For a location in York Region, I think La Rocca Creative Kitchen has great value, delicious, creative cakes, a clean space, and a beautiful kitchen perfect for folks to have afternoon tea in. On the walls of La Rocca, are shelves with small merchandise for sale.
Entering for the first time, I walked into a beautiful display of the kitchen and tons of well prepared cakes in front of me. They have unique small pastries, macarons, cupcakes and large cakes for sale - pre-ordering the cakes are a good tip! The kitchen was an open kitchen concept, and each staff had their own station to maximize their creativity; it also allows for great personal space!
We decided to try their pastries since they all looked super delicate and creative! If you purchase 6, it will be tax free. All together, the cakes were less than $40 including tax (they were roughly $5-$7 per piece), which is a decent price for these creative pieces! If you purchase a large cake, it's roughly $30, which is fairly reasonable as well, considering that cakes roughly the same size at Longos is around $25 to $30. We were able to sit down and enjoy their space - they had water, cups and napkins on the side.
A few of the cakes we purchased (miniature, personal size) were:
1) The caramel crunch ($6). This one is iconic to many places. It has a beautiful crunchy layer of "cake" loaded with beautiful nutty flavours and is sandwiched by whipped cream and caramel. Sounds sweet? Surprise, surprise, it's actually not that sweet! Which is why I really liked it.
2) The Ispahan Tart ($6.50). This one is a tart that's filled with delicious rose petal sponge, raspberry cremeux, fresh lychee compote, raspberry lychee whipped ganache and extra extra sprinkles on top! The tart was nice and crisp, and the raspberry top didn't take sour or too sweet at all!
3) Birthday cake (not pictured): Of course, this would be the one that's sold out - and yes, I got the last piece! This is your personal slice of vanilla cake with sprinkles on top!
4) Hazelnut Cube ($6.50) (not pictured): This is filled with a milk chocolate ganache and surrounded by a silky hazelnut mousse. It had great texture and flavour, but I'm not a big fan of mousse, nor am I big fan of chocolate, so it wasn't my favourite. My family enjoyed it though!
5) Yuzu Coconut Dome ($6.50). I felt like this was one that had all the flavours in one. A bit of sweetness from the delicately ribbon white chocolate that surrounded the dome, a tarty, bittery taste from the yuzu, the sweet, crisp texture of the coconut meringue base at the bottom, and a luxurious filling!
6) Matcha Mango Cheesecake ($6.50). This one probably looked the most creative out of them all, but the taste was really not my favourite. I loved the presentation, the chocolate on top delicately placed as a dome shape over top chopped up mangoes and a beautiful matcha cheesecake! However, the taste in my opinion didn't mix very well. The mangoes tasted a little sour when blended with this sweet chocolate, and matcha in addition to that tasted a little bizarre. read more