dessert – Page 46 – Michael Eats

Unique Scoops at Wong’s Ice Cream

Published on August 21, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 617 Gerrard Street East, Toronto
Website: http://www.wongsicecream.com/

Ice cream is the best (obviously), but if you ever find yourself getting bored with the same old flavours, there’s an easy solution: head to Wong’s, an Asian-inspired ice cream shop with some seriously interesting scoops.

I don’t think you’re going to find taste combinations like pineapple cilantro, wasabi honey, or toasted ramen miso anywhere else in the city (though Wong’s is far from the only Asian ice cream joint in town; Kekou Gelato is another stand-out).

I got the rosewater white chocolate jasmine, and it was seriously delicious. The texture was ever-so-slightly grainy (from the white chocolate, perhaps?), but it was otherwise excellent, with a very rich, creamy consistency.

White chocolate tends to be intensely sweet, so I was worried this would be a bit much, but the sweetness was admirably restrained. Rosewater has a very distinct, very strong flavour (it’s a bit of an acquired taste), but again, the flavours here are really subtle and well-balanced. There’s a mild floral sweetness, but it isn’t in-your-face. If you’re on the fence about rosewater, this might just be the dessert to get you on board.

Mind-Blowing Dessert at Millie Patisserie

Published on August 17, 2018October 17, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 12 Oxley Street, Toronto
Website: http://milliedesserts.com/

I just had a slice of the mille crepe cake from Millie Patisserie, and it was so incredibly delicious that I’m pretty sure I can never eat dessert again. I mean, what’s the point? It’s all garbage to me now. Mille crepe cake 4 eva.

In case you’re not familiar with a mille crepe cake, it’s a magical creation in which crepes and custardy cream are layered on top of each other until you wind up with something that looks like a cake.

The version they’re serving at Millie Patisserie is next level. It’s insanely good.

On this particular visit, they had four varieties: vanilla bean, tiramisu, earl gray, and matcha. I went with vanilla bean, and holy crap it was amazing.

The custard between the crepe layers was crazy delicious. It was rich and creamy, with an intense custardy flavour and the perfect amount of vanilla. Just give me a spoon and a bucket of this stuff and I’ll eat it until I literally explode.

The tender crepes are just as good, with a very light chewiness that complements the custard perfectly. The proportion of both is just right; it’s the perfect balance of creaminess and substance and amazingness. It was easily one of the best desserts I’ve had in ages.

It’s not cheap, however. One slice comes up to a bit over ten bucks with tax, which is so much that I almost left the store without ordering anything. But man, it is absolutely, positively worth it. Aside from the fact that it’s ridiculously delicious, the quality of ingredients they’re working with is obviously high, and I have to imagine that making one of these things is quite labour intensive. There are so many layers and they’re all so perfect.

Mediocre Ice Cream at Cows

Published on August 14, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 44 Queen Street, Niagara on the Lake
Website: https://cows.ca/

Cows has been a Niagara on the Lake institution since 1983, so they’re obviously doing something right. Though in this case, I think the thing they did right was picking a location that’s right in the middle of the main road in a very touristy town. Because the actual ice cream isn’t that great.

It’s relatively rich and creamy, so it’s certainly very, very far from the worst ice cream I’ve ever had. But the flavour was a pretty big shrug.

I got the Wowie Cowie, which is “vanilla ice cream, English toffee marble, chocolate flakes & moo crunch.”

The vanilla ice cream doesn’t taste like anything but generic sweetness. There’s nothing there. Plain ice cream can be amazing — the sweet cream at Ed’s, which doesn’t even have vanilla bean to fall back on, manages to pack in an impressive amount of flavour and depth. Meanwhile, this tasted like sweet nothing.

The “English toffee marble” was even worse, and there’s a lot of it rippled in there. It didn’t have any of the rich caramel flavour you’d expect from English toffee; it was just thick and sweet, like plain corn syrup.

As for the other elements, the chocolate was fine, and the moo crunch didn’t even seem to be there (I’m not sure what it was supposed to be, but I didn’t notice anything but the caramel and the chocolate).

Quality Ice Cream and Waffles at Wooffles & Cream

Published on August 8, 2018August 8, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 8360 Kennedy Road, Markham (inside New Kennedy Square Food Court)
Website: https://www.facebook.com/woofflesandcream/

Every other ice cream joint in the city now serves Hong Kong-style waffles. It’s a combo that came out of nowhere and absolutely exploded. And while I don’t think that Wooffles & Cream were the first to do it in the GTA (pretty sure Bang Bang got there first), they certainly helped popularize it.

It’s still great. They have a few different flavours of waffle that you can try; I went with the sticky toffee pudding, which is a standard waffle filled with sweet cakey chunks of the aforementioned dessert.

The waffle itself was as delicious as ever, with a nice crispy exterior and a creamy interior. The bits of sticky toffee pudding were quite tasty, though they were dryer than you’d like, and not quite as sticky and sweet as you might hope from that particular dessert.

There were also a few chewy mochi bits interspersed throughout, which were an interesting addition.

The ice cream itself (I got vanilla — earl gray was also an option) was nothing special, but the quality is decent and it’s certainly an addictive combo with the waffle.

Terrible Ice Cream at Baskin Robbins

Published on August 6, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 855 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.baskinrobbins.ca/

This probably won’t come as much of a surprise: it turns out that the ice cream at Baskin Robbins isn’t very good. I haven’t been there in several years, but I remember it being decent enough.

Either I’ve become pickier in the meantime, or it’s become worse. Probably a bit of both.

I tried the current flavour of the month, Cookies ‘n Cake: “Cake flavored ice cream, cookie pieces, and a chocolate cake batter flavored ribbon.”

The quality of the ice cream itself was pretty bad; it was slightly better than really bottom-of-the-barrel stuff like Chapman’s, but that’s really not saying much. The texture was thin and unsatisfying.

The flavour was even worse. I’ve eaten a lot of cake in my lifetime, and none of it even remotely tasted like the ice cream here. I’m normally fine with artificial, cake-flavoured junk food, but this stuff was just vile. I’m having a hard time even figuring out how to describe the flavour — it was acrid and unpleasant and weird.

The cookie chunks were good, at least — they were Oreo pieces, so no surprise there. But the “chocolate cake batter flavored ribbon” basically just tasted like a sweeter, less chocolatey version of Nesquik chocoalte syrup. It wasn’t offensive like the ice cream, but it wasn’t particularly good, either.