Richlea Bakery

Bakery: Richlea Bakery 
Address: 5166 48 Ave, Delta BC
Website: http://www.richleabakery.ca
Style: Canadian
Price: $$ 

Within walking distance of my other Delta bakery, Richlea is the second bakery in the little area of Ladner and seems to aim to be a healthier choice, at least so claim the signs, among other things. Stepping inside, I didn't necessarily find the tray of apple fritters and cronuts good for you, but they did look good. ;)

With pretty much all display cases devoted to sweets, there's a fairly large selection of doughnuts, cookies, full-sized pies, along with various squares and creamy delicacies. The specialty, owing to the various fruit flavours, seems to be their pies as well as their cronuts which resemble French toast... at least, maybe not really specialty, but they seem to really want you to get one. What they did seem to lack, at least in my opinion, was a less decadent selection of baked goods; things were a bit empty, so maybe I'd simply missed them? However, the 'assorted apple cake squares' ($4.25) proved to make up for that lack.

If not wanting to invest in a large pie, the apple cake, available in mini slabs that form ~2 pieces, turned out to be a great alternative. This is as classic and home-style as it gets: a simple coffee cake with moist dough loaded with sliced apples. On top, you have some more fruit (in my case, only the blueberry variety was left) and a streusel topping. Really, this one item that I wouldn't even guess had come from a bakery: not too sweet, stuffed with fruit, no-frills appearance, it seems like something that wouldn't be out of place coming straight from grandma's oven. ^^ And that, indeed, is a good thing.

Rating: ***