meringue – Michael Eats

Outstanding Pastries at Steven Tran Chocolatier Pâtissier

Published on December 24, 2025December 24, 2025 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 476 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://steventranchocolates.com/

Steven Tran Chocolatier Pâtissier (that just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) is clearly doing pretty well. When I visited just after 1:00pm on a recent Saturday, the place was pretty much cleared out, with just a handful of pastries remaining.

I don’t know if I would have tried the salted caramel brownie if it weren’t one of the only things in stock, but wow, I’m glad I did.

This might have been one of the best brownies I’ve ever had? It has a perfect chewy texture and a delightfully intense chocolatey flavour. That’s not to mention the salted caramel on top, which is borderline burnt in all the best ways, with a slight bitterness that balances out its sweetness.

After I finished it, I was extremely tempted to walk back into the store and order another one, which basically never happens. Seriously, seriously good.

I should note that I actually went back a couple of weeks later and ordered the brownie again, and it was just as good. If I’ve ever eaten a better brownie, I certainly can’t remember it.

Because I’m a glutton, I also tried the mont blanc, and yeah, that was stellar, too, with a nice creamy/crispy contrast from the cream and the crispy meringue, a satisfying chestnut flavour, and some nice fruitiness from the sauce (blackberry?) in the middle.

I went back one more time and tried the canele, and like everything else, it was stellar. Perfect light crispy exterior, and the interior is delightfully custardy. So, so good.

A Creamy Pastry at Marvelous by Fred

Published on March 13, 2023 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 224 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: https://marvelousbyfredtoronto-order.ca/

Marvelous by Fred is a French bakery chain with a bunch of locations in Europe, the States, and, in the last couple of years, Canada. They have a handful of tasty looking desserts and sandwiches, but their specialty is the Merveilleux, a tasty combo of whipped cream and meringue.

They serve a few different varieties of this, but the classic is the dark chocolate, which the store describes as “dark chocolate whipped cream & dark chocolate shavings.”

It’s good. Obviously it’s good — it’s just a big pile of crispy meringue chunks held together by chocolate-infused whipped cream, and then covered in shaved dark chocolate and topped with more cream. You literally cannot go wrong with that. How could you?

It’s not mind-blowing, though. I know that its creation is likely more involved than it tastes, but it kinda feels like I could mix together meringue, whipped cream, and chocolate at home and wind up with largely the same result.

I’m almost certainly not giving the bakery enough credit, but I can’t say I’ve ever thought that about literally any dessert from a French bakery, so there’s that.

Perfect Key Lime Pie at La Rocca Creative Kitchen

Published on September 4, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1285 Elgin Mills Road East, Richmond Hill
Website: https://laroccakitchen.com/

Is key lime pie the king of pies? It might be! The contrast between the tart filling, the sweet graham cracker crust, and the creamy topping is absolutely magical when done well. I have a hard time saying no when I see it on a menu.

And La Rocca Creative Kitchen — which serves the type of little pastries that look so nice it’s almost a shame to eat them — makes a really good one.

It’s a little bit untraditional. The typical whipped cream topping is subbed out for creamy Italian meringue, and the crust is made from speculoos cookies instead of graham cracker.

It’s great. Sometimes a key lime pie’s crust can be too substantial or dry, but this had the perfect level of crunch without getting in the way, and the flavour of the speculoos set it apart from the norm.

The dense, creamy Italian meringue might even be better than whipped cream. Certainly, it does a perfect job of balancing out the tart key lime custard.

And the custard was just right — it’s sweet and creamy, with just the right amount of tartness. It’s good stuff.

Lemon Meringue Croissant from Butter Baker

Published on June 22, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 120 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Website: https://butter-baker.com/

The lemon meringue croissant from Butter Baker is one of those things that I saw on Instagram and immediately had to eat. And yes, I know: this makes me part of the problem.

A very strong argument could be made that social media (Instagram in particular) is making our cuisine appreciably worse by incentivizing restaurants to serve visually innovative food in which the actual taste is an afterthought (e.g. Sweet Jesus).

And that’s absolutely the case here. I mean, look at that! It looks so impressive! But it gets less impressive once you start actually eating it.

For one thing, it’s almost impossible to eat without getting sticky meringue all over your face. But let’s set that complaint aside, because a lot of cupcakes are just as hard to eat without making a mess, and only a monster would argue that a cupcake isn’t great.

The two main issues here are that the croissant itself is merely okay, and the lemon curd filling is completely bland. The latter point is especially egregious; the whole appeal of a lemon meringue pie is the delightful way that the tartness of the lemon curd is offset by the sweetness of the meringue. But here, the curd is disappointingly anemic, with a limp sugariness and almost no sour bite. Because of this, the whole thing comes off as one-dimensionally sweet and boring.

I will, however, give Butter Baker props for the use of creamy Italian meringue over frothy, dull French meringue. This is correct; French meringue is for jerks.