LenJo Bakes — Restaurant in Kitchener

A new gem of a spot in Mount Hope-Breithaupt. Friendly as heck, and amazing treats. Like, heavenly. The individual blueberry pies -- light and airy and the perfect amount of sweet (as in, the sweetness of the berries does the work; no sickly sweet sugar like too many places in Canada and the US). The macarons -- I had mint chocolate today and was transported. Last week, the cheesecake brownies were one of the best hybrid textures and flavours I've had in a dessert. I'm not kidding -- I haven't had such solidly-executed pairing since some of the inspired desserts at Gushue's Berlin by Tara. Speaking of textures and flavours, the layers of perfectly complementary elements in Lenore's verrines are pitch-perfect -- you can close your eyes and they pretty much sing in your mouth. A great, uncrowded place to go on a Saturday to support a small, local artisan who also makes a great flat white, latte, or cappuccino. Seating is limited, so get stuff to go after having lovely conversation with the owner and her mom, and whatever makes it all the way home with you will remind you that this magical place in midtown is...

So unbelievably excellent! My partner and I stopped in here after hearing some rave reviews and wow! The owner immediately greeted us and was so friendly! We were walked through the process of making several items and the amount of work that goes into each one (like cooking down actual bananas for the banana macarons)! You can truly feel the passion she has for her work and it shows in how beautiful, unique and delicious everything is. We got the blueberry pop tarts and six macarons, the pop tarts were gone before we even left the parking lot and the macarons didn’t last much longer (we very reluctantly shared them with visiting family, who couldn’t get enough of them) also, highly recommend the banana foster macarons if you like bananas, so amazing! My partner already has her birthday cake for September picked out after our experience and we can’t wait...

Got to check out LenJo Bakes today. Staff was amazingly friendly and made shopping here a delight. It's pretty small and doesn't have a huge selection (focusing largely one cakes which are a bit out of my price range) but what it does it does very well. The standouts were the Len Jo Louis whoopie pie which was fun and chocolate with a good cake to filling ratio. I was skeptical of the "kitchen sink" cookies but when the comped me one to sample I couldn't resist and it won me over! It was a crispy thin chocolate chip cookie with multiple kinds of chocolate chips, pretzels, crushed potato chips and ground coffee. I hate coffee but this totally worked balancing sweet and salty. The lavender shortbread were wonderfully crumbly but the lavender was too strong. The apple blonde had strong apple flavour and the double chocolate cookie was excellent. I...