Tag Archives: cream puffs

Is it a Breakfast Cereal or an Afternoon Dessert?

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Choux & C. is a new Marda Loop dessert retreat

It seems dessert shops are having a moment in Calgary. Take your expanded pick of matcha doughnuts, pistachio cream puffs or ice cream marriages with breakfast cereals.

How hot is this trend? Consider,Avenue Magazine has just published a list of 10 new dessert places in Calgary. Ten!

Sampling them all might put me in a diabetic coma. So I’ll focus on a couple of sweet spots, both in Marda Loop, and let you decide what else to indulge in. Let’s dig in.

Seeking an escape from the tumult of Marda Loop? Just step into Choux & C, a refuge of elegance in a little French bakery and cafe.  Savour a pistachio cream puff or mini croissant, paired with a berry choux latte featuring Monogram-roasted beans.

Delicate cream puffs are Choux’s speciality

Choux & C
121, 2215 33 Avenue SW, Calgary
Opens daily at 7 am, except closed Monday

Tat’s Treats advertises itself as “cereal-infused soft serve”. In other words, ice cream blended with, say, Cheerios or Fruit Loops.

Tat’s Treats is a hole-in-the-wall dessert shop

Definitely new territory for me. Might as well jump in at the deep end with a mix of Rice Krispies, crushed Oreos and marshmallows ($9).

Ceereal-infused soft serve ice cream is its speciality

Cue the nostalgia. Except for the fact my mother always served over-night oatmeal.

P.S. For those who despair of decency in today’s world, here’s a heartwarming end to my sampling. While I was scooping up my thickened ice cream on Tat’s deck, a soft server came out to tell me my payment transaction hadn’t gone through. But by the time I went in to pay up, a young woman customer had  already paid my bill and refused to be compensated. Many thanks!

Tat’s Treats
115, 1934 34 Avenue SW, Calgary
Opens Thursday to Sunday at noon

Calgary’s Creme Cream Puffs Blows Up on TikTok

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Sublime cream puffs at Creme

There’s nothing like TikTok to turbocharge the marketing of a wee Calgary bakery. That’s what Crème Cream Puffs owner Carly Hamilton recently discovered when she posted a video of her little industrial-area shop, just off Macleod Trail.

Two weeks later, sales of her inspired cream puffs and macarons had increased 600 per cent, with 105,000 likes and counting. That’s what the kids call going viral or blowing up.

Of course, I had to hustle down to snag some celebrated cream puffs before they sold out for the day. Luckily, I was in time to grab a six-pack box featuring the following flavours: best-selling crème brulee, salted caramel, blackberry mascarpone and chocolate egg cream. I didn’t realize I could be a cream puff fan till that first blissful bite through burnt sugar and vanilla cream.

The macarons are damn good, too

Also as they say, Crème was an overnight success six years in the making. After writing a food blog in Hong Kong, Carly studied at London’s Le Cordon Bleu and worked in a Michelin-star restaurant before returning home to Calgary.

There, she played with cream puff recipes in her parent’s kitchen, testing her product on friends and relatives before graduating to online and restaurant sales. Eighteen months ago, she expanded to a commercial kitchen and walk-up retail sales.

Hitting the jackpot on TikTok is great but only if the underlying product justifies all the acclaim. So how does Carly and her burgeoning crew maintain the chef standards?

It starts with handmake choux dough, topped with crunchy, cookie-like cracquelin and filled with small-batch pasty creams, citrus curds and esoteric things like marshmallow fluff and carrot cake crumble.

A bustling kitchen just off Macleod Trail

Crème’s cream puff menu changes every month, all the better to prompt repeated visits. Just don’t arrive late in the afternoon, when the display cases may well be empty.

Creme Cream Puffs
Unit 2, 5524 1A Street SW, Calgary
Online orders and walk-in sales Wednesday to Friday 10 am-4 pm and Saturday 10 am-3 pm. Closed Sunday to Tuesday
587-429-5846