Top 6 in the Six: Best Desserts

Billed as the first pastry shop in Toronto to be solely dedicated to the éclair, Nugateau uses authentic French techniques and no artificial flavours to create their hand-crafted pastries. With a menu featuring over a dozen different iterations of the oblong pastry, Nugateau’s éclairs range from simple fruit flavours to those more decadent and complex. The Red Rocket, a red velvet éclair filled with raspberry compote and cream cheese mousse, is topped with a white chocolate depiction of a red Toronto streetcar. If a whole éclair is a bit too decadent for you, try the miniature éclairs – dubbed petit choux.

Serving up Japanese style desserts made with French techniques, Millie started out as a modest crêperie in Kensington Market before expanding to include a Markham café and the downtown patisserie. Just north of King and Spadina, Millie Patisserie offers light and fluffy soufflé cheesecakes, lava-centred cheesetarts, caramel-bottom puddings and other treats. Crêpe cakes are a favourite. To make this delicate dessert, twenty paper-thin crêpes are stacked up with pastry cream layered in between. The standard flavours are great but keep an eye out for their seasonal limited editions – sakura cakes are a spring specialty and rainbow cakes appear during Pride month.

Pastry chefs may be a dying breed in Toronto, but one restaurant still doing due diligence is Mamakas Taverna on Ossington. As well as being responsible for making hundreds of pitas daily, Cora James creates and prepares all of the desserts on offer at the Greek eatery. Choose from traditional desserts like baklava and hazelnut cake (foudoukiou keik) as well as a Copenhagen style chocolate brownie tart with caramelized filo and blackberries.

Anita Lauritsen founded the Danish Pastry House out of love for her Danish upbringing and the tradition of baking and eating with family. In her commitment to authenticity, Lauritsen even recruited pastry chefs from Denmark. Honouring old world recipes, the Danish dough baked in-house contains a minimum of 27 layers for maximum lightness and flakiness. The Danish Pastry House offers several variations on a swirling pastry called the cinnamon snail – including custard-filled and mini snails. A new location opening this fall at the Eaton Centre will make it even easier to get your hands on these Danish delights.

Not all desserts need to look like a work of art to be delicious. Short and Sweet Bakeshop, with locations both inside Assembly Chef's Hall and in North York prove that baking can eschew fuss and pretention in favour of fun. Their colourful creations are more like the kind of recipes you might whip up with what's left in your pantry (in the case of their Monster Bar's, that's literally the case). That's not to say their baked goods aren't beautiful - order a unicorn cake if you want to see how skilled they are. We just prefer to relive our childhood with their cookie sandwiches.