Sakura season at Cheese Garden

It’s Sakura (aka cherry blossom) season at Cheese Garden! 

Sakura’s actually one of my favourite flowers. I love the subtle pink (my favourite colour) and the cute little petals. It’s a symbolic flower of Spring, which is also my birthday season. Needless to say, when I heard Cheese Garden came out with their Sakura Spring Collection, I just had to try it!

Featuring Japanese Sakura from Kanagawa, this beautiful Sakura dessert set comes with:

1 Sakura Fraise Cheesecake

2 pieces of Sakura Yakigashi

1 Sakura Raindrop Cake

1 exclusive Sakura spoon and Sakura bag as free gifts (SO cute!)

I love the different layers of the Sakura fraise cheesecake. The cake consists of the following layers: Sakura mizu yokan, custard pudding, Sakura jam, no bake strawberry cheesecake and matcha sponge cake. The matcha sponge cake and the strawberry cheesecake go so well together! I like that the Sakura wasn’t over powering so I got to really enjoy all the different flavours.

The Sakura Yakigashi is my favourite from the dessert set. This Sakura and cranberry cookie bar is as yummy as it is beautiful. The toasted pistachios adds a nice crunch and the marshmallows gives it a nice chewy texture and added sweetness.

If only raindrops can be as beautiful as Cheese Garden’s Sakura raindrop cake then maybe I’d enjoy rainy days more. The texture of this raindrop cake reminds me of jello and it has a very distinct Sakura flavour. I can’t get over the beautiful flower sitting perfectly in the “raindrop”. It’s almost too pretty to eat!

This new and limited Sakura Spring Collection is only available from now to May 12th!

Only 50 Sakura Spring Collections are available per day at each location and limited to 1 set per customer (no reservation, first come first serve).

Available at all Cheese Garden locations: 

 📍5291 Yonge St

📍Unit G120 - 3250 Midland Ave. 

📍B58 - 4300 Steeles Ave. E (Pacific Mall) 

📍Saks Fifth Ave. Pop-up store, 176 Yonge St.  

Website:  http://www.cheesegarden.ca/ 

Tsujiri Patisserie

Location:  596 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON, M4Y 1Z3

Website:  https://tsujiri-global.com/

Grand Opening Promo: This iconic Japanese Matcha brand will be celebrating their very first Tsujiri Patisserie store in downtown Toronto by offering FREE matcha ice cream lava cakes for the first 88 customers on March 30, 2109, starting at 12:00PM!

Tsujiri is just one of those dessert places that never goes out of style. There’s a reason why there’s still so much hype about this 155 years old Japanese matcha brand. I have been such a fan ever since I had my first bite of matcha soft serve. 

The store itself is bright and spacious with a very minimalist design. There are lots of seating available so it’s a perfect spot to catch up with friends over some matcha appreciated treats (I couldn’t resist... My blog post is not complete without at least one pun).

Tsujiri Patisserie offers unique items such as their beautiful dessert platters. Perfect for indecisive individuals (much like myself) because these platters offer a variety of treats selected by the pastry chef. 

The crunchy eclair is filled with a generous portion of Tsujiri’s delicious matcha cream. I absolutely love this combination of a crunchy eclair shell and a creamy matcha filling. These eclairs are made fresh to order, meaning the matcha cream is piped on the spot once an order’s been placed. This helps prevent the crunchy eclair from getting soggy.

The matcha ice cream lava cake will have you coming back for more! There’s a mountain of Tsujiri’s famous soft serve sitting on top of a fresh out the oven hot and ooey lava cake. I mean you really can’t go wrong with a dessert like this! So much care’s been put into this one dish. From the made to order lava cake, to the beautiful platting and the yummy mochi and chestnut, this dish is definitely a must try at Tsujiri Patisserie! 

I was lucky enough to check out a few of the Tsujiri locations when I was traveling in Japan. I can honestly say that the quality here really does match the quality of the matcha treats served in Japan. Food is always able to magically trigger specific memories for me and this lineup of matcha desserts brought me back to my adventures in Japan. Now if only it can literally bring me back!

Sasaki Fine Pastry

I’ve always been a fan of Japanese desserts and Sasaki Fine Pastry just happens to make some my favourite Japanese snacks (daifuku and dorayaki!)

Before I start gushing about my love for the yummy daifuku at Sasaki Fine Pastry, I’ll just briefly explain the difference between Mochi and daifuku. For the longest time I didn’t know the difference between the two and thought that they were the same thing. Now that I’ve finally figured it out I shall pass on this very important knowledge. Sharing is caring and caring is fun!

Mochi vs Daifuku

Mochi is best described as Japanese rice cakes. It’s made by pounding steamed glutinous rice until it’s soft, smooth and chewy. I find that mochi, by itself, is actually quite bland as it is not naturally sweet. 

Daifuku is basically a large Mochi stuffed with a sweet filling. I find the most common filling to be red bean, but when I was in Japan I came across many fruit filled daifuku (some were even stuffed with a whole strawberry!)

Sasaki Fine Pastry offers a pretty large selection of daifuku flavours. They rotate some seasonal flavours as well. I’ve tried their matcha, chestnut, sesame, houjicha, mango, strawberry, and cream daifuku. My top 3 are the sesame, houjicha and strawberry.

Bonus: both the strawberry and the houjicha daifuku have red bean filling inside as well!

The Mochi itself is so soft, chewy and not too sticky. There’s a very generous amount of filling too. It’s the perfect daifuku!

The dorayaki here is on point. Doraemon (a robotic cat from the future) was one of my favourite anime characters when I was a kid. So naturally I also love his favourite food, dorayaki! 

Dorayaki is like a red bean pancake sandwich. Sasaki Fine Pastry added their own twist by adding cream with the red bean filling. They also have a red bean with matcha cream dorayaki that is amazing.

Daifuku $2.60/each

Dorayaki (classic) $2.50/each

Dorayaki  (red bean + cream) $3.00/each