Montreal Eats

Here are some of the places where we stopped to eat on our trip to Montreal. I must say most of it was delicious but not everything.

On our first day we started off at the acclaimed Schwartz's Deli on Saint-Laurent boulevard, we waited in the pouring rain for about thirty minutes but it was totally worth it. We each got a sandwich and shared fries, coleslaw and a pickle. Of course we could pass up Schwartz's signature black cherry cola which funnily enough is produced right around the corner from my house and I've never seen it for sale anywhere.

Montreal Smoked Meat

Our second stop was at Burritoville, beside Concordia University in the English speaking part of Montreal. Our friend Steve owns this hip vegetarian/vegan restaurant. You can choose between tacos, quesadillas, or burritos with really different fillings than your traditional meat and lettuce. The sides are amazing, they make three different types of tortilla chips, homemade salsas, sprout salad, quinoa and three types of homemade ice teas and lemonades. 

3 Bean Chili Burrito & Sprout Salad

Our second day we took the trip up to the Mt. Royal plateau area and had some wonderful poutine from one of the best places to get poutine in Montreal, La Banquise. Their poutine is cheap but excellent. We got the traditional poutine with a side of hot peppers, they have so many alternative types of poutine but I just can't get past the traditional cheese curds and gravy. And these cheese curds were to die for!

Traditional Poutine

We also stopped by Fairmount Bagels, to get some bagels for our trip home and of course we couldn't pass up a fresh one right out of the oven to snack on with some excellent whipped cream cheese. Our dinner that night was nothing to talk about so I'll move on to our french macaron experiences. Altogether I bought macarons from three different shops in Montreal.

The first we stopped at was La Maison du Macaron, while the shop is lovely and they have a great selection of flavours I found the flavours weren't strong enough especially the shells. Some of the fillings had flavour but it found them generally bland. Also they didn't stay fresh, drying out only after a day.

Matcha, Peaches, Caramel & Mocha

Peaches and Cream macaron

The second place we stopped at was Point G, their macarons were amazing. They came in a super cute package, which also kept them really fresh. They had some great flavours including poppy, cassis, lavender  and lime/basil (which was really tangy). I though I had taken pictures but I ate them all sorry :( 


My final macaron experience was at Dr. Frost (which I have already posted about here), these were probably my favourite, the shells had tons of flavour and I loved the ice cream in the middle...yumm ice cream!

And finally a video of some of the places we visited while we were in Montreal made by mkphotographics. It includes the Biodome, the Olympic Stadium (tower), Mont Royal and our train ride on VIA rail.

In Montreal from Marc Koecher on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

Ice Cream Macarons

Yes I said ice cream macarons. These things are AMAZING!!! I had these wonderful things from a place in Montreal called Dr. Frost which unfortunately their website says nothing about. The shop was set up like a lab, where you could experiment with all different types of flavour combinations.

They had about six flavours, all of the macarons shells were the same flavour just different colours, it was the ice cream that was different (which I found out when I went back for a second one). The first one I had was black cherry, which is one of my favourite ice creams and the second was chocolate mint. I'm definitely going to make these when I get back to Toronto. The are sooo good!

Black Cherry Ice Cream Macaron

The shop

Menu board

Chocolate Mint Ice Cream Macaron

Enjoy!

Snicker French Macarons

I made these quite awhile ago and never posted them.  The macarons turned out great, they are quite finicky to make. They take patience and a stand mixer, there would be no way that I could hold on to a normal electric mixer.

These snickers macarons include a chocolate macaron shell, peanut butter and marshmallow nougat, chocolate ganache and caramel or dolce de leche sauce.  These macarons are decadent, you can only have one, maybe two at a time. I'm going to see if I can find the recipe, until then check out the photos, they'll make you drool!

Enjoy!

Funfetti Cupcakes and Friday Favourites...on a Saturday

Busy week again this week with work, volunteering and meeting up (finally) with my twitter/blog, now real friend Cailin from A White Picket Fence.  Therefore, no Friday Favourites but I'm making up for it with an extra bonus of homemade funfetti cupcakes.

What are funfetti cupcake you might ask. Well they are just regular cupcakes with sprinkles in them.  Pretty easy eh!  I decided to make these cupcakes because I had a order for four dozen cupcakes for a team of figure skaters and they wanted a star theme.  I went out and got some colourful star sprinkles, a star chocolate mold and some yellow confectionary melts and made some pretty awesome looking cupcakes.

Batter with star sprinkles

Cupcakes right out of the oven

Which colours should I use?

Purple and Orange, all done with the chocolate stars

Now for the Friday Favourites, although I wasn't on the net a lot this week I still found some pretty awesome stuff.

• A great "how to" over at Cake Journal on how to make macarons.
• These awesome lip pops over at Bakerella, great for anytime of the year.
• This super cool picture taken of a band called Change of the Light Brigade, each person was taken individually then composed together, excellent work over at mk:photographics.
• Some nice stuff over at Pinks and Needle's etsy, a really cute cupcake pin.
• Made these awesome lava cakes by Paula Dean for Valentine's Day.

Hope everyone has a great weekend, see ya next Friday!