Tasty Cookies and Onigiri at Momochee’s Desserts

Momochee's Desserts
Location
: 263 Lakeshore Road East, Mississauga
Website: https://momochees-desserts.square.site/

Momochee’s Desserts is a delightful bakery in Port Credit that specializes in cookies, basque cheesecake and, oddly enough, onigiri.

Momochee's Desserts

Onigiri, for the uninitiated, is a triangular rice ball with various fillings; frequently, it comes wrapped with a sheet of nori that’s been protected from the rice by plastic, keeping it crispy.

Momochee's Desserts

It’s not something that you’d expect to find at a bakery, but yeah, I’m into it.  I’m a big fan of the stuff, but it’s hard to find a really good one in Toronto.  Usually, the seasoning is off or it’s been sitting out too long, with unpleasantly firm rice.

Momochee's Desserts

I went with the spicy mayo onigiri, and aside from being served too cold, it was just right.  The rice was fresh and nicely seasoned, it had a good proportion of creamy tuna filling (with a surprisingly pronounced spicy kick), and the nori was perfectly crispy.

Momochee's Desserts

But of course, the place is mostly a bakery, so I had to get a dessert.  I went with the classic chocolate chip cookie, and it’s quite tasty.  Nothing about it blew my mind, but the contrast between the crispy exterior and gooey interior was satisfying, and it had a nice amount of good quality chocolate chips.

Quick Bites: Emmer, Dear Grain, Craque de Creme

Peanut Butter Miso Cookie from Emmer
Peanut Butter Miso Cookie from Emmer

Toronto Life recently called the peanut butter miso cookie from Emmer one of the best new cookies in the city, so obviously I needed to try it.  And yeah, it’s fantastic, with a really addictive crispy/chewy contrast and a deep savouriness from the miso and the generous amount of salt on top.  The level of sweetness here is very, very restrained, which seems like it maybe shouldn’t work, but it absolutely does.

Blueberry Scone from Dear Grain
Blueberry Scone from Dear Grain

I feel like I can’t bring up Dear Grain without grumbling about their refusal to slice most of their (very delicious!) bread (unless you buy it frozen), so: what’s the deal with that??  With that out of the way, I’ll say that their blueberry scone is absolutely fantastic.  Seriously, seriously good.  The exterior is nice and crispy, it’s sweet without being too sweet, it’s got a nice blueberry punch, and the texture of the scone itself is perfect.  It also comes with a little cup of tasty lemon curd, and its pleasant tartness really takes things over the top.  It’s so good.

Canele from Craque de Creme
Canele from Craque de Creme

Speaking of tasty pastries, the canele from Craque de Creme is thoroughly tasty, with a rich custardy flavour and a restrained sweetness that I found to be quite delightful.  The overly crunchy exterior does hold it back from canele perfection, however.  I love a nice crisp, caramelized exterior on a canele, but this one takes a step or two (or three, or four) too far.  The rock hard exterior here kinda shredded the inside of my mouth.

Quick Bites: Jaffna Street Food, The Keg, Sheliss Bakeshop Cafe

Chicken Kothu Roti from Jaffna Street Food
Chicken Kothu Roti from Jaffna Street Food

I’ll say this about the chicken kothu roti at Jaffna Street Food: it’s a great deal.  If you come on a Friday, you can get that dish for a cool ten bucks, and considering the hefty portion, you can’t go wrong there.  Was it the best kothu roti I’ve ever had?  No, it was pretty dry and nothing about the flavour really popped.  But it was perfectly okay.  For the price, I absolutely can’t complain.

Steak at The Keg
Steak at The Keg

Generally speaking, the quality of the food at Canadian casual chain restaurants ranges from “passable, I guess?” to “are you sure this is food?”  But whenever The Keg comes up in discussions online, people tend to be pretty complimentary about it.  I just checked the place out for the first time in like twenty years, and yeah, I get it.  I tried the escargots, a steak, and a slice of the famous Billy Miner pie, and they were all solid.  Nothing here blew my mind, but everything was well-executed and tasty.  I can definitely see why people are fans of this place (especially given the competition).

Cheese tart from Sheliss Bakeshop Cafe
Cheese tart from Sheliss Bakeshop Cafe

It’s rare that I get to try a pastry that I’ve never even heard of, but it recently happened at Sheliss Bakeshop, a delightful Mexican-influenced bakery on St. Clair.  The pastry in question: the cubilete de queso, or cheese tart, which they describe as “creamy cheese filling in a buttery pastry shell.”  It’s great.  What I really liked about this is how restrained the level of sweetness is, with the dense but creamy filling tasting kinda like a cross between a custard and a cheesecake.  And the shortbread-esque complements it well.  It’s a tasty dessert.

Chocolatey Amazingness at Blackbird Baking Co.

Chocolate cork at Blackbird Baking Co.
Location
: 172 Baldwin Street, Toronto
Website: https://blackbirdbakingco.com/

I’ve written about Blackbird several times (tl;dr — it’s great and you should go there), so my inclination is to just write a Quick Bite review about this. But the chocolate cork at Blackbird? It needs its own post. It’s too good to share space with anything else

Chocolate cork at Blackbird Baking Co.

It’s phenomenal. Legitimately one of the best pastries I’ve ever had. It’s kinda like a really great cakey brownie, but also stuffed with delicious chocolate mousse.

The chocolate flavour here is intense. If you like chocolate (or things that are delicious) then you owe it to yourself to try this.

Chocolate cork at Blackbird Baking Co.

I don’t have a whole lot more to say about this. But I feel very strongly that everyone needs to know how great it is.

Quick Bites: Slow Jams, Cotolet, Bakerbots Baking

Smoked pork sandwich from Slow Jams
Smoked pork sandwich from Slow Jams

Slow Jams is a Filipino pop-up shop that you can find at various street festivals.  I previously tried their fried chicken sandwich, and between that one and the smoked pork sandwich (“tamarind & sweet soy sauce, spicy pickled cabbage”), they clearly need to get their own location ASAP.  The sandwich features a very generous amount of pork that’s meaty, tender, and satisfyingly smoky.  The slightly sweet, squishy bun suits it perfectly.  Between the strong vinegary punch of the sauce and the cabbage, it’s kinda acid overload, but the pork is tasty enough that this is only a minor complaint.

Pork loin katsu with brown demi-glace sauce from Cotolet
Pork loin katsu with brown demi-glace sauce from Cotolet

You can’t go wrong with a good pork katsu.  I mean, you can’t go wrong with basically anything that’s breaded and fried, but there’s something about katsu that’s particularly magical.  And the version at Cotolet?  Quite good!  The pork was maybe a bit on the dry side, but the panko-breaded exterior was perfectly crispy, and the brown demi-glace sauce (“made with various fruits and vegetables”) has a very nicely balanced fruity sweetness that’s a bit different from any katsu sauce I’ve had before.

Pecan sticky bun from Bakerbots Baking
Pecan sticky bun from Bakerbots Baking

Yep, Bakerbots is still chugging along, serving some of the tastiest baked goods in the city.  I’ve written about them a few times before, so I don’t need to dwell here, but I do feel like it’s my duty to tell you that their sticky bun is very good.  Sweet but not too sweet, nice texture on the bun itself, gooey but not complete mush like certain national chains that sell sickly sweet cinnamon buns… it’s very tasty.  But then I’ve never had anything that was less than delicious here, so I guess that goes without saying.