Emmy's Bake Shop

Bakery: Emmy's Bake Shop
Address: 610 7th Ave, Keremeos BC
Website: facebook
Style: Canadian 
Price: $$

From Osoyoos, I headed to the small town of Keremeos, which happens to be home to Emmy's Bake Shop. I think the term "bake shop" kind of got my hopes up and made me envision a full-blown bakery, especially since bakeshops tend to focus on the sweet stuff, not bread. In that sense, Emmy's is indeed a bakeshop: it focuses on sweet treats, but beyond that, I would really call it a cafe more than anything else, as they make breakfast and light meals and that seems to be the highlight. A cafe with their own baked goods. Of course, another of their specialties is their shelves of differently flavoured shortbread -- and who doesn't like shortbread? However, buying them individually does add up and at some point it isn't really worth it, compared to what you could have for the same price.

I tried two flavours of shortbread ($0.95/each): the orange cardamom and the cranberry. When it comes to shortbread, I like them either melt-in-your-mouth or Scottish style: not as soft and sandy, but hard and buttery, so much so that you just like to let them sit on your tongue and suck that butter right out of them. Emmy's really doesn't fall into neither category; they don't exactly dissolve immediately and they didn't have that buttery flavour that I was hoping for. Cardamom is my favourite spice, ever, so I was really looking forward to the orange shortbread, but found it lacking in flavour and complexity. Even the texture was better on the cranberry.

In addition, I grabbed one of the very few other items available: a date square ($2.25). It looked like a nice and chunky one with a granola topping, but I found the bottom dough layer didn't have enough texture and the top could have been thicker; both were almost mushy and the date filling, as sometimes happens, was too sweet. Personally, I'd stick to the shortbread.

Rating: **