Prairie Girl Bakery

There's a new bakery in the city! We had been planning to visit since the opening, but have been blaming the cold weather for my resistance to leave the office.

Easter Monday wasn't a weather-friendly day either, but enough waiting. We took the chance and luckily didn't get rained on. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera with me, but my colleague Jen did (yes, the same Jen that went with me on my first NYC Cupcake Tour). So all the photos in this post are courtesy of Jennifer Lum:

Prairie Girl Bakery

Suite 106, 18 King Street East

Toronto, ON M5C 1C4

(416) 504-2253

When you first step into Prairie Girl Bakery, you'll notice how clean, bright, and spacious it is. There will be customers in line and ordering cupcakes, but you won't mind the wait because you'll be distracted by this wall:

Don't you wish you had cupcake drawers like this at home? They even slide out:

Very clever and what a practical way to store and keep track of all the cupcakes.

There's also some nice cupcake art hanging on the walls.

But let's go back to the cupcakes, Prairie Girl Bakery offers two cupcake sizes: regular and mini. Five cupcake bases: dark cocoa, golden buttermilk, red velvet, banana, and carrot. The dark cocoa and golden buttermilk can be paired with many different icing flavours. The red velvet and carrot are matched with cream cheese icing, while banana gets its own peanut butter icing.

We went with half a dozen mini cupcakes in order to sample as many as we could that day. We tried: Vanilla Lemon, Chocolate Peppermint, Chocolate Strawberry, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Carrot Cream Cheese, and their treat of the week: Cafe Au Lait (chocolate with coffee butter icing).

Back at the office, we sliced each cupcake in half for the taste test. All the cupcakes were spongy and light with a good texture (not too crumby). We found that the icings were also very soft and good in flavour. My favourite would have to be the Chocolate Strawberry. Most places don't get the strawberry flavour in the icing to be noticeable, but this one was. I think it's safe to say that I will be back for some more!

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!

Old Firehall Confectionery

Do you remember this tweet?

Square cupcakes? Must go see!

You know what? Despite the fact that my parents couldn't remember the name of the place or gave me no clues whatsoever, the place was easy to find.

Laura, Howard, and I just followed the aroma:

Old Firehall Confectionery
170 Main Street
Unionville, ON L3R 2G9
(905) 415-9192

I hopped, skipped, and jumped to the square cupcakes!

Then I stood up and looked further down... gasp!

Cupcakes to the right, truffles at the bend. The truffles! We ended up getting 5: green tea, Bailey's, white chocolate mango passion, raspberry, and lemon raspberry.

Fudge, biscotti, rolled waffles, and pretzels - all dipped in chocolate!

Cookies on a stick! I want one!

That was just one side of the Old Firehall Confectionery. The other side had frozen treats! Ice cream, sorbet, yogurt, Dippin' Dots with cones or waffles!

Ok back to this square cupcake business:

They are called "Square Top Cupcake" even though the bottom were in a square shape too. They had two sizes, large ($3.99) and small ($2.89), and are on the expensive side. I am going to guess that the large ones have the ganache filling, since the two small ones I got did not have any filling.

I ended up trying the "Creamy Maple" and "Smackingly Strawberry:"

The strawberry buttercream smelled so good, but when we ate it, it tasted like butter! Howard said there was too much butter. Laura said it had a bitter after taste. Mom said it wasn't sweet at all. I have to agree with all of the above. There was no strawberry flavour, just the aroma. The buttercream tasted to be tinted pink butter to all of us. However, the vanilla cake was really good. Everyone agreed that the cake had a good texture and flavour too it.

After the disappointment with the buttercream, we had the Maple one left to try. Again, this smelled so good, I personally thought that the buttercream had a hint of maple flavour. No one else agreed and said it was too much butter. The vanilla cake was still the best part.

Despite that we didn't like the cupcakes, we would still go back to the Old Firehall Confectionery to try the other treats. The place is just fun to be in, there is so much eye candy and the service is good. The five truffles we had were delicious and I really want a to try the fudge and cookies on a stick next!