Sweetie Pies

Bakery: Sweetie Pies on Main 
Address: 28 Main St S, Georgetown ON 
Website: facebook
Style: British, Canadian 
Price: $$ 

It's been insanely slow on the Cake Tour lately; however, I did just finish my "best cinnamon buns" guide, in case you happen to be curious. But back to Sweetie Pies: this is a bit of a hodgepodge business that isn't entirely a bakery. In fact, it seems to fall most often into  the 'ice cream shop' (homemade) category, other times a breakfast/brunch place. They sell imported British products, make their own British-style meat pies, and oh yeah, did I mention that they also have a small selection of sweets?

 That's a pretty ambitious undertaking and, in most cases, this is a recipe for sub-standard baked goods, but in this case, Sweetie Pies sells delicious butter tarts in both raisin and pecan varieties. At first glance, the thick, hand-sculpted shell seemed like it would detract from the filling, but it turned out to be a good match. Perhaps hard to slice into at times, but if you got a hold of both the shell and the slightly runny filling with that buttery froth on top -- yum! I always think that pie places should make good butter tarts and Sweetie Pies is no exception: a great-tasting, classic butter tart.

Rating: ***

West Mall Donuts

Bakery: West Mall Donuts and Deli
Address: 290 The West Mall, Etobicoke ON
Website: n/a
Style: Doughnuts 
Price: $ 

You know you've hit a dry spell when you're starting to review rundown doughnut stops.... :/ That being said, someone recently brought a box of doughnuts from here and I thought I might as well review it. Because something is always better than nothing.

West Mall Donuts, however, is more a breakfast diner than a doughnut destination with sandwiches, eggs, and the like being most likely the most popular items here. The doughnuts in the name are contained in a couple of orange trays by the cash: a few cake doughnut varieties, apple fritters, and danishes. After some online research, I've found attestations that the danishes are homemade, but the doughnuts have a commercial look and feel to them, so I have my doubts. With one-of-a-kind flavours like coconut and a plain, unglazed cinnamon twists, however, they could be made in-store. I suppose it can go either way.

The doughnuts tried were: coconut, honey dip, cinnamon twist, apple fritter, and sour cream glazed. Most, as the photo shows, had a glaze that cracked off in chunks, indicating that these certainly weren't at the peak of freshness. The dough lacked the crispy-soft texture of a nicely fried doughnut and was pretty bland, regardless of the variety.

It's good that it's an independent business and it's not... that unmentionable coffee place on every single stinkin' street corner, but it's a bit seedy and not really the best place to make a doughnut run.

Rating: **

Von Doughnuts

Bakery: Von Doughnuts
Address: 713 Danforth Ave, Toronto ON 
Website: http://vondoughnuts.com/
Style: Doughnuts
Price: $$

Wanting to fill out the pending bakeries I proposed on my Greektown-Danforth walking tour, I decided to do one each trip and opted, this time, for Von Doughnuts. Von Doughnuts, without a doubt, seems to be one of the more high-profile gourmet doughnuts outlets in the city. I heard about it before actually seeing it in person. Stepping in, go past the seating and you're greeted with two display cases of six or seven different doughnut flavours along with a row of their signature "doughnut-kabobs". Doughnuts are all priced at $2.85 while the kebabs are $2.95. Some of the flavours I remember seeing at the time of purchase were tequila lime, blueberry lime, pink with sprinkles (the Homer Simpson), another sprinkle, some sort of chocolate chunks, sangria, and creme brûlée. A few were laced with alcohol, which sounded pretty exciting.

 After some deliberation, I went for the sangria doughnut. The description sounded super enticing: red and white wine glaze, strawberry jam swirl and a slice of strawberry in the middle on a yeast doughnut. Just to get it right, I went to check the website and wow, I can say with certainty that mine did not look like that. Getting it ready for its picture, the first thing I noticed was that the topping (wine glaze, strawberry jam and all) was so thin it was transparent and had hardly any taste so that all you tasted was the dough. The doughnut was a little too brown on the outside and the dough itself reminded me of badly fried, amateur Polish doughnuts (pączki): very airy, somewhat dry, kind of bready -- definitely not the doughnut I was expecting. Suddenly it makes sense why the people who had been eating there had each left at least a quarter of their doughnut behind....

Rating: **

Henrietta's Pine Bakery

Bakery: Henrietta's Pine Bakery
Address: 92 King William St, Huntsville ON
Website: facebook
Style: Canadian
Price: $$ 

The final stop from last month's Muskoka trip, Henrietta's Pine Bakery is a classic, well-established bakery with two locations in the area, with the Cake Tour having visited the one in Huntsville (yes, making that two bakeries in town and warranting its own label!). This bakery is filled with old-fashioned Canadian bakery staples like pies, tarts, and cinnamon buns along with squares/slab cakes (what I considered the carrot cake) and some "European" baked goods -- were those indeed pączki I saw!?!

I picked a carrot cake to change things up and it's always nice to try different bakeries' takes on a classic cake. This version from Henrietta's had a nice thick layer of icing -- this is a must with a good carrot cake; I think this one had to be 50% of the dough itself! Others usually use coloured icing to paint on some sort of carrot on top, so I actually really liked -- and preferred -- the big chunks of walnuts sprinkled on top. That was a nice touch.The dough was a nice spiced cake, fairly moist, with a good amount of carrots. Maybe it wasn't on my list of the best I've had, but this one was certainly recommended.

Rating: ***

Debrodniks Donuts

Bakery: Debrodniks Donuts
Address: 700 Strasburg Rd #S20, Kitchener ON 
Website: https://www.debrodniks.ca/
Style: Doughnuts
Price: $$ 

It took two tries driving over to the gourmet doughnut destination for K-W. The first time was a failure: at around 2 on a weekend afternoon, the doughnuts were sold out and the place was closed. -_- A few hours earlier, still on a Saturday, a return was underway and this time: success. That being said, there were several varieties in the display that were already gone, limiting choices to six (the only one not tried was the mint).

Doughnuts are sold individually, by the half- or whole-dozen. Luckily, there were enough doughnuts still available for the half. ;) These doughnuts included: three fritters, one Irish Cream, blueberry (the ring one), and the Boss (a.k.a. a Boston Cream).

Both the Boss and Irish Cream were filled doughnuts, and of the two, the Boss was the better one with a thick chocolate glaze and a hearty cream filling. It being flatter in shape, it didn't have the downright excessive whipped filling the Irish Cream had. The latter had more cream than dough, and though the glazed exterior and dough with a hint of Irish Cream was tasty, it was just too much. Especially when on their website looking for pricing (I forgot what it was), I stumbled across the FAQ and had it confirmed that the whipped filling wasn't real whipped cream (which wasn't the most savoury of discoveries). Now, that is a lot of non-dairy whip. :/

The blueberry was pretty tasty and the concept of a ring doughnut with the ring filled with blueberry and then topped with glaze, a sprinkling of streusel, and icing was a good one.

The highlight (but aren't they always? :P) was the fritter. Debrodniks adds the explanation that it's "not your average fritter". This was nicely fried with a nice thick caramel-like glaze on top. Good taste, great texture; I was assuming that it wasn't actually an apple fritter, but a fritter, and was going to say an apple fritter would have been better than just plain cinnamon dough, but... the website says it is an apple fritter. Um, but where were the apples? O.o

Good doughnuts with the potential to be better. 

Rating: ***

Village Bakery

Bakery: Village Bakery
Address: 104 King St W, Dundas ON 
Website: facebook
Style: Canadian 
Price: $$ 

Well, here's a news update for you. I finally got around to changing my header. *points above* That thing has been here from the very beginning and it was well past its time. So, there's a new and hopefully improved one; at the very least, I can say with confidence that my Photoshop skills have advanced. :) And also, I've been working on my series of guides and got down the foundation for... the guide to the best doughnuts! You can check out all guides at the bottom of the site or click here.

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Village Bakery has been on my radar for some time now, but because they're closed on Sundays, it's taken a while for it to work around that. Located inside the old Post Office building in downtown Dundas, this bakery has all the classic baked goods of a small-town bakery. This includes pies, squares, scones, tarts, and possibly cinnamon buns (I didn't see them if they were there). Two items were sampled this time around: the cranberry scone and the rhubarb square.

Despite taking it, I have a hard time determining the difference between scones. Maybe I'm not even the biggest fan of these English staples, but nonetheless, this was a fairly good one. It had lots of fruit which moistened the otherwise dense, "scone dough". The more crusty top rolled with sugar was also a nice touch.

The rhubarb square was without a doubt the better of the two. A really good crumble on top with cinnamon and sugar (maybe a little too much sugar which then turned hard in some places). Nice dough on the bottom with tasty fruit in the middle. Though the concept and taste was good, this would have been so much better if the bottom layer would have been thinner and there would have been more rhubarb; as it was, the square was too doughy.

Rating: **1/2