Loco Beanz Coffee House

Bakery: Loco Beanz Coffee House 
Address: 50 Meredith St, Gore Bay ON
Website: facebook 
Style: Canadian 
Price: $$ 

There is apparently a real bakery on Manitoulin Island, but it was closed and leaving the island without having any sort of Cake Tour stop was unthinkable, so I decided to pop into Loco Beanz. Loco Beanz is a local coffee shop chain with three locations around Manitoulin Island that serves coffee along with hot breakfasts, light lunches, and a very few -- as in three or four -- baked goods.

 Stopping to grab something, I thought that the strawberry cheese danish would go well with my drink. It was alright with soft, slightly flaky dough, runny jelly and nice cheese, but the glaze drizzled on top tasted old and cracked off, and despite it saying homemade, there was something quite generic about it. So, in the end, maybe it wasn't the best Cake Tour, but the most important thing is that it was a Cake Tour; next time around, I'll get the real deal!

Rating: **

Billy G's Doughnuts

Bakery: Billy G's Doughnuts 
Address: 2326 Alberni Hwy, Coombs BC 
Website: n/a 
Style: Doughnuts 
Price: $$ 

Part of the Goats on a Roof ultimate tourist-trap empire is this small doughnut shop tucked along one side of the building. This extremely bustling stand sells nothing more besides doughnuts and a few drinks, with the latter prone to selling out by the afternoon -- I would know, it took two tries to find this place open! Coming in about a dozen flavours, the doughnuts feature inventive names that mask the fact that the flavours themselves are generally anything but. Rather, I wouldn't go so far as to call them gourmet doughnuts; instead, you'll find mostly classic, typical cake and yeast dough varieties at slightly marked up prices, mostly due to the location, no doubt. Most flavours, including some unique offerings, usually chocolate-oriented, cost an additional $0.50. Perennial favourite, the apple fritter is, as is usually the case, the most expensive at $2.99.

I love my yeast doughnuts and if I had a choice between yeast or cake doughnuts, I would always take the former. Fortunately, Billy G's offers both. Unfortunately, their more unusual varieties -- including various types of dough, which is hard to find in better doughnut shops like this -- are cake doughnuts, so essentially I was hard pressed to find an interesting yeast doughnut that wasn't chocolate. Sometimes, however, simple is the best way to gauge how good the doughnut is, so I picked out the cinnamon twister ($1.99). Good dough: nicely fried with a denser, rip-apart texture. I probably would have preferred glaze over the cinnamon and sugar, but a simple, tasty doughnut.

I also decided to try the Coombs Cut-Off ($2.50), essentially a Boston cream doughnut with a flatter yeast dough base, thick custard and equally thick chocolate top. I liked that same dense, sponge-like dough, but personally was not a fan of the chocolate glaze which was far too thick and sticky. Overall: not baaah-d! ;)

Rating: ***

Abundance Artisan Bakery

Bakery: Abundance Artisan Bakery 
Address: 77 8th Ave, Lilloet BC 
Website: facebook 
Style: Canadian 
Price: $$ 

Someone once recommended checking out Lilloet since it was a nice town with great scenery and seeing as there was a bakery there as well, I thought why not? ;) Abundance is a busy, somewhat chaotic (especially when it comes to customers forming lines in the order they arrived...) bakery cafe with an open counter dedicated to a limited selection of rustic baked goods ranging from various danishes and sweet buns, cookies, perhaps a scone or two to simple, wholesome-looking cake slices.

 I was originally planning on something else, but when I found out that their sourdough-based doughnuts (sourdoughnuts, if you will) were a weekend-only event and it happened to be Saturday, really, how could I choose otherwise?

I grabbed the last two glazed doughnuts ($2.85 total) and ate one immediately. The dough was moist and airy with a slight chewiness to it. The thin glaze that pooled around the middle complimented it perfectly; overall, it was delicious. Mmm... I'm not sure if I'd have enjoyed the other baked goods in store as much, but I was very happy I went with that Saturday special!

Rating: ***

Cascade [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Cascade 
Address: 3 Chome-2-1 Aioicho, Chūō-ku, Kōbe-shi, Hyōgo-ken
Website: http://www.cascade-kobe.co.jp/
Style: Japanese
Price: $$ 

A great many bakeries encountered on my Japanese Cake Tour aimed to replicate a French patisserie, complete with croissants and little flags indicating the most authentic baked goods; several more adventurous bakeries had their sights set on something a little different. Cascade, a local Kobe-area bakery chain, was one such bakery; their goal? To turn their run-of-the-mill bakery into a sort of German Konditorei. Naturally, that does include the presence of little German flags here and there, though to be quite honest, I had a hard time distinguishing how a few of the items qualified as being German flag-worthy, but no matter.


Two items did inevitably catch my attention amid their large selection of baked goods: a sort of two-tone roll cake slice and the pretzel below. In-store, I just froze. Was it? Could it be? In theory, yes, that dough and darker mass should have been poppy seed, but my gut instinct was that it wasn't. More than that, of course I knew it to be chocolate!

Nonetheless, I was still not completely convinced and it did look like one of the better items for sale, so I grabbed chocolate almond pretzel (205 yen). Putting aside the fact that it was so meant to be poppy seed, this was very, surprisingly good! I started with saying I'd try a small piece and save the rest for later, but ended up eating the whole thing at once -- it must have been the combination of flaky "pretzel" dough, softer, sponge cake-like chocolate dough filling and vanilla glaze and some slivered almonds generously coating the top. A bit of crunch, some chewiness, delicious blend of flavours. Oh yeah -- so wasn't expecting that from a chain of underground walkway bakeries!

Rating: ***1/2

Doce Minho Pastry & Bakery

Bakery: Doce Minho Pastry and Bakery 
Address: 2189 Dufferin St, Toronto ON
Website: https://doceminhobakery.com/
Style: Portuguese
Price: $

It was a miserable day and I was sick, so I thought there was nothing better than to drive around and visit some bakeries I'm still missing. Doce Minho was my first stop. This neighbourhood Portuguese bakery and cafe seems to be a popular destination for those wanting to sit down for a coffee or to grab some of the many cake slices they sell.

For me, however, I actually prefer Portuguese baked goods over their cakes or famed custard tarts: give me a hearty coconut or custard bun, maybe a malasada... or two any day. In that aspect, Doce Minho doesn't exactly satisfy my needs, with many Portuguese bakery staples I've come to expect not there. It being a Saturday, maybe they simply sold out in the morning and never baked more? Regardless of the reason, I was unusually lost as to what to get. Big, flat custard pastries in the back looked appealing from a distance, but when inquiring about what it was and how much it cost, I noted that what I had assumed to be some sort of jam was actually blackened dough and the price, at $14.00, didn't exactly make sense given that they offer the same thing (so the worker informed me) as individual slices for $2.00 and the large size isn't 7 times (or more) bigger.

 I grabbed a twist bread with cinnamon and sugar ($2.00); this is one particular baked good I end up grabbing regularly so in comparison I found this version very doughy and dense, a bit like a giant cake doughnut. Stiff, lacking in either moistness or airiness.  I've had better elsewhere.

In the end, I did pick that individual slice of the custard pastry ($2.00). I really like this pastry style and, truth be told, it looked much better than the bigger version, though the right side was quite black under the coconut and you could taste it. A bit of custard piped down the middle with a flaky dough all along the bottom and up along the sides, which were then dusted with shredded coconut. My preferred pick of the two, though I think it probably should have been baked a level or two lower from the top.

Rating: **

Nanaimo Bakery

Bakery: Nanaimo Bakery
Address: 2025 Bowen Rd, Nanaimo BC
Website: https://www.nanbakery.ca/
Style: German, European
Price: $-$$ 

Several years ago, I discovered that the city of Nanaimo has created a "Nanaimo Bar Trail", a local tour celebrating the city's homegrown hero: the humble Nanaimo Bar. Taking a look at the tour with the express purpose of covering as much ground as possible, I discovered that there really weren't that many locations, and not that many bakery locations, at that. Of the two on the list that I considered close enough to group together and make a Nanaimo Bar Trail of my own, Nanaimo Bakery was my second and final stop.

Fresh with my disappointment at having not found any Nanaimo bars waiting for me at the previous bakery, I came in to Nanaimo Bakery expecting the worst. What I didn't expect was an overwhelming array of pastries, cakes, baked goods and chocolates, all laid out in a very impressive spread, so much so that I couldn't possibly leave with just one item in tow!

I was very fortunate I did, since all three sweets were delicious, starting from the famous Nanaimo Bar ($1.30), which was exactly as I wanted it to be: rich custard cream in between a dense chocolatey bottom layer and dark chocolate on top that tasted so fresh, which was a nice change from squares and bars often encountered that taste of the fridge and have kind of solidified. This is how a Nanaimo bar should taste.

Equally good was their poppy seed danish ($1.75), a unique treat that had a flaky bottom layer of dough that was topped with poppy seed mass, some crumble and an almost opaque layer of icing. I'd never thin anything in this style: very thin, made almost like a Copenhagen square. Was it ever good!

In addition to that, I tried to silly porcupine cake ($2.25): roughly the size and shape of a rum ball with a moist chocolate inside and rich taste, though maybe the poor critter's face needed a little improvement. :P Overall: a fantastic bakery.

Rating: ***1/2