Cinnamon Bear Bakery & Cafe

Bakery: Cinnamon Bear Bakery & Cafe
Address: 8342 20 Ave, Coleman AB
Website: n/a
Style: Canadian 
Price: $$ 

Right in the heart of the Frank Slide area, there's Cinnamon Bear an at times bustling bakery-cafe famous, as it seems, for their cinnamon buns. With their wooden decor and rustic, hearty, semi-healthy baked goods and lunch items, it is without a doubt a mountain bakery, though they are first and foremost a lunch destination with people running for their soups, savoury scones, and quiches. Beyond that, they have a selection of cookies, some squares, and cakes at varying price points. Some items were a little pricey in my opinion.

Nevertheless, back to those cinnamon buns! Having purchased something savoury, the question "white or whole wheat?" was, I assumed for the other item; I only discovered later that they do indeed have white and whole wheat cinnamon buns. And I ended up with the whole wheat. Two things irked me a bit: everything in-store is labelled and priced except for the cinnamon buns (how much did they cost? I think $2-something?) and you have to pay $0.75 extra for icing, which is a first.

However, these don't need icing. With a bit of glaze on top and filled with sunflower and sesame seeds and whole grain flour, these have good texture and are perfect for those who don't like excessively sweet baked goods. Heck, you could almost say they're healthy... and that's reason enough to have another one. :)

Rating: ***

Homestead Bakeshop

Bakery: Homestead Bakeshop
Address: 228 24 St, Fort McLeod AB
Website: https://www.homesteadbakeshop.ca/
Style: Canadian
Price: $$

Right in the middle of Main St Fort McLeod, I found this relatively new bakery. Simply given the size of the place and just general trends, I was expecting this to be your typical small-town bakery. You know the kind: squares and cookies, maybe some really good doughnuts. Instead, I was surprised to find a pretty, tastefully decorated artisanal bakery that wouldn't be out of place on the hippest of city streets. Not that the former is a bad thing, of course. ;) Both are good and well, a bakery is a bakery~

Fortunately for me, my bakery touring that day started nearby and I was actually at Homestead before lunch. ((This must, I need to add, be celebrated; it seems a general rule for me to be running in a few hours before closing)) Nonetheless, I did find labels with items obviously cleared out and others on their way there. I found goodies made with flaky dough, others with puff pastry, a few surprising finds (were those Dutch almond tarts!?) and more rustic, artisanal versions of baking classics such as butter tarts, cookies, muffins, and these guys: sticky buns ($1.95).

Yes, I was debating between this and the almond tart, but this being the third bakery so far (three more would follow .__., I thought it would be more budget friendly to "stick" to the bun. Ha ha, get it? Anyways, this was a tall bun with a slightly flaky exterior and a soft inside, similar to what you might expect from a danish or French-style cinnamon buns; all of that was then beautifully topped off with sticky syrup just oozing down the sides and big chunks of nuts. A bit of caramel, a bit of cinnamon, some walnuts -- yum, this was good!

Rating: ***

Kooyman Bakery

Bakery: Kooyman Bakery 
Address: 514 51 Ave, Coalhurst AB
Website: facebook
Style: Dutch, Canadian 
Price: $

Just outside of Lethbridge, there is the small town of Coalhurst, and in that town is a Dutch bakery -- the only Dutch bakery I managed to nab on this particular Cake Trip. Yes, I had quite a few lined up here and there and I was ready to take them on, one apple fritter at a time. :P But I was either at the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing worked out. Until Kooyman, that is.

Kooyman has a fairly large selection for its size, but of the baked goods they do have (the majority being bread and savoury items) I was a tad disappointed that they didn't really have many Dutch mainstays, though there were packs of botterkoek and slices of Dutch apple cake, so I shouldn't complain too much. :P Beyond that, it was a nice selection of classic, small-town baked goods with cinnamon buns being perhaps the most prominent.

Someone had been just talking about Dutch apple cake ($1.95) and the desire to eat some a few days ago, so spotting this one, I couldn't resist. Chunks of apple folded into a slightly moist, slightly dough and then topped with a glaze. Maybe, I confess, my mom's is still the best, and I realize it would have been much better warmed up a bit (it was eaten in the car a few hours later), but it was still very good.

The other item I got was the apple fritter ($1.25). Unlike most apple fritters, this proved to be more like a jelly doughnut, with the jam-like apple filling stuffed in the middle of a denser cinnamon-spiced dough and glazed only one side. Nice taste of cinnamon throughout. This was certainly a different take and quite good, though I think there was too much filling, especially towards the middle where there was more filling than dough. Never really like when that happens.

Nonetheless, I did finally get my Dutch bakery fix and it was a satisfying one!

Rating: ***

The Neighbourhood Bakehouse

Bakery: The Neighbourhood Bakehouse
Address: 1418 17 St S, Lethbridge AB
Website: https://neighbourhoodbakehouse.com/
Style: Canadian
Price: $

In one week of travels (almost) across the country, there was actually only one perfect 4-star bakery and that unassuming bakery happened to be The Neighbourhood Bakehouse in Lethbridge.

As the name indicates, this bakery is sandwiched right in the middle of a residential area, a very small plaza popping up almost unexpectedly as you drive past house after house. Inside, this equally small bakery has a whole corner of display cases, fully stocked with delicious glazed doughnuts, baked goods, cinnamon buns and cookies -- and did I mention they have three varieties of apple fritter? Wow! All priced, all labelled, and all looking delicious.

For a mere instant, I was unsure of what to take; I had a few options when, yet again, I spotted it. The poppy seed bun ($1.25). Rolled into a spiral and simply glazed, it looked pretty straightforward. Biting into it was a whole different story. Super fresh, super fluffy, this wasn't any old poppy seed bun, this was a poppy seed doughnut! And it was amazing! *-*

Rating: ****

Sweet Bakery

Bakery: Sweet Bakery & Coffee House
Address: 2445 Broad St, Regina SK
Website: http://www.sweetbakeryandcoffeehouseregina.com/
Style: Canadian 
Price: $$$$ 

At the beginning of August, I embarked on a road trip from Toronto to Kelowna. Five provinces. Six days. Sure, the main purpose wasn't to go cake touring, but it was certainly a top priority, especially considering that I am still aiming for 150 bakeries from all over the country! Here are the results.

Rounding out my Saskatchewan tour this time around is Sweet Bakery. Well, I suppose I forgot to do this chronologically and had to go back, but nevertheless, I spent one night in Regina and thought it a travesty if I didn't have any Cake Tours from the city. This proved more difficult than you'd think. There really aren't that many bakeries for a city of Regina's size and they seem scattered about; none, suffice to say, were really on the way. Except, that is, for Sweet Bakery, which was located a few blocks away from where I was staying and it was more or less on the way back to the highway.

Despite the name online, it's known as Sweet Coffee on location and that is certainly more appropriate. It really isn't in any way a proper bakery in the sense that the focus is the drinks and prepared light meals or sweets to accompany those drinks. They really don't have that much in terms of selection; no bread, that's for sure, and baked goods are more or less variants of the same item (cookies, cheesecake, and coffee cake). Moreover, these baked goods were expensive! I simply did not think anything was worth the price.

I confess I was ready to walk out when the idea of not doing a bakery in Regina loomed darkly over my head and I caved, going for the cheapest item: a cookie. I picked the ginger cookie ($2.55). I love ginger cookies; I could eat them all day, every day. People often get them wrong, yes, and I don't often stumble upon a good chewy, gingery cookie. Most of the time, they're too sandy, even though they have enough of that ginger zing. These, on the other hand, were brittle and hard. The size and thickness made them nearly impossible to break or bite apart and they didn't smell like ginger, nor taste like it. I hardly ever get nasty on my reviews, even when I don't particularly like it, but I was really... unsatisfied and disappointed with this place.

Rating: *

Maple Leaf Bakery

Bakery: Maple Leaf Bakery 
Address: 424 4 Ave, Moose Jaw SK 
Website: n/a 
Style: Canadian 
Price: $ 

At the beginning of August, I embarked on a road trip from Toronto to Kelowna. Five provinces. Six days. Sure, the main purpose wasn't to go cake touring, but it was certainly a top priority, especially considering that I am still aiming for 150 bakeries from all over the country! Here are the results.

I was intent on doing a bakery in Moose Jaw and this one instantly came up, though there's very little information about it online. Usually, this doesn't bode well and I already encountered a few on my trip like that, but Maple Leaf is indeed open! Stepping into this small, long-established bakery, at first glance, there wasn't that much selection, at least in the actual display cases, but then you realize that baked goods are either presented on cookie trays in the window or behind the counter on racks. And unlike a great many bakeries, the focus seems to be on the sweet goods -- yes!

Maple Leaf was one pleasant surprise after another; first, amid the doughnuts, cinnamon buns and butter tarts, I spotted it. Yup, it was a poppy seed bun -- my first poppy seed bun of the trip! *-* The next surprise came in the form of the price: I paid $1.90, with taxes, for the poppy seed bun AND cinnamon bun. Together. Whoa. Elsewhere, a bun with so much poppy seed would set me back at least $2.50!

And how did it taste? Amazing! This was a generous, what I call a Russian-style poppy seed mass. Very black, pure poppy seeds and lots of it, rolled around a soft, fluffy, pull-apart dough. I haven't had such a good poppy seed bun in so long!

Then there was the cinnamon bun. Similar soft, fluffy dough as the poppy seed bun with a nice amount of cinnamon that got a bit nice and gooey in the centre. As always, I'm not the biggest fan of raisins and thought this would have been better without, but still tasty. Yes, it's not the poppy seed, but besides that....

Rating: ***1/2