sandwiches and soups. But of course, I wasn't there for *derisive frown* soup; I was there for baked goodies! In this way, Panaché (I'm almost tempted...) doesn't offer that much, especially not in freshly baked goods; instead, there are cake slices, squares, and cookies, with squares having the most variety.

Their website claims their signature is the St Laurent cake, except I couldn't exactly distinguish it from your usual types. I was asking about a few squares (a limited number of goods are labelled and priced) and they didn't prove to be anything too thrilling (chocolate chip brownie), but I did go away with two Canadian bakery classics and surefire picks: the carrot cake and the date square.

The carrot cake ($3.25) was good and in the words of the self-proclaimed carrot cake expert and fellow sampler: "these guys knew what a carrot cake is supposed to be". Namely, full of carrots with a thick layer of cream cheese icing and, in this case, even the little icing carrot on top. Simple, tasty classic.

The date square ($2.25... or $2.50 or was the cake priced differently?) is yet another classic and one of my favourite squares. This one was good, but far from the best I've had with a good oat topping and a date filling that's not too sweet. There was, however, nothing overly unique about it that made it stand out and what's with the size!?! This was so small and not worth the price. :(

And, in the end, I simply can't resist:

On my first visit to Panaché
A rather modest bakery and café
I found it very busy noonday

Club sandwiches made your way
Freshly baked bread on the tray
How are the squares and cookies? Okay

But one really does have little say --
It's the only bakery in Gananoque!

Rating: ***

A. Blikle [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: A. Blikle
Address: Nowy Świat 35, Warsaw
Website: http://www.blikle.pl/
Style: Polish
Price: $$

This is where things get interesting. One of my regular correspondents (okay, let's admit it, I have two) went to Poland this summer. And he was given one assignment: you're going Cake Touring or you're not getting picked up from the airport. ;) I will get the whole world done just like that, I promise you! And he came back with a suitable amount, including some from Prague. Well, very well done!

Anyways, Blikle has been on my radar for years. I once was looking through a fairly outdated DK Poland book we have, assuming it would provide little surprises. After all, my family is Polish and my mom has been travelling to Poland, and Warsaw in particular, so regularly that she should know and have seen everything. Then how is it she never to Blikle!? Blikle was a mandatory stop a few years ago when one brother went along and no one could find the time. Why Blikle? According to DK, one must go to Blikle and get a classic doughnut, the humble pączek. This pastry shop and coffee shop has been in operation since the mid-1800s and is perhaps almost as known in the goodies department as the great Wedel. Perhaps not, but nonetheless, A. Blikle is an institution and now boasts of several dozen locations in the capital and beyond. The perfectly glazed doughnut topped with orange peel on their website was more than enough to force someone to go here. How I love my doughnuts.... So how did the doughnuts, those famous balls of delicious fried dough, fare? ...

I thought by just looking at it that Blikle was a very fancy and expensive place, but I was a little surprised that it wasn't that expensive in the end. Actually, I would even call it just another bakery. There were cakes that looked very nice, but we were there for the pączki. So, we got two types of pączki: Staropolski and Rosa (sic?). Staropolski was much better. The icing on the Rosa was too cakey. Although both should be similar in terms of the dough, the one with powder tasted more like fried dough: it had crispy edges on outside, soft on inside. Good but not great. It's just an average bakery and wasn't even my favourite place for pączki during my trip. Actually, in the end, no one could beat Wawel's "ponki" in Montreal.

Rating: ***

Paillard

Bakery: Paillard

Address: 1097 rue Saint-Jean, Québec QC

Website: http://www.paillard.ca/

Style: French

Price: $$

As unbelievable as it sounds, I actually did three bakery trips this summer, with one carried out by international correspondents and another on the way. Oh, what a great day for bakeries worldwide!! :) One of these trips were a road trip of Gaspesie. Five days doing the full circle with two intermediate stops in each direction. One of these intermediate stops was Quebec City, which, believe it or not, has not yet been featured on the Cake Tour. Scandalous!! Many years ago, we used to go to Quebec City semi-regularly, but not since the start of my little site. The city, in keeping with its French roots, boasts of a great many bakeries and it's downright heartbreaking to walk the streets on Sunday night, admiring all these closed bakeries I'm passing. So, so many bakeries. :(

However, there were two bakeries that were open and Paillard was one of them. I am certain this wasn't here the last time I was here... my jaw must have dropped when I entered into this high-ceilinged, marble-laden patisserie extraordinaire! This is the hint of Paris so many bakeries unsuccessfully try to recreate: downright chic surroundings, delectable treats, and reasonable prices. How insanely exciting! ;D

The one real downside that this place has so many baked goods and pastries and none of them are priced or labelled. This makes navigating through products confusing and rather slow, as no one in the line can figure out what they want until they ask what it is. :/

Of course, after much deliberation, I had to settle for just two items. After all, I had already bought goodies at another bakery. :P The first was a fairly classic cherry danish ($2.95) with a French dough and a handful of fresh sour cherries in the middle. The dough itself was uncharacteristically browned and wasn't as flaky and buttery as I was expecting. Good taste, but the competition's danish was superior.

Without a doubt, the highlight was the jesuite ($2.75), a pastry similar to that of a gateau basque, with an inside made up of a dense, semi-sweet almond dough and wrapped instead in a thin flaky pastry. Think of it as an almond cake strudel. And if that doesn't already sound enticing, let me assure you it was so good. In a poll of three people, however, two said that this was the best from both bakeries and one said this was the least preferred of the bunch. To each his own, I suppose, and Paillard is so mine. ^^;

Rating: ***1/2

The Bakery (in Hella) [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Bakery (in Hella)
Address: Gamli Suðurlandsvegur, Hella (inside Kjarval supermarket)

Anyways, the bakery consists a rather small nook upon entering the vestibule of the supermarket. There's little more than a few glass cases, most of which have sandwiches and more lunch-friendly goodies. Sweets are fairly limited and feature your usual selection of cinnamon buns and some danishes, as well as some American classics like (overpriced) cookies and doughnuts. [On a side note, I've seen American-style doughnuts in countless bakeries here and I am so tempted to give one a try. Some look really good...]

Hjónabandssæla ("married bliss") square and a cinnamon bun. It looked good for you and tasted like it too; this was somewhat of a muesli bun, chock full of oats, a lightly sweetened whole grain dough with just the right amount of jam. Good, and probably a fantastic choice for fans of muesli and granola bars, it's a nice change from the icing-laden sweets in most Icelandic bakeries... though of course I may prefer a danish. :P

Rating: **1/2

Farmhouse Eats

Bakery: Farmhouse Eats
Address: 13644 Loyalist Pkwy (Hwy 33), Picton ON
Website: n/a
Style: Canadian
Price: $

The second stop on my Kingston tour, this bakery is actually tucked behind the fruit market stall, though the sign makes finding the bakery pretty clear. Rest assured, I didn't miss the turn. :P

While the bakery is quite small, offering a limited selection of denser, soda-style breads, savoury goods, cookies and squares, many of the products are also baked with or inspired by produce from the farm such as fruit tarts and pies. Without a doubt, the highlight is -- clearly advertised in the fruit market -- their individual short cakes, eaten with strawberries and whipped cream, of course. ;) A dense, semi-sweet buttermilk muffin or scone of sorts ($3.00 for a pack), the shortcake is clearly meant to be eaten as an accompaniment to fruit. I took raspberries from the on-site stand and had no whipped cream on hand and actually preferred the shortcake on its own versus piled on with fruit (as pictured). The lack of sweetness and stiffer texture in the shortcakes made it not the best combination with fruit, resembling more a bun or slice of bread than an actual cake. Pretty good in taste, but not quite sure what the best pairing with this would be.

The second item I got were these fruit tarts made with local fruit; there were a few varieties, but I couldn't resist the raspberry one (2/$3). Homemade fruit filling in a thick flaky tart shell. The shell itself was, like the shortcakes, a little lacking in flavour, but the fruit-filled jam was what really stood out. Final verdict: good, but not great.

Rating: **1/2