Nadege Patisserie

The final place we stopped by on our pre-Valentine's Day weekend was recommended to me by Monica Kulling. Exactly one year ago, she gave me 4 little macarons from Nadege Patisserie, I even kept the card it came with (it's still on my fridge) just so I would remember to visit.

Nadege Patisserie
780 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON M6J 1G2
(416) 368-2009

They offer lots of pastries, desserts, sandwiches, and macarons. They also have seating room if you ever want to take a break and watch chefs in the back make wonderful treats.

Honestly, I wanted to try more than one of their cakes, but having just purchased a bunch of cupcakes from the three previous bakeries, I had to behave and limit my sugar intake.

Since it was a weekend of looove, Howard and I decided on the pink fuzzy heart cake named Elle. "It's so FUZZY!" (say it in Agnes' voice from Despicable Me)

Cute box!!! By the way, the service was great. They greet you when you come in and are very attentive to help while you hem and haw over which dessert you're going to finally pick.

Hello Elle! This was by far our favourite dessert from the whole day. Inside, there is a layer of light sponge cake, lichee mousse with raspberry filling. We don't know what the pink fuzzy covering is over the white chocolate mold, but it was all edible and tasty. Great flavour combination!

And of course we're back for the macarons!

What can I say? It was fun! And if you have an eagle eye, you'll notice in the photo of our sweet haul that the macarons are sitting on top of another Nadege bag. Howard couldn't resist and also got a chocolate almond croissant.

Click here to read about our previous stops: OMG Baked Goodness, the Wedding Cake Shoppe, and Dlish Cupcakes.

Dlish Cupcakes

The third place we visited last weekend focuses only on cupcakes:

Dlish Cupcakes
833 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON M6J 1G1
(416) 703-8005

They're on facebook and twitter too.

There are 3 seats by the window and a wall of cupcake boxes, I'm guessing the display of the boxes will change according to the season or holidays.

It's a small little cupcake shop that serves 16 different flavours, but they rotate throughout the week. Let's have a closer look at the 9 flavours being served last Saturday:

Top left to bottom right: vanilla, chocolate marshmallow, coconut macaroon, dark chocolate, salty caramel, mocha, vanilla on chocolate, nutella, and red velvet.

We got a salty caramel and red velvet cupcake to go in the brown paper bag (not in the boxes they were displaying). Their red velvet was getting some good reviews, so we decided to try it. Although, we're still not fans because of the intense red colouring.

You can see the full list of their flavours on their website. We have to say that we weren't blown away by the two cupcakes we tried, but we're glad to hear that they're all baked from scratch.

We do have one observation about Dlish Cupcakes, this shop reminded us a lot of Sprinkles. So we're not sure what to make of it.

The Wedding Cake Shoppe

Our second stop during our pre-Valentine's Day weekend:

The Wedding Cake Shoppe
859 College Street
Toronto, ON M6H 1A1
(416) 916-2253

They tweet too!

Despite the name of the shop, they don't only sell wedding cakes, you can visit and pick up some great cupcakes too. While you're there, they also have a small selection of cake toppers and tools.

Hello! My name is I'm going to eat you!

Some cupcakes were dressed up for Valentine's Day. As a heads up, Howard and I will be helping a friend make cupcakes for their wedding. If we aren't tired from making 250 cupcakes, I'll do a little tutorial about making fondant monogram hearts and share the mass cupcake experience. =)

The lovely display of cake stands drew my attention away from the cupcakes a bit. I would like the pink, blue, and green cake stands please! Oh and glass domes!!

It was really busy here on Saturday. All of the tables were full of people doing tastings and planning their wedding cakes.

We picked up the dulce de leche cupcake. A vanilla bean cupcake topped with imported argentinian dulce de leche. It was rich, thick, sweet, and delicious! We also tried the passion fruit pash cupcake. Another vanilla bean cupcake, topped with passion fruit buttercream. Great aroma and flavour for the buttercream!

OMG Baked Goodness Ltd.

The weekend before Valentine's Day. What should we do?
Howard!

Oh the silence of no answers. Since we did not have anything planned, Howard agreed to take me on a mini dessert run. First up:

OMG Baked Goodness Ltd.
1561 Dundas Street West
Toronto, ON M6K 1T9
(647) 348-5664

They're on facebook and they tweet too!

Welcome to OMG Baked Goodness Ltd! I had heard about this bakery awhile back and had seen some of their cupcakes at other retailers, so let's check it out.

A cupcake mural greets you when you walk into the bakery. I was actually quite surprised by the size of the place. There is a huge area behind the storefront!

The storefront consists of bakery cases and tables featuring, you got it, OMG baked goodness! Sorry, I like playing with the name of this place, it's too fun. The walls are pink, it wasn't just for Valentine's Day.

Some things of note, they also have cookies, pastries, pies, scones, bread, and fortune cookies. We were told that the fortune cookies had some fun messages in them. =)

And you know me, I'm zooming right for the cupcakes. They sell regular and mini sized vegan cupcakes here.

We picked two mini ones. The pink one is with vanilla frosting and the other one is chocolate. Eeks, the tops got a little squished before I could take a photo. I preferred the chocolate with chocolate cupcake.

Get your heart on! Like I said, it's the weekend before Valentine's Day! They have some more photos on their facebook page if you want to check it out. It looks like they have lots of fun here!

These cupcakes enjoy watching the snowy days go by...

Fondant Dinosaur Round-Up 2

It is time to do another round-up featuring your fondant dinosaur cupcakes! We left off our round-up here and we have been joyfully hearing from more and more of you. We tried our best to post these in the order that they appeared, if we missed yours, please let us know.

1. Shared on flickr by Melinda from Fantasy Cupcakes in the UK:

We love how she added spots on some of the dinosaurs and those eyes, you just get lost in them! A great set and she even made dinosaur bones and prints.

2. Posted by Kim M. Byers from the Celebration Shoppe blog in Ohio:

There are the dinosaur cake toppers she made!

Cole is one lucky birthday boy!

You have to visit the blog for the full effect - the dessert table, the dino-ROAR party ideas, and the decorations! Great colour co-ordination and attention to details.

3. Posted by Sandi Oh from Oh, just put a cupcake in it.... in Minnesota:

So many dinosaur cupcakes! Once again, we love the added touch of patterns on the dinosaurs. They turned out really good and she made a volcano cake:

Do you want to see something cool? Sandi also posted a video showing the volcano eruption using dry ice.

4. Posted by Christine from Pure Joy Events in DC:

Here is the full post about their DinoFOUR Birthday party. It looked like a lot of fun, we would have loved to do a dinosaur hunt as a kid!

Love how the cake stands are decorated with a grass border. The cupcakes are from Georgetown Cupcakes, you may have heard about their show on TLC, DC Cupcakes?

5. Posted by Netty from Babycakes in New York:

We hope that Louis loved them!

Grinning T-Rexes make us grin too! Nom!

6. Photo shared by Carol Delp from facebook:

Smooth frosting for the cake and great use of icing for the nest too! I thought the eggs were jellybeans or candy, but Carol confirmed that they were also made from fondant.

7. Photo shared by Stephanie Bouffiou from facebook:

Smiley dinosaurs, nice and neat grass frosting too. We know how tiring piping lots of tiny grass can be, so great job! What flavours are the cupcakes? We see two colours...

8. Photo shared by Darlene Grucci Darden from facebook:

Great photo! Volcano and dinosaurs for Sean's birthday.

9. Photo shared by Auradell from the comments below. Visit her blog, she also made an amazing guitar cake!

This guy is ready to party!! Such a cute hat!

Thank you to everyone for sharing! It looks like most boys turning 3 or 4 are really into dinosaurs! We like seeing that our dinosaur tutorials are being found useful, so don't hesitate to let us know if you have any questions or suggestions for future tutorials. =)

Happy Chinese New Year

We're celebrating the Year of the Rabbit with some more peanut butter chocolate crispy bars. They were so good that we made it again with more "crispy" to them. By some kind of luck, we had a snow day yesterday, so I made these early in the morning and popped them in the fridge to set. By late afternoon, half of the batch was gone.

This is currently the wallpaper on my laptop. Mmmm chocolate!

Such a good combination!

Let me out of the pan!

I packed up 3 boxes of these little treats. One for Howard's parents, one to stay at home, and one for me to snack on at work.

My dad had the brilliant idea of adding Osmanthus flowers to the crispy bars. So I made a batch without the peanut butter and chocolate topping for us to test. It is quite the success and I'm torn between which version I like better! The flowers give such a great aroma when you're combining it with the corn syrup mixture and the fragrant stays even after the bars are chilled!

Osmanthus Crispy Bars
Makes about one 8x8 square pan

1 3/4 cups of crisped rice cereal
1/4 cup of water
1/4 cup of sugar
3 tablespoons of corn syrup
3 tablespoons of unsalted butter
1 1/2 tablespoons of dried Sweet Osmanthus flowers

1. Lightly spray a paper towel with nonstick cooking spray and use it to rub the bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan.
2. Pour the water into a small saucepan. Gently add the sugar and corn syrup. Make sure none of the sugar or syrup gets on the sides of the pan. Use a wooden spoon to stir the mixture until combined.
3. Put a candy thermometer in the saucepan, cook over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Cook until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage, 235 degrees F.
4. Remove from heat, stir in the butter and Osmanthus until well combined.
   
5. Pour the mixture over the crispy rice cereal. Quickly stir until the cereal until it is thoroughly coated. Then press into the 8-inch square baking pan. Let the bars cool to room temperature, chill to set.
   

Wordless Wednesday: February 2, 2011