The Donut Line [RIP]

Bakery: The Donut Line
Address: 195 Memorial Ave, Orillia ON
Website: n/a
Style: Doughnuts
Price: $ 

It's been a bit slow on the Cake Tour lately, but I finally got through several bakeries on a recent trip to Muskoka. The first on the list is The Donut Line. Though it may resemble a Midas muffler place on the outside, inside it's an old-school doughnut shop that serves humble, no-frills doughnuts. With a nice selection of cake and raised classics being their specialty, these simple doughnuts are fresh and very nicely glazed.

Out of the three doughnuts taken -- a maple raised, apple fritter, and dutchie -- the highlight was definitely the maple, with its tasty, perfectly applied glaze and soft, fluffy texture. Yummy! It looked so good that it was only halfway into it that it was remembered that a photo still hadn't been taken. The others suffered a worse fate. -_-

While both the apple fritter and dutchie were very good in their own right, they had the downfall of being eaten when the memory of downright amazing apple fritters and the best dutchie ever found were still (hot and) fresh in the mind, and therefore, little comparison could be made; still, when it comes to standard sources for doughnuts, these were above-average. The Donut Line is a good place to pull over to get your doughnut fix.

Rating: ***

Happy Bagel Bakery

Bakery: Happy Bagel Bakery
Address: 4949 Bathurst St, North York ON
Website: facebook
Style: Jewish, Eastern European
Price: $$

I was going back down to the 401 when I spotted yet another bakery on bakery-heavy Bathurst -- and imagine, I hadn't done it yet! Happy Bagel, to be sure, is not that hard to overlook. Located on the corner of a plaza, the boring sign makes this look a little like a rundown coffee joint; you don't expect the lovely array of Eastern European/Russian baked goods waiting inside. This includes several types of poppy seed treats (of course that's a priority) along with flaky buns and pastries filled with chocolate, sweet cheese, prunes and nuts. They also have more universal baked goods like turnovers and cookies as well.

Naturally, I had the difficult decision as to which poppy seed bun to get: the smaller coil with rock sugar and what looked like candied orange peel or the larger, more dense roll. I went for the big one. ($2.99) Delicious poppy seed mass generously rolled with thin layers of dough with a hardened sugary topping above. Very good, but I had one issue which I wasn't too pleased with: raisins. In some ways I was surprised since generally this style of poppy seed mass doesn't contain raisins, and there were a lot of them so considerable picking was needed. :/

To make up for the raisins, there were these beauties: trays of hamantaschen ($0.89/each) available in poppy seed or prune. These were freshly baked and you could tell: sugar cookie dough was crunchy on the inside and slightly soft on the inside. Pair that with a chewy poppy seed mass that had not yet hardened as is the case with cookies that have been sitting around for awhile. Nothing too elaborate, but I think these outdid all others I've tried; these "poppy seed triangles" have to be my new favourites! Fantastic, moderately priced and quality baked goods.

Rating: ***1/2

Sanremo Bakery

Bakery: Sanremo Bakery
Address: 374 Royal York Rd, Etobicoke ON 
Website: http://www.sanremobakery.com/
Style: Italian
Price: $$ 

Hey everyone! The latest "best of" guide -- the Best of Toronto bakeries -- made by yours truly has just been finished and posted on the menu at the very bottom of the screen or here.  You're welcome to take a look, see what you think. :)

**

Ah, Sanremo -- at last! It is not often that Mimi's Cake Tour has to retreat and regroup when it comes to a bakery; in this case, that meant walking out and returning another day. In a sense, it's almost unbelievable that this was my first time going to this busy Italian bakery in Mimico, famous for their doughnuts. How did that happen? Nonetheless, checking out their website and spotting thirty flavours of doughnuts was enough for me to come running. Unfortunately, everybody else seemed to have the same idea and I soon learned that coming on Saturday afternoon was a big mistake. With entire shelves and every single doughnut cleaned out and barely enough room to stand, I've never seen such pandemonium in a bakery. Impossible to park, difficult to even drive past, it takes patience and dedication, and even I was getting annoyed. Seeing that nothing I wanted was there, I returned on a Wednesday afternoon to find a more subdued insanity, but all doughnuts except two butterscotch and one chocolate chip gone. They did, however, it being March, have four or five flavours of zeppole... and I then knew exactly what I wanted.

Backing up a bit, Sanremo is more or less a typical Italian bakery and deli with just a portion of the large space dedicated to baked goods. Some self-serve treats are located on shelves near the bread, but the vast majority are located behind the counter of craziness. Even with a number system, it's hectic and frustrating with people cutting in line or groups of individually paying friends ordering all at the same time. Despite this, Sanremo does have a larger than usual selection of Italian and Canadian baked goods including shelves upon (empty) shelves of doughnuts, cannoli, cakes and cake slices, and some interesting Italian pastries I've never seen anywhere else, such as the torta calabrese. Items are labelled and priced... if you can push past the hordes of people to see anything, that is.

Yes, it being zeppole season, I had the chance to try a Sanremo version; the amarena cherry version, to be exact. Other options include ricotta cream, strawberry and cream, nutella, but at a pricey $3.75 + tax -- the most expensive I've ever seen them -- the only one worth taking in my opinion was the amarena cherry one: my favourite. In some ways, I was hoping that it wouldn't be too great since I wouldn't have to return here, but that backfired. :/ Incredibly fresh pastry rings (which made me realize I've never had a freshly baked zeppola before) stuffed with custard and cherries that were literally soaking through the dough and onto the box below. This weighed a ton and was a pleasure to bite into. So much rich cherry flavour, delicious dough -- wow. In the end, everyone seems to know it's worth the wait and inconvenience of grabbing something, anything at all from this bakery.

Rating: ***1/2

Deri Italian Bakery

Bakery: Deri Italian Bakery
Address: 640 Bloor St, Mississauga ON 
Website: http://deriitalianbakery.com/
Style: Italian 
Price: $$

It's that time of year again! Anyone that's a regular frequenter of Italian bakeries will know what I'm talking about: it's zeppole time! :) The greatest of Italian pastries makes a comeback, often for a limited time, and I am there to cover as many bakeries as possible in the time period, hoping to find yet another "golden zeppola" out there. Lacking enough for a proper competition, I still decided to try one at my newest bakery.

I must not drive this way at all, since a couple months ago, I was driving down Bloor (in Mississauga) and noticed a plaza I had never known existed; on it was Deri Bakery. Granted, Deri is a couple of decades old at this point, and so it's been around for some time and is, in fact, far from new. Still, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find new things to review, so while in the area, I popped in here, overjoyed at the signs in the window announcing that it was zeppole time -- yes! Turns out I got here at the right time! ^^;

Deri is a typical Italian bakery/deli, just a bit smaller-scale with a limited selection of baked goods and more items located in the display cases; these include whole cakes, cupcakes, and some pastries like cannoli and, there in the bottom corner, zeppole. While most items are labelled, there isn't a price to be seen, which was a little frustrating.

Nevertheless, this zeppola ($3.50, taxes included) was of the custard variety with three stiff, half-cherry peaks on top. This being fairly standard, I didn't expect that the three chunks of cherry (totalling 1.5 amarena cherries per zeppola) on top were the only cherries in it. In all others ever tested, there are either more cherries inside or the filling is at least drizzled with syrup-like juice, infusing it with that cherry flavour I love. This was just plain pudding, quite thick and resembling the packaged stuff a little too much for it to be enjoyable. Good dough for the ring, but iffy filling made this zeppola bland. I'd been waiting all year for this and came away a bit disappointed and with my zeppole cravings unsatisfied.

Rating: **

The Sweet Escape

Bakery: The Sweet Escape
Address: 24 Tank House Lane, Toronto ON 
Website: http://www.thesweetescapedistillery.com/
Style: North American 
Price: $$-$$$ 

Now that all trips are over and the rush of bakeries has subsided, it's getting a little slow (and lonely) on this site of mine. That's why I finally got started on a new idea I've been thinking of for the past few months: best of "travel" guides. At the moment, there's only one done, but there are more on the way. Scroll down to the bottom menu or click here to check out the first: Montreal! :)

 Located in the Distillery District, at the end of the hallway of one of the commercial buildings there, the Sweet Escape is one of a few bakeries in the area. Actually, I haven't been to the Distillery District in ages and was a little disgruntled that not much has changed in terms of the bakery scene and there aren't as many options as I would have liked to see. However, the Sweet Escape is there; touting itself as a patisserie, their primary focus seems to be cupcakes. In addition to this, they have different varieties of colourful macarons and squares of the brownie kind.

One of their signature items -- or perhaps *the* signature item -- is their "Distillery cake"; this is an English-style toffee cake with a sponge cake dunked and coated in a more runny caramel sauce. This was then topped with two pieces of dates. The dates in themselves were a bit deceiving since I was expecting it to be more like a date cake, which is always amazing, but it was different. The toffee coating made the cake moist, sweet and sticky with a hint of orange, which was nice. Overall: it probably looked yummier than it tasted, but it was still pretty good. 

Rating: **1/2

The Donut Stop

Bakery: The Donut Stop
Address: 617 Parkdale Ave N, Hamilton ON
Website: facebook 
Style: Doughnuts 
Price: $  

Located in an industrial area of Hamilton, this 24-hour coffee stop may be an easy miss and unlikely stop for those on the hunt for baked goods, but The Donut Stop, despite signage advertising nothing but their coffee, makes their doughnuts fresh and from scratch. These come in a bunch of classic varieties, along with a few harder-to-find types. Nothing gourmet, but simple, tasty doughnuts that are fresh and affordable -- what more could you want? ;)

 Anyways, for $6 you get a box of half dozen, and the ones in this box were: walnut, cherry, and two dutchies and apple fritters. My focus was on yeast (raised) doughnuts, because these are always my personal preferences; however, I have noted with many doughnut places that when you make good cake doughnuts, the yeast ones aren't so good. You could say this was the case here: at first glance, I pounced on the apple fritter, but although fresh and with good dough, it lacked apples (I probably had two chunks) and didn't have the flavour and nice glazed outside of good fritters. The same was true of the dutchies, which also lacked raisins and the tastiness of the ones sampled a few weeks prior.

On the other hand, I took a piece of the walnut and cherry at first out of pure curiosity. Dense, but still moist on the inside with an almost shell-like, thickly glazed outside, these two cake doughnuts were the highlights and are obviously the specialty here.

Rating: ***