All the bloggers and I at Sweetery Toronto 2015

As some of you might have seen in my post several days ago notifying you guys about the upcoming dessert food festival, Sweetery Toronto Food Festival had its first inagural event this past weekend on August 15 and 16 at Front and Portland.  

Sweetery Toronto hosted this event in collaboration with the George Brown Chef School and all of its proceeds goes to the Sick Kids Foundation.

I got to bring one guest with me on the tour; Kristine! 🙂

Their festival went on for two days from 11 to 10 p.m.  I was invited to their Bloggers’ Tour by Vivian who was also the one leading us around to the vendors.  There were about 13 of us and it was a very hot and sunny day on August 15.

After we signed in and got our name tags, we waited for everyone to arrive before Vivian started the tour with us.  She did an amazing job leading us to each vendor, telling us a little bit about the vendor and their story, and helping us get samples to try.  She ensured that there was more than enough time for us to take pictures and eat before moving on to the next vendor.  It was because of her thorough job in guiding us that made the tour last nearly two hours.  Despite the heat that day, I really appreciated her efforts and considerate actions to helping us bloggers try everything in order to get the word out.  Thank you, Vivian! 🙂

Floor plan of all the vendors (in red) and food trucks (in blue)

Food bloggers photoshoot!

First of all, we were led to hear a little bit about the Sweetery Taste Test Challenge.  You could guess 5 popcorn flavours correctly to win a prize!

Challenge your Taste, Bud! XD

We stopped by the George Brown Pastry Chef booth where they were making chocolate designs.  Cool!  (They also had cakes for sale later on which I heard were really good and looked great too!)

Chocolate designs

Tito Ron’s, yummy Filipino fare

Our first food vendor booth was Tito Ron’s.  I’ve had them recently at the TO Food Fest and they recognized me right away which was very neat.  Hello Tito Ron’s! 🙂  We got to try their Coconut Bae Lumpia as well as their Purple Plantain.  I’ve had their Coconut Bae Lumpia before and it was delicious!  I also liked their Purple Plantain this time around too.  It was hot and fresh off the fryer!

Coconut Bae Lumpia

Purple Plantain

Everything is vegan!

Bloomer’s uses all vegan ingredients to make their food including sandwiches and donuts.  We got to try their raspberry pink donut which I thought was delicious!  There was something about it being vegan that made it taste so light and non-doughy.  I really liked how fresh the raspberry jam was too!

Vegan donuts from Bloomer’s!

Kakigori (Gusta Haus) wasn’t ready for us yet so we went over to Toast Delight instead.  I’ve been meaning to try Toast Delight for a while after finding out that they are very similar to Wooffles & Cream (they have HK style waffles that have different toppings in them!).  However, one half of their machines were out of power so we couldn’t try anything from them.  Maybe next time!

Original Flavour HK style waffles from Toast Delight

Catering Diva offered us to try their mille crepe.  I am so glad that I got to try the original “amazing” mille crepe at Millie Creperie last month — their matcha crepe cake is out of this world!  This one was vanilla flavoured and tasted so soft and cool.  It was great for a hot summer day and was very well made too!

Catering Diva

A small sampling of their “Simple Vanilla” mille crepe

Pure and Seedless offered to show off their Bottomless Whole Watermelon for us to take pictures with but told us to return later to try some samples.

Cute watermelons from Pure and Seedless

Bottomless Whole Watermelon. $10

Baker Siu showing off his matcha crepe cake

Off we went to Baker Siu‘s booth.  This guy is super popular due to the fact that he was on Master Chef Canada.  Even last time at the TO Food Fest, he was the first booth to sell out.  I tried his Matcha Crepe cake last time and thought it didn’t compare to the one at Millie Crepe.  Even this time when I got a bite of it, I thought it was too dry and “dusty” tasting for my taste.  I tried the Lemon Cake Macaron though and really liked it!

This guy’s ego is so high due to all his fans flocking around him all the time

Butter tarts from Beverley’s Bakers

At Beverley’s Bakers, we got to try an assortment of their homemade butter tarts.  Vivian was eager to let us know that all of their butter tarts are all homemade.  They had a lot of different flavours including plain, pecan, raisin, maple walnut, raspberry coconut, and double chocolate.  I got to try half of their Double Chocolate Pecan Butter Tart.  It was SO good!  I’m usually not a big butter tart fan, but this one was so decadent.  The moment it was cut in half, the chocolate started to run.  It was gooey and the butter tart was so soft.  This was delicious!! 🙂

An assortment of their butter tarts

Double Chocolate Pecan Butter Tart (cut in half)

Fufu Rocks!

Next up, we got to try some samples from Fufu Rocks.  It was actually around this time that I mentioned to Kristine that after all those sweets, I wanted some meat to balance out the carbs and sugar.  Lo and behold, Fufu Rocks actually served us two savory dishes!  Fufu Rocks actually contacted me last month about delivering me two free dishes in order for me to blog about them (they are a delivery food service that caters to your moods), but since I live in Markham and not downtown where they usually serve, I wasn’t able to try them out.

“Enthusiastic” Thai Chili Balls. $6
“Serenity” Jerk Drumstick Lollipop. $6

We got to try “Enthusiastic” Thai chili balls and “Serenity” Jerk Drumstick Lollipop.  Wow, I was impressed with how generous they were (this should be how food festival tastings work 🙂 ).  Almost every person got their own drumstick and chili ball to taste.  I really liked the chili ball and that it wasn’t too spicy for my taste.

The best one was the Jerk Drumstick Lollipop.  It was perfectly seasoned and it was such a big chunk of meat too!  It was delicious!

Hard at work cooking the drumstick lollipops!

Fufu Rocks is especially cute because they have a monkey mascot that someone wears when they deliver food to your home.  It’s creative!

Puffy Love — handcrafted gourmet marshmallows

Next up, we returned back to the sweets and tried some marshmallows from Puffy Love.  Their entire booth was shrouded in pink which is why all of the pictures here are in a pink mist.  They are a Handcrafted Gourmet Marshmallow business where they feature different flavors of marshmallows.  We got to sample the Bacon Heaven one.  It was neat because the marshmallow had some bacon inside of it.

Sampling “Bacon Heaven”

Pure Leaf

Again, it was perfect timing for some cold drinks in our system!  It was getting really, really hot out there.  Pure Leaf was providing free samples of their real brewed tea all afternoon long (afterwards, we wondered why they didn’t offer to sell any because they would have make a lot from all the thirsty and dehydrated people that afternoon).  Their drinks came in different flavours like:  Raspberry, Unsweetened, Lemon, Peach, and Green Tea with Honey.  During the course of the afternoon, I tried their Peach, Lemon, Unsweetened, and Raspberry.  Their tea truly has real tea flavouring in there, especially the unsweetened one.  It was very refreshing.   Maybe because it was the first one I tried, but I liked the Peach one the most.

They were so refreshing and tasted like real tea!

At this time, we went back to Pure and Seedless and got to try their watermelon juice!  The cup included a ball of watermelon on a stick.  Their watermelon juice was so refreshing because it was actually frozen beforehand.  So hydrating!

Trying the watermelon juice from Pure and Seedless

A fellow blogger trying to hit the Sweetery Pinata!

We got to preview the Sweetery Pinata game as well.  One of the bloggers in our group tried to hit the E pinata to try to get some candies out and he did succeed!  He got two candies with the small spoon lol.  It’s a great initiative to raise some funds for the Sick Kids Foundation. 🙂

Proceeds go to Sick Kids Foundation

BeaverTails is becoming more of a frequent sight in Toronto; you used to only be able to get these once a year at CNE!

Last but not least, we finished the vendor booths and headed over to the Food Trucks portion of the afternoon (this was very well executed).  We stopped by BeaverTails to try their Killaloe Sunrise Beavertail.  It contains cinnamon, sugar, and lemon.  I have never tried this topping before (I’ve previously tried their Chocolate Banana and Maple).  It was actually really good because it was refreshing.  Squeezing the juice from the lemon wedge helped to quench our thirst and renew our appetite for even more food.

Killaloe Sunrise Beavertail. $4.87 
-cinnamon, sugar, lemon

Thank you for all these samples!

We tried the Cinnamon Sugar chimney (Hungarian pastries that are made on a rotisserie grill) from Chimney’s.  They gave us little samples.  While it was good, I think I need to try the entire thing to actually judge what I think about it.  They had a huge line-up though so I still appreciated that they had the time to make the samples for us to try.

This is the first time I’ve heard of Chimneys. They are so popular! The line-up was so long

Samples from Chimneys

Sweet Spot — ice cream and ice cream sandwiches

We got to try some ice cream sandwiches from the Sweet Spot.  They were very generous here.  Almost every single person got their own quarter of an ice cream sandwich to try.  Yum!  I liked mine since the cookie was chewy.  I tried the one that Kristine got and it was chocolatey yet the cookie was a little harder than mine.  It was good.  At this point I was really getting full!

Ice cream sandwich samples! 🙂

The last on our tour, we tried some Cubano Sandwiches from La Novela Vesta Lunch including their Fried Plantain with cheese.  I loved their Cubano Sandwiches!!  The fried plantain with cheese was amazing as well. 😀

La Novela — Latin food

Fried Plantains and Cubano Sandwiches

Sweet Snow Shave Ice — Hawaiian shaved ice

At this point, we did head back to Sweet Snow Shave Ice to try to get some samples but it was almost past the two-hour mark after we had started the Bloggers’ Tour and a lot of people had to leave.  We also had to wait 10 minutes for the samples so most of us called it a day.  I felt bad because Christian had been waiting for us all this time.

Once we were all done the tour, I thanked Vivian for her work and time and we headed towards our friends who had just arrived.  I got a Sakura Mochi Milk from Kakigori (they had a gigantic line at this time; apparently their power was out for an hour and they had a backlog of orders).  During this wait, we sampled some more drinks from Pure Leaf.

Wow! Just look at their line-up!

Watching them make the shaved ice

Soon, we got the Sakura Mochi Milk.  It was so nice and topped high.  It was the perfect finish to a seriously hot summer day.  We were all burning and sweating under the sun.  This dessert itself didn’t have too much of a distinguishing taste but it was highly refreshing and thirst-quenching.  The shaved ice tasted so good in the heat.  There was some leaf powder, sakura mochi, sakura milk, and aduki red bean in it in the bottom.  Apparently their sakura actually comes from Japan!

Sakura Mochi Milk. $8
-leaf powder, sakura mochi, sakura milk, aduki red bean

After this, we were all full and tired from the heat.  It was time to call it a day!

Fun in the shade!

Hello Sweetery!

Kristine and I had a blast touring around the different vendors and eating!

Thank you, Jeff and Vivian for organizing!

Food bloggers in action

Thank you so much to Sweetery Toronto for inviting me for the Bloggers’ Tour and allowing me to have a first-hand experience to taste almost all the vendors that were at Sweetery Toronto Food Festival for their inaugural year.  It was a pleasure to be there and I was so pleased to see it do so well in their first year.  There were a lot of people attending!  I appreciated that it was an admission free event; people could walk in and out as they pleased.  It was well organized and neat.  Even the floor plan of the event made perfect sense.  The only thing is that perhaps next year they can consider hosting it in an air conditioned area?  Or at least have more tents where people can rest if it is again a hot and sunny day.  Otherwise, I loved the event and getting to see some fellow food bloggers again and enjoy fantastic food. 🙂

This event was a huge success. There were so many people here in their first year!

Did you get to go this year?  If so, what did you think of the event?

It was the perfect day to have an outdoor food festival

Yay! 🙂 Thanks for having me!

FTC Disclaimer:  Although Vivian reached out and invited me to a complimentary tasting to showcase the food and vendors at the Sweetery Toronto Food Festival, the opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of the organization.