Breka Bakery

Restaurant: Breka Bakery

Cuisine: Bakery/Desserts
Last visited: December 17, 09
Area: Vancouver, BC (South Vancouver/Fraser)
6533 Fraser Street
Price Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 3
Service: 2
Ambiance: 2
Overall: 2.5
Additional comments:

• European bakery specializing in European desserts
• Open 24/7
• Savoury cafe foods available
• Breads made fresh daily from scratch, by hand
• Halla Bread on Fridays
• On site bakery
• Organic free-trade coffee
• Cheap, pretty big pieces
• For best results: let desserts thaw to room temperature before eating
• Busy, good for coffee breaks/studying
• Relaxed/casual atmosphere
• Eat in/Take-out
• Whole cakes for sale
• Breads to go

**Recommendation: Poppy seed tart, but apparently chocolate mousse cake and cheesecakes are popular, but I didn’t try them

After narrowing down our choices for late night dessert around Burnaby (which was nothing but bubble tea places)…my fellow foodies Kim (I’m Only Here For the Food) and Anita (La Petite Foodie) trekked out to South Vancouver to try Breka Bakery.

I love dessert and we get along very well. I spent some time in Europe researching out the most authentic and traditional desserts, so I come trying Breka Bakery with some knowledge. I’m also blessed with great friends so I’ve been lucky enough to have tried home baked European desserts too. The style of desserts at Breka Bakery is denser than they are light and delicate. They were more Eastern European than Western and they had a bit of American flair to them. I only tried 3 desserts at Breka so I really need to try more to give a better review.

I’ve heard of Breka Bakery before but the reviews for it were only okay. I knew it was a 24 hour place so it’s not like I was expecting oompa loompas in the back making desserts 24/7. However I was expecting very homemade style desserts, but they were actually quite professional, but not gourmet professional. They were grocery store professional. Just standardized and very mass

produced looking – maybe it was the way they were all laid out in sheet pans in the display case. When I see desserts like this I can’t help but to think how long it’s been sitting there for. Next time I will go in the morning because I think it would have been better.

I think it’s popular and well-liked mainly for its portion and price. For the price you pay it does the job and settles the sweet tooth. It's not the best, but for the area and for what you get, it's fine. I wish they had more options - they have a lot, but only 4 things made me "ooh" and "ahh"...and I LOVE dessert (if I haven’t made that clear ;)). I was expecting at least 8 things to make me do that.

On the table:

Poppy Square 4/6

• A poppy seed square or tart with poppy seed filling $2.50
• This was my choice. I love poppy seed! The more the better and this one had lots of poppy seed. I've had variations of this, but this is the most poppy seed filling I've seen used. Which is fine by me! The poppy seed filling was sweet but not too sweet - a little nutty, very moist and paste-like. It’s soft and smooth yet it's poppy seeds so there's texture.
• It’s made of poppy seed, sugar and butter and there is also a very subtly tang and I'm 99% sure there's lemon juice in there giving it that tang. It's not sour though. I wish they used some zest too. There may also be some honey to round it all out.
• Let it thaw out to room temperature and the flavour really comes through.
• The crust was more of a cake-like crust rather than pie crust, which I liked. It was soft, moist and buttery almost like pound cake, yet sturdy enough to hold the heavy poppy seed filling. It was actually a tad salty too, it worked with the filling. I really liked the thinness of the crust. For this dessert in particular I prefer lots of filing with little crust anyways.
• On top was a soft cake-like lattice top with a sugar syru p and lemon glaze to make it shiny.

  

Tiramisu 2/6

• Tiramisu Square $3.50

  

• I didn't like that it was precut. I felt as though it was more of a cake than a tiramisu. It was very dense and not light and fluffy. More cheesy and heavier on the mascarpone than it was creamy, but maybe it just needed to thaw.
• The lady fingers could have been more soaked because they were a bit dry and I also couldn’t taste any rum. It just lacked flavour.
• I didn’t like that there was only one layer of lady fingers and the bottom layer was a cake layer. I felt like this was cheating because a tiramisu should always have 2 layers of tightly packed lady fingers. I also liked them more tightly packed together in a layer, rather than spread out. I like to have a bite of lady finger cookies in every bite.
• Lots of cream but it was sturdy cream. Wh at this means is that you could slice into it and pull away with a clean knife.

  

Lemon Custard Bar 2/6

• Lemon Custard Bar $2.25
• This one was dense and sweet and the lemon custard wasn’t as creamy. They do call it a bar rather than a tart so maybe the lemon custard was supposed to be more solid. It could have been the fact that it was sitting in a chilled display case so it was a bit stiff.
• The flavour of the lemon custard was a bit sweet and I think it could have beeen more tart. It was a radioactive yellow, so I’m not sure if it was from a little dye.
• The crust was a shortbread crust and it was very buttery and cookie like. I liked the thinness of crust because it made the bar lighter in texture overall. It needed that because the lemon custard was already dense.
• I’ve had better before, and just thought this was ok, kind of boring and just ‘whatever’ for a lack of a better term.