Donuts, revamped!

This past long weekend, my boyfriend and I decided to head down to good ol' Calgary just to get away for a quick over night trip. I love Calgary. There are always new foodie spots to hit and there are many interesting restaurants/bakeries popping up. We stayed in the southwest part of downtown, home to some unique restaurants, bakeries and shops, one of them being the brand new Jelly modern doughnuts. 

I definitely recall reading about this new bakery in the August/September issue of the Where magazine. I always pick up this magazine when I'm in town because it always gives great reviews and recommendations on restaurants/diners/bakeries scattered across the city. I'm not too big of a fan of doughnuts, but I was curious as to what they meant by "modern". My boyfriend's eyes lit up when he heard 'doughnuts', so we decided to give this place a try. Even better: when we looked up the location of Jelly on our GPS, lo and behold, it was right beside our hotel!

After checking out of our hotel, we made our way to Jelly. The exterior of the bakery was very eye-catching: Jelly is in bright pink, as well as their logo, a doughnut of course, with white-very simple.

The showcase of doughnuts was amazing! I felt like a kid in a candy store. An astonishing array of unusual doughnut flavours filled the showcase-lemon, s'mores, peanut butter, madagascar bourbon vanilla, coconut, apple pie, maple bacon (what we came for!) and many more. You can check them out here.

I was trying to get a shot of the menu, as you can see that didn't work out so well (still not bad for a camera phone!)

 

Look at those doughnuts!

Look again! They even have bite sized doughnuts in the same flavours of the original sized ones-except they call them 3 bite doughnuts. Cute!

The individual prices of the doughnuts were $2.25, which is a little pricey considering they are just doughnuts; however, their catch is that they use local, organic and only the best ingredients possible to make the donuts. The fillings are hand-filled and everything is made fresh that day. To include some examples, the bacon they use is from Valbella meats in Canmore (which I absolutely love!) Vital Green and Chinook Honey. Their doughnuts are preservative-free, which means they are best consumed within 24 hours.


We opted for 1/2 dozen (1 dozen seemed like too many, considering I don't have much of a sweet tooth). We chose maple bacon (of course!), lemon, s'mores, peanut butter, coconut, madagascar bourbon vanilla. 

Our flavours L to R clockwise: S'mores, bourbon vanilla, maple bacon, lemon, coconut and peanut butter. All sooooo delectably delicious.

We first devoured the maple bacon...how could we not? Although most can agree that maple and bacon go together very well, and they do, my boyfriend and I agreed that there was not enough bacon bits on the doughnut. There wasn't enough of the satisfying bacon taste we get every Sunday morning. Other than that, it was yummy. 

Interior.

So far, we've tried s'mores, peanut butter and madagascar bourbon vanilla. The s'mores was my favourite so far (they even make their own marshmallows!), but the other ones were very tasty as well. I gave the lemon doughnut to my dad because he loves lemons; the coconut doughnut is on the menu as tomorrow's dessert. 

They even make birthday donuts!

Any of you planning a trip to Calgary anytime soon? Make sure to include Jelly modern doughnuts as your next sweet tooth venue because it's worth the trip there. We'll definitely be making a second trip!

Jelly modern doughnuts is located at 100 1414 8 street S.W., Calgary, Alberta

Verdict: sooo scrumptious!

Recipes to Riches: Week One

(I'm a bit behind ...) Week one of Recipe to Riches - Glo McNeil of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia wins the first one. She was up against three other contestants: A gentleman from Montreal with his Maple Pudding Chomeur and a food blogger from Burnaby with her Canadian Pie in a Jar. Although Glo's "Luscious Lemon Pudding" won out against the three, I was very interested in the other two desserts. Perhaps I should give the recipes a try? Check them out here. If you're interested in watching the video, check it out here.

Time for the taste test...

The packaging. Cute heh?

Each in a individual plastic ramekin.

Heat it up in the micro for 1 minute and...voila! You have "Luscious Lemon Pudding" 

Verdict: these cute little desserts were delicious! Although the recipe is quite simple, the judges are right that it could be a casual or fancy dessert.

My two favourite things collaborate: President's Choice & Food Network Canada

For those of you who love food and watch Food Network on a daily basis, you probably have heard of the show "Recipe To Riches" in which contestants across Canada (I'm still choked that I didn't hear about this until a few weeks ago!) entered their recipes. The judges scoured across Canada from Coast to Coast, choosing the top three finalists for each of the 7 categories (from desserts to savoury pies ). Within each category, all three individuals compete in a "batch-up challenge" in which the three contestants chosen must make their recipe enough for 100+ or 200+ depending on the challenge. Once the judges have a taste at the recipe, one person is eliminated from that round. The remaining two contestants compete against each other in a marketing challenge in which they pair up with two of Toronto's top marketing firms to market their products. The contestant with the best consumer response, name and marketing idea wins $25,000, their recipe made into a PC product for Canada to try and are automatically qualified for the grand prize of $250,000.

 There are 7 categories to compete in; the first two contestants already won for their dessert. They won $25,000 and their recipe made into a PC product and made avaiable to Canada the following weekend. The final 7 contestants are up against $250,000 and their recipe made into a permanent PC product. I already tried the "Luscious Lemon Pudding Cakes" and "Rockin' Peach Cheesecake" and they are delicious! However, my question is--why didn't I hear about this contest?  Check it out here: