sweet – Page 27 – Michael Eats

Instagram-Friendly Ice Cream at Sweet Jesus

Published on May 26, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 106 John Street, Toronto
Website: http://www.sweetjesus4life.com/

I don’t think there’s a more blatant case of an Instagram-famous restaurant than Sweet Jesus. They serve up concoctions that are so finely-honed to be drooled over on social media that actually eating them almost feels like an afterthought.

They mainly serve very elaborately topped cones that are impossible to eat without making a huge mess; but then, what do they care? Again: actually eating them is secondary to the likes that they’ll accrue online.

Thankfully, they eventually acquiesced to common sense and offered the option of a cup instead of a cone, which is slightly less photogenic, but much more reasonable to eat.

I got the Sweet Baby Jesus, which is supposed to come with caramel soft serve (I’m pretty positive it was actually vanilla) topped with peanut butter caramel sauce, chocolate peanut crumble, and chocolate sauce.

I should note that I actually like Sweet Jesus. I’ve been there a bunch of times, and I have no doubt that I’ll be back a bunch of times. But it could be so much better.

The biggest issue is the soft serve itself. It’s fine; it’s basically on par with what they serve at ice cream trucks. I like the stuff, but it’s not exactly high quality ice cream.

And because they insist on making these things as cones instead of the sundaes they should obviously be (for no reason other than that the elaborate cones look better on Instagram), the ratio of sauce/toppings to ice cream is way off. This would be fine if they were using better quality ice cream, but they’re not. Which means that the big pile of ice cream you’re left with after the toppings have been eaten feels kinda useless.

As for the Sweet Baby Jesus, it was tasty enough. Peanut butter and chocolate is a surefire combo, and yeah, it works here. But both of the problems I mentioned above are definitely present.

Tasty Soft Serve Gelato at Bar Ape

Published on May 23, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 283 Rushton Road, Toronto
Website: http://www.bar-ape.com/

You wouldn’t be blamed for getting kinda bored of gelato in Toronto. You seemingly can’t walk more than a few blocks without coming across a gelato shop in the city. A lot of it is quite good, but after a while, it all starts to feel samey.

Enter: Bar Ape, which mixes things up by selling their gelato in soft serve form. Of course, this means that they can only serve two flavours at a time (though chocolate-covered gelato bars are available in a variety of combinations), but it’s a worthwhile trade-off for something that’s so delightfully unique.

On this particular visit the two flavours were chocolate sorbet and fresh mint. I got the twist, which comes with both.

Sorbet is generally made without dairy, so I was concerned that it would be icy or thin, but it was rich and creamy, with a really nice dark chocolate flavour.

The fresh mint was even better; unlike 99 percent of mint ice creams, which are made with mint flavouring, this was clearly made with actual fresh mint leaves. This gave it an interesting herby flavour that really made it stand out. The combination between it and the chocolate was a home run.

The only real downside? The wooden spoons. They’re becoming more and more common in the city, and I feel bad for criticizing them — they’re obviously more environmentally-friendly than plastic — but the rough texture and mild woody flavour makes them an off-putting implement for eating ice cream. Plastic (or metal) or GTFO.

Amazing Cupcakes at Prairie Girl Bakery

Published on May 10, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 150 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.prairiegirlbakery.com/

Prairie Girl Bakery might just serve my favourite cupcakes in the city. There are some other contenders (the Cupcake Shoppe comes to mind), but Prairie Girl is right up there.

I like that they actually have three different sizes — standard, mini, and cutie. The mini size is absolutely perfect if you’ve just had a big meal and you want something sweet that isn’t going to make you feel completely sick. It’s still a couple of decent bites’ worth of cupcake, so it’s enough to satisfy, but not so much to make you question the way you’re living your life.

On this particular visit I got the banana peanut butter, which features peanut butter frosting with banana cake. Not surprisingly, it was great — the cake basically tasted like a lighter, fluffier banana bread. It had a really distinct banana flavour that worked perfectly with the very creamy peanut butter frosting.

The whole thing was sweet, but with enough of a balance to not be a complete sugar overload. It’s good stuff.

McFlurry Deliciousness at McDonald’s

Published on May 5, 2018May 5, 2018 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 6170 Bathurst Street, Toronto
Website: https://www.mcdonalds.ca/

Generally speaking, I think McFlurries are a waste of time. I mean, they’re just a poor man’s Blizzard, right? If I’m craving a blended ice cream treat, why get an imitation when I can have the original?

It turns out I might be wrong about this, because I just had the Butterscotch Blondie McFlurry, and it was easily better than any Blizzard I’ve had in recent memory.

It had a really rich caramel flavour from the abundant butterscotch, and the sizable blondie chunks were chewy, tasty, and satisfying. It’s super sweet, obviously, but there was enough going on here that it didn’t feel one-note.

The ice cream was a little too melty, but aside from that? Shockingly good.

Delicious Cupcakes and Cookies at Short and Sweet Bakeshop

Published on April 14, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 111 Richmond Street West, Toronto (in the Assembly Chef’s Hall)
Website: http://shortandsweetcupcakes.ca/

Are you a cake person or a frosting person? Because the cupcake I had at Short and Sweet is making me doubt myself. Generally I prefer a cupcake that’s a bit heavier on the cake in the cake-to-frosting ratio, but Short and Sweet goes hard in the other direction. And yet I quite enjoyed it.

As you can see from the photo of its midsection, between the injected sauce and the icing on top, it’s something like 35 percent cake, and 65 percent sauce and frosting. It’s pretty intense.

I got the Dream Team cupcake, which is a vanilla cupcake that’s been topped with vanilla buttercream and a swirl of caramel and chocolate sauces. It’s also injected with the aforementioned sauces. It’s an intense, in-your-face sugar bomb — and yet it somehow isn’t too sweet. All of the flavours go together so well.

It helps that all of the individual components are great — the cake is moist and fluffy, the buttercream is smooth and velvety, and the two sauces are great. In particular, the rich, dulce-de-leche-esque caramel sauce is absolutely fantastic. But everything is so sweet, and altogether you’d think it would be way too sweet, but it isn’t. It works.

I also tried the s’mores cookie sandwich, which consists of two above-average chocolate chip cookies encasing a whole bunch of chocolate frosting and marshmallow sauce.

Do I even need to say anything else? Or does it go without saying that it was delicious? Because it’s just as good as you’d hope it would be.

I should note that it’s incredibly heavy, both figuratively and literally — the thing must weigh like half a pound, so eating this all at once isn’t advisable unless you have a particularly large appetite. But it’s so, so good.