Duchess Bake Shop & Provisions- 02.19.15
This post is part of our special NOTCOT Alberta Great Escape series thanks to our friends at Travel Alberta. In Part I, we roadtripped up from LA for a fall adventure. In Part II, we are experiencing all that Alberta Winter has to offer! Follow the series to see what inspires us along the way!
If there’s one place that keeps coming up on Edmonton lists that you HAVE to try, it is Duchess Bake Shop, as well as their specialty baking store Provisions by Duchess, next door. The bakery has clearly become a destination for foodies and macaron lovers everywhere, and as soon as you step in, it’s easy to see why. Tucked away in a strip of shops, you enter an ornate, yet modern, parisian feeling spot filled with world class pastries made daily from scratch. And if you’re inspired to make your own, Provisions is filled with the who’s who of pastry cookbooks, specialty ingredients, baking tools, and even their new self published Duchess Bake Shop Cookbook - complete with 80 recipes for their most loved pastries from the bakery.
While our culinary adventures in Edmonton surprised us - so many delicious new restaurants filled with modern interiors I loved, and incredibly nice folks. Heading to Duchess near lunch hour was a bit more like Disneyland! But worth the chaos. One thing to note if you make the pilgrimage to Duchess is that they are not open Mondays, and if Monday happens to be a public holiday (in this case Family Day), they are also closed Tuesday. Luckily, we were driving to Jasper on Weds, so managed to squeeze in a quick stop to check it out, have a quiche and croque monsieur, and pick up a box of treats to enjoy on our road trip! Of course, once i got there and peek at the cookbook, it warranted a longer read… so check it all out on the next page!
The view from the street as you walk up…
… steeping inside, you can’t help but look UP at the lovely gilded, ornate ceilings.
The hardest part was picking what few things to try first!
The extremely nice (and super helpful) lady at the counter told us that the Key Lime Tart and Macarons were a must.
Beautiful colors!
Of course, we also had to try their signature Brioche Pépin which is filled with creme patissere & chocolate. It really is far more delicious than it looks! But as you can see there is SO much to choose from.
Crossing over to the Provisions side - first stop was flipping through the Duchess Bake Shop Cookbook. Beautiful pictures, nice thick paper stock, and such an approachable layout!
The most mesmerizing wall is full of ingredients - from coloring powders to every type of sugar and flour and ingredients i don’t even yet know how to use.
To help baby step aspiring pastry chefs, they have a lot of cutely packaged kits for macarons, cookies, and more.
Their cookbook section is an impressive collection of how to make sweet treats from all the famous bakeries!
It feels endless!
Once we got to Jasper, it was time to properly dive into it all… on the Oliver Apt Cutting Board I made!
The macarons taste even better while you read how to make them.
… and the key lime tart is just divine!
It was all so delicious - I definitely understand all the attention this little Edmonton bake shop is getting! With cookbook in hand, i’ll definitely have to give the Duchess Bake Shop recipes a try when i get home…
