Montreal Desserts: Brulerie St-Denis

Brulerie St-Denis
3967 St-Denis
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5 1/2 out of 10

On the first eating stop of my Montreal dessert adventure, I decided to check out Au Festin de Babette, but as I'm a thorough investigator, I decided to look in every café window on my way up St-Denis in search of cakes. I was first stopped at Brulerie St-Denis by a three-tiered cake display. A million questions later, I had two pieces of cake (BMOT - brought my own tupperware) and a whole lot of answers.

I think the only reason I particularly cared about the Brulerie was because the carrot cake (bottom right of photo) was not beautifully glazed. Instead, the icing was smoothed simply around the whole body of the cake. Home made???

It turns out all the desserts at Brulerie St-Denis are bought from two Montreal companies:
Dawns Desserts and Fous Desserts.

Dawns Desserts doesn't have a shop, but delivers relatively freshly-made cakes and pies to certain Montreal cafés and restaurants, as well as doing private cake orders (by phone or email). Fous Desserts has a flagship store on Laurier, but also delivers (frozen cakes) to local businesses. Both websites say they are made with real whipped cream and the finest quality ingredients. Fous Desserts explicitly states it uses no preservatives and only the "richest butters and creams". I have a feeling Dawn Desserts skimps on the butter, though, because I know butter. When you don't eat a lot of butter, you really taste it and in Dawn's chocolate icing I did not taste butter. If it was there, it was not a particularly good butter.


The cakes: I went with Dawn's cakes because Fous Desserts had all been pre-frozen so I figured fresher would be better (but maybe you can get Fous Desserts' cakes fresh at the shop on Laurier?). Fous Desserts only had mousses and cheesecakes, kinds of cakes that can get away with freezing without people caring, but Dawn valiantly offered a two-layer Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake and a two-layer carrot cake (the colossal one with 6 layers you see at JavaU sometimes wasn't in attendance that day). If you're not like me, and are only getting one piece of cake, there's no question that you go with the carrot cake. The chocolate cake tasted like just about nothing. Non-buttery icing aside, it was a decent dense texture, though a bit dry from being refrigerated. It almost found a saving grace in a bit of espresso flavour in the icing, but it couldn't make up for the rest of the bland slice.

The carrot cake fared much better. The first of the two layers being a white cake with strands of carrot. Definitely not overly carrot-y, very moist, but the bottom layer had more of a gingerbread colour and taste, with more walnuts and dried fruit pieces, while staying just as fluffy and deceptively light as the top. The real cream cheese icing tasted respectable and was melt-in-your mouth smooth. Not the best carrot cake ever (Aux Vivres wins hands-down when theirs is fresh, despite the orange, grainy icing) but definitely not bad. If you're a cheesecake fan, try Fous
Dessert's Green Tea version, and for mousse, try the popular Phénix. I think these cakes get brownie points for trying to be wholesome and pure, but just don't make you feel like you walked into a Grandmother's kitchen. Definitely come back to these companies when you're craving that insanely bad-for-you piece of Oreo Mousse or Reese's Peanut Butter Cheesecake like you'd expect from a Cheesecake Factory.

Oh, so I got to Au Festin de Babette but the only cake they had was a small Chestnut Cream cake, which looked nice, and probably home made, but not exactly what I was hoping for cake-wise. It's cheaper at $3.75 a slice (a smaller slice) but I'd hold out on Au Festin de Babette for summer when you'll be craving their selection of soft ice cream, or go now for a rich, creamy hot chocolate.

Expect to Pay: $6.00-$7.50 with tax and tip

Brulerie St-Denis: 3967 St-Denis, 514-286-9158
5252 Cote-des-Neiges, 514 -731-9158
1587 St-Denis, 514-286-9159
Maison Alcan, 1188 Sherbrooke West, 514-985-9159
10 rue King, 514-397-9866
Ste-Justine Hospital, 3175 Cote-Ste-Catherine, 514-738-4900
Ptomenade Masson, 3039 Masson, 514-750-6259
Fousdesserts: 809 avenue Laurier Est, 514-273-9335, Tue-Wed 8am-7pm, Thu-Fri 7:30am-7:30pm, Sat 7:30am-6pm