Stickling's Organics

Bakery: Stickling's Bakery and Bistro
Address: 191 Charlotte St, Peterborough ON
Website: http://www.sticklingsbakery.com/
Style: Organic, North American, German
Price: $$

This has been sitting here for awhile, so I thought I might as well cross this off the impending list and then continue with my newer additions. One reason for the slight delay was that the photo was found on the cellphone camera while I was looking for location shots. Imagine, I'd almost forgotten about this place!

Nevertheless, Stickling's came up as a bakery while I was compiling my list for places to try in Peterborough; however, taking a look at their website, I thought there was no point adding it as a location the brother needed to bring something back from. I say that, since it looked like these guys only made bread (this sold at various locations across Canada -- check their website) and that the 'bistro' in the name was just that: a place to sit down and have some lunch, for instance. Taking all of this into account, I was quite amazed that not only did the brother end up here voluntarily, but that there were some sweets after all! Nice! :) I'm always happy to expand my less numerous tags and to add some more organic baked goods onto the tour, especially as they're slightly more elusive. That being said, don't expect that much variety. This is, indeed, a bread-bakery that specializes in European-style sourdoughs, ryes, bagels, and other types of healthy bread. Sweets include simple classics that seem to be sold according to season: a couple of cookies, muffins (which are vegan), a few cakes/pies and that's about it (the website is currently advertising organic homemade Stollen and Lebkuchen -- man does that sound yummy!). This is, of course, available at their 'bistro' and not at those aforementioned country-wide locations.

So, the brother got the lemon coconut square-thing. :P Well, I wouldn't necessarily call it a square, but somewhere in between a square, a sort of cobbler, and maybe a pie. Nonetheless, quite interesting in taste: a nice sourness from the lemon custard and with the added coconut flakes, it tasted very... Portuguese. Not sure if that was the intent, but nonetheless, a tasty treat -- and it was nice to have organic baked goods that well, tried to branch out a little beyond the standard muffins and cookies. It was greatly appreciated... by my tummy as well. ;)

Rating: ***

Old Bread Mill [RIP]

Bakery: Old Bread Mill
Address: 14 Oxford St, Richmond Hill ON 
Website: n/a
Style: Italian 
Price: $$-$$$

Another trip to Richmond Hill (for cake), another Cake Tour. :) This seems to have become the general rule and I'm not complaining. Not in the mood for navigating parking-less plaza to get another Persian bakery on the list (though in retrospect I probably should have), I turned into this more easily navigable bakery off of Yonge (south of Elgin Mills).

As with countless Italian "bakeries", this is most certainly a deli first and the smell that greets you is not of freshly baked bread or baked goods (though that in itself is quite the rarity), but of pizza. Notwithstanding that ubiquitous hot table and cold-cut counter, they have one corner devoted to breads and two cases to pastries up at the front. Italian bakeries seem to fall into a general price range and Old Bread Mill falls into this category, with pastries on the board advertised as being $1.75 (this clearly does not apply to all pastries, however, but no indication of that is made). Then enter the other offerings. Their cream-filled doughnuts look great, but $2 for a simple, sugar-dusted doughnut seems a little steep. As does $9 or something for the strudel.

The bakery, however, does make up for it with some pretty darn good pastries. The first was, of course, the good old-fashioned cannolo ($1.75), available in either original and chocolate flavours. It's really getting hard to differentiate from one to the other, especially after so many, but this certainly figured in the "better" group. Nice shell, good filling. Perhaps it's not award-winning (Woodbridge, it seems, reigns supreme), but very good nonetheless.

The second item was the slice of baklava ($2.49). Alright, so I wasn't the only one to exclaim a little dubiously that baklava is certainly not Italian; it was the first thing that came out of sampler #3's mouth, but all in all, it was a pleasant surprise (going with the assumption that Italian baklava can't be the best) to find that this was, like the cannolo, pretty good! A larger slice with your typical soaked filo and a generous nut filling -- the Old Bread Mill does not disappoint!

Rating: ***

Heather's Bakery & Cafe

Bakery: Heather's Bakery & Cafe 
Address: 103 Main St S, Georgetown ON 
Website: http://www.heathersbakery.ca/
Style: Scottish, English
Price: $ 

Well, if you recall, I did mention another bakery in Georgetown and here it is. Heather's is a bakery in downtown Georgetown with a nice selection of Scottish/English baked goods in the form of various types of muffins, scones, squares, as well as tarts and some cakes. Not to mention fantastic prices! At $1.10 for each item in the scone-like category (with a grand whopping total of $2.20, taxes included) or $1.50 for the squares, this is amazingly affordable! Not to mention tasty!

Actually, to be quite honest with you, I told myself beforehand that I'm not a big fan of soda-based baked goods such as scones. I find them too dense and the taste/texture too uh, particular. So, I didn't expect too great things from either item. The first was a cinnamon twist (they might have called it a swirl, but either way, you get the idea :P), with scone-like dough wrapped and filled with delicious cinnamon filling. I warmed mine up a little in the microwave to soften the dough a little and get that cinnamon a little more oozy and mmm... it was so good! *-* Surprisingly delicious dough and great sugar and cinnamon mass, just the way I like it!

Just as good was the cranberry-raspberry scone with lots of fruit tucked into the dough. A softer dough -- and definitely tastier -- than some of the dry, brick-hard scones I've encountered at some places, this was also a surprise hit. It was even more so of a surprise, because the other baked goods, although more elaborate and which seemed more "interesting" at first glance, couldn't come close to simply some great baked goods. Keep it up, Heather's! ;)

Rating: ***

Mercato Fine Foods

Bakery: Mercato Fine Foods
Address: 1 Queensgate Blvd, Bolton ON
Website: http://www.mercatofinefoods.ca/ 
Style: Italian 
Price: $$-$$$

Hi, Bolton! The Cake Tour has come to town! :) One more random hiking trip to who-knows-where courtesy of the brother has resulted in my first bakery in Bolton.. and that's always exciting.

Mercato Fine Foods is, in a sense, your typical Italian deli: hot table, some grocery items, as well as the usual breads and pastries behind the counter. Those pastries likewise include a fairly large selection of all the classics such as cannoli and other Italian pastries, fruit tarts, various creamy cake slices. In typical Italian fashion, neither prices nor descriptions are readily available; at least I believe this to be so because my brother doesn't know how many anything was. Then again, he doesn't remember how much paid either, pegging it from anywhere between $5-7... for two pastries, and one of them the usually lesser priced cannolo, this isn't that cheap, regardless of where it was in that range. 

The first item up for trying was the ubiquitous cannolo. Liking to have a frame of reference, this was just one more addition to the great big -- unofficial -- cannoli challenge and how did this one fare? Okay. It was somewhere in the average range, with pretty good cheese filling (one or two chocolate bits). The shell was quite brittle and crumbled, flaked off, and came apart very easily; even while positioning it on the plate, the two halves cracked open, making it more difficult to eat (and get both shell and filling in one bite).

The second item was the "rum" baba, sponge cake soaked in most likely sugar syrup and stuffed with cream which was a little too pudding-y in consistency. It was... alright, but not great, which could pretty much sum up everything. Certainly not the worst Italian place, but not on the upper echelon of pasticcerie either.

Rating: **1/2

Heritage Bakery [International Correspondent]

Bakery: Heritage Bakery 
Address: 1912 37 St SW, Calgary AB
Website: http://www.heritagebakeryanddeli.ca
Style: Polish
Price: $$

[Well, I suppose that in every trip, there must be a little cloud in the Cake Tour, blocking out the glorious rays of delicious baked goods... okay, okay, let's not get too poetic there. :P Nevertheless, Heritage Bakery was the one bakery the brother was absolutely ordered to go to. Whether he wanted to or not. Ha ha ha! Growing up, this was one of my fave bakeries (and not only for the freebies I got :D). We were actually one of the very few Polish families who supported this bakery right from the beginning, at their first location in Ranchlands. Two moves later, they're still at the same place many years later, but apparently it's not the same place on the inside (I'm guessing/assuming the "kids" must be running it now). Rather, it's not really a bakery anymore. The photos, sign, and products available prove this all too clearly. This was pretty heartbreaking to hear. And so ends my Albertan Cake Tour (so far). :(

... What else was heartbreaking to hear? That this idiot forgot to take any pictures at all. No location photo (and Google was really being awful when I, for once, needed a great street view shot), no idea of the price, and *NO* product picture as well. What was this guy thinking!?! He was complaining that he ate the pie they bought for three days afterwards and in those three days he never thought of taking a photo! Grrrr... my head is going to explode. I had a huge stroke of luck, though: the website has both an outside photo and a pie photo, so there we go. Both photos are property of the deli website and all credit goes to them... please let me keep them up here?? :)]

Heritage Bakery is more a deli than anything else. I had the impression that it was the sort of place you go for lunch for hot Polish food. This food mostly consists of gołąbki (cabbage rolls), pierogi, etc. with very few baked goods. They had only one type of ciasto (cake), cookies, and pie. They don't even bake their own bread, which was pretty disappointing for a "bakery"  in my opinion. I took the pie, which was okay. There was too much filling (blueberry jam). The bottom (the actual pie shell) wasn't great and I thought the topping wasn't crispy enough. By the third day -- it took me three days to finish the pie, not to mention the baked goods bought at other bakeries -- I'd had enough. I was really hoping for a Polish jam-filled doughnut (pączki), which are probably my favourite Polish baked goods, on my trip, either in Edmonton or here at Heritage Bakery, but I came away disappointed.

Rating: **

Traditional Taste

Bakery: Traditional Taste Bakery & Cafe
Address: 211 Guelph St, Georgetown ON 
Website: http://www.traditionaltastebakery.ca/ 
Style: European, North American 
Price: $ 

A recent drive to Georgetown resulted in some more baked goods for trying -- and an official Georgetown tag as well (I now have the minimum three ^^)! Traditional Taste was supposed to have been sampled the previous time, but the bakery was closed on the Saturday afternoon when I'd been there, so it took some time, but it's been done. Nonetheless, Traditional Taste is, despite the label of "European treats", more what I'd call contemporary Canadian baking: a blend of the most well-known pan-European pastries (cannoli, macarons, throw in a strudel or danish -- and it's most certainly the Portuguese custard tarts that give away the bakery's origins ;)) and your usual bakery classics such as cream cakes, tarts, and various squares.

Well, I got two items to try this time around (actually it was another of the brother's hiking trips and he picked this out himself): the first was a slice of apple strudel (he wasn't sure what the price was, but he paid $3.50 altogether), which looked quite promising. While not necessarily in the style I like best, this was a thin layer of soft dough, glazed on the top, and stuffed with large chunks of cinnamon-spiced apples. A common problem, the apples were as I'm not particularly fond of them: hard and cooked for too little time or simply the wrong type of apple (not all types of apples work in baked goods), giving the impression that the filling was made up of fresh apples and that just didn't match with the dough. This is one of my big no-nos, so I was pretty disappointed.

The second item was the classic butter tart, which was pretty good. Flaky tart shell with a firm pecan middle -- not bad. The only thing that was really going against it was that I'd just had Ruth's the previous week and, as I've come to notice, it's going to be very hard to beat that. :P

Overall, Traditional Taste is alright, with a good assortment of treats, but not my personal pick for the best bakery in Georgetown.

Rating: **1/2