T.O.bites | Toronto Food & Restaurant Blog

I first heard about Tim Horton’s doing their trial co-branding with Cold Stone Creamery last year but had not really gone to check it out quite yet. Having tried Marble Slab, I loved the idea of taking some ice cream and mushing it together with your favorite crunchy and sweet ingredients on a cold slab of marble. What I didn’t like was the price of it (it can cost you $7+ just for a small!) and the lineups in the summer.

My friends on foursquare can probably tell you that after trying Cold Stone Creamery last month, I’ve been in love with the place having gone back about 4 more times in the last 4 weeks. The price is a bit cheaper (You can get one of their small signature creations for less than $5) but you can tell the ice cream is of slightly lesser quality than Marble Slab. Never the less, it’s still pretty darn good.

The frozen slab at Cold Stone, where the magic happens!

I find that whenever a place lets you go wild with the ingredients, I’ll always stick with the recommended/pre-selected creations as they’re usually more tried and tested. I’ve tried my own random Cold Stone ice cream creation of Cookie dough ice cream with oreo and strawberries but it just wasn’t that great. However, their signature selections are heck of a lot better. My favorites would have to be the Cookie Mintster (Mint ice cream with oreo cookies), and Our Strawberry Blonde (graham cracker pie crust, strawberries and caramel).

I know it’s been a year since they first put Cold Stone in the Timmy’s up at Bay and Bloor, but I do hope they roll out a lot more of them around the city.

I meant to post about this weeks ago but I found this quite interesting.  During the Pride festivities, they were selling frozen sorbet in a carved out fruit shell.  I remember they had lemon, coconut, and I believe pineapple but I can’t really remember.  They were $4 each though which was a bit pricey, but everything was a little overpriced on the street that day.  It ranks up almost has high as the Del Monte packaged fruit banana, but I give it points for creativity.  I haven’t seen any in any stores anywhere yet.

Every Burger

Every now and then I take a trip up to Korea town on Bloor St.  One of my most frequent stops aside from the K-BBQ restaurants is the giant Korean grocery store where you can get some yummy mochi icecream.  They also have an aisle where they place the feminine hygiene products right next to the tabasco sauce.  Hey, space is quite limited there.  But my favorite aisle just so happens to be the junk food aisle where you can find the most random things from “Collon” candy to candy shaped like dinner food such as hot dogs which taste like marshmellows

Which brings us to Every Burger, which I’m not quite sure is a candy or a cookie.  The treat comes straight from Japan, and is crunchy like a cookie, but has a drop of chocolate to simulate the burger patty, and a drop of yellow sugar stuff (possibly white chocolate) to simulate the cheese.  The tops have what appear to be small sesame seeds on them, and have a slight savory taste to them.  Perhaps there’s some salt in them tops.

They’re about the size of a quarter in diameter and come in two packs filled with 8 cookies in each.  They’re about $2 a box, and I’m sure they also have them somewhere in Chinatown or Pacific Mall.

Dragon Beard Candy

Every time Chinese New Year rolls around, it makes me glad to be living in such a diverse city full of great cultures with excellent food.  There isn’t a better way to spend the day of celebrations than in Pacific Mall; formerly known as Markham’s hotbed of pirated DVDs and games, now somewhat restored to it’s former glory as one of Canada’s largest Asian malls.

A group of us spent most of last Sunday there where everything Chinese was proudly being flashed and displayed at us and anything Valentines was completely scrubbed out.  I wouldn’t have it any other way for a February 14th!

The candy being made

During our scouring through the mall, among a mass of Chinese New Year trinkets and paper cut outs being sold, there was a small stand making the famous dragon beard candy.  When I can see people make the food I’m about to snack on, I’m usually completely sold.  Maybe that’s why Tiny Tom’s Donuts are always a must-buy each year at the CNE.

Dragon Beard candy is a pretty delicate process which only a handful of people in the world know how to make. It’s made by boiling sugar in water until most of the water evaporates and you’re left with a rubbery clump of sugar, then you pull and stretch the candy over and over again endlessly until you get long thing strands resembling a beard.  All this is done while keeping it completely covered in flour so that it doesn’t stick together or to your hands.  After, it’s cut and wrapped around a mixture of peanuts and coconut shavings.  The video below shows it better than I can actually explain it.

The guy who does it at Pacific Mall is usually only there when he can be.  Most of the times, you’ll catch him there on a long weekend when the mall is busy.  There’s also a possibility you can find him there on any other given weekend but it’s usually a small chance so I really wouldn’t make the trek out there just for the candy.  Thankfully, a lot of the stores are now filled with some interesting things to buy and look at since most of the pirated DVD stores have been given the boot and gone into temporary hiding.