9 May

5 GREAT MAPLE TREATS IN MONTREAL

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The end of maple season approaches as spring swings into full bloom, so if you’ve got a yen for this particularly local flavour, now’s the time to indulge…

Here in Montreal, local bakers and candy-makers have been busy, as they always are, thinking of new ways to feature the maple flavour in all sorts of tasty new avant-garde inventions, as well as some twists on traditional recipes. Here’s our selection of this year’s best…

1) Cake à l’érable from Mamie Clafoutis. From this cherished address, an artisanal bakery on Van Horne street in Outremont, a sweet maple cake baked in a classic maple-syrup tin.

2) Érable chocolates from Chocolats Genevieve Grandbois. This sweet morsel from one of Montreal’s most celebrated chocolatiers, is a threefer – maple butter, maple sugar and pecans caramelized in maple syrup! Instore, also check out the Brindilles au chocolat (small chocolate branches) sprinkled with maple sugar, and the maple caramel spread.

3) Frozen maple-bacon cake from Les Givrés. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: This is Montreal’s best ice cream. Their maple cake creation is a maple-sugar genoise, maple ice-cream, maple butter, caramelized pecans and a maple meringue, with a special bacon topping. It’s indescribable.

4) Maple Pie from Pain et Saveurs isn’t especially newfangled or crazy, but this classic maple treat from a bakery on the South Shore is well worth the drive over the bridge. Quite simply, it’s the best maple-sugar pie I’ve ever had: Maple, cream, butter and crust – simple, the way it should be.

5) Maple Sugar scrub from Montreal-based cosmetics company Bella Pella, known for their excellent handmade body products, has a sugar scrub for your body that’s good enough to eat, even though it’s not edible. You’ll smell like a maple snack yourself after a few minutes in the shower with this baby, and your skin will be super-soft – and you’ll be left irresistible to sweet-toothed paramours, as well.