Yesterday my foodie friend Alexandra and I decided to hit up two cupcakes shops and one of Montreal's biggest farmer's markets. I love having a whole day dedicated to food. I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday.
The first place we went to was called Petit Gateaux. Everything looked really good but since we were planning to go to a second cupcake place afterwards we decided to stick with the mini sizes.
As you can see from the pictures there was a lot to choose from.
In the end she got the coconut and the vanilla.
I decided to get the chocolate passionfruit cupcake and a coffee flavoured cupcake. They were good but not the best I've ever tasted. The frosting tasted like it had been made with shortening, not butter. When eating a cupcake I prefer thicker frosting and in this case it was almost the consistency of whipped cream. I would go again though.
They had a display of Halloween cupcakes which was pretty cute. I like the little ghost one.
Next we went to another shop called Cocoa Locale which has the reputation of having the best cupcakes in Montreal. It was a bit far away but I figured we were helping to burn off all the sugar calories.
The store was cute but tiny. There wasn't even room to sit down. We ended up sitting on the steps outside to eat our cupcakes.
The shop is a one woman operation. She bakes and runs the whole thing by herself, there are no employees. She must be one tired chick by the time her vacation rolls around!
She only has three cupcake flavours: lemon, vanilla and chocolate-chai. I took the chocolate (naturally) which was really good. She uses Valrohna chocolate and you can really taste it in the frosting which was really thick and fudgey. The chai flavour was barely perceptible though but out of all of the three places that I have gone for cupcakes in Montreal this was my favourite. I wasn't blown away though. Alexandra liked them but said they weren't as good as the ones at Magnolia Bakery in New York. Given that I have never been there I can't compare but I would go back away to Cocoa Locale. Next time though I'll buy some to bring home!
After we were done with our cupcakes (I tried scraping off as much of the frosting off the paper liner as I could), we walked back, hopped on the metro and headed to the Jean-Talon market which is one of two of Montreal's big public markets.
As you can see all the fruit and veggies looked gorgeous and were much cheaper than at the supermarket. It is cranberry season right now and there were baskets and baskets of them everywhere. Since I was on foot I didn't buy any but I liked just walking around and taking a look at all the stalls. There weren't just fruits and vegetables of course, there were plenty of carbohydrate laden sweet and savoury goodies to tempt us.
Everytime I see Turkish Delight it reminds me of that scene in The Chronicles of Narnia where the White Witch asks Edmund what he would most like to eat in the world and he asks for a box of Turkish Delight. If you haven't read the books do so, they are some of my favourites.
I shared a churro with Alexandra. They weren't bad but my biggest qualm was that they had very little sugar sprinkled on them so they barely tasted sweet. The cinnamon sugar on churros is the best part! This was the first churro that I have had in years so I was happy to have a taste at least.
I had a Polish prune donut from a bakery. Much better than it sounds and really tasty. It was nice and puffy and not greasy at all.
We stopped off at a chocolate shop where Alexandra bought a bag of chocolate and some hot chocolate mix and I bought a bar of dark chocolate with dried cranberries. No picture, sorry!
Since I can't survive on sugar alone we stopped at a taco stand and I had some steak tacos. I was a little disappointed as they weren't that good. The meat really lacked flavour. I asked for salsa and it was really hot. I like hot, way hotter than most people but all I tasted was scorching heat. I was ok but when Alexandra took a bite of my tacos she looked like one of those cartoon characters who has eaten something that is too spicy and has flames and smoke shooting out of their ears.
There was a Belgian french fry stand that basically drew me in by smell alone. They serve fries along with different varieties of flavoured mayonaisse in which to dip them. I ordered a portion along with the American sauce (mayo, paprika, green onions, garlic, onions and harissa). Not very American but delicious nonetheless. The french fries were great, they had a slightly crunchy texture which went really well with the cool mayo.
As you can see there was a lot more food that I didn't get to eat. The taste buds were willing but my stomach was completely full. If I had known that there was going to be chocolate cannoli I would have saved room. I will definitely make it back to Jean-Talon one of these days to hit up all the spots that I missed this time.
