Girl Guides are famous for two things: tradition and cookies.
Today, Canadian Girl Guides take a fresh look at their 100-year tradition of community involvement at the Art Gallery of Ontario. One hundred Canadian Girl Guides will make their photography debut in an exhibition entitled Canadian Girls Say… .
To celebrate, PostCity.com asked Toronto bakers what they have to say about another Girl Guide tradition, the classic Girl Guide cookie.
The real deal
Madeline Sperry, owner and pastry chef of Flaky Tart, spent her childhood in the kitchen instead of the Girl Guides but she still remembers the classic vanilla cookie. “The old Girl Guide cookies were brilliant! They just tasted real,” she says. Sperry makes a similar cookie at her bakery with the high quality ingredients the Girl Guides use. “We use a lot of vanilla bean in our baking and I think it makes a difference when the cookie doesn’t taste artificial. It tastes real.”
711 Mount Pleasant Road. (416) 484-8278.
Neighbourhood nostalgia
Mario Totaro, pastry chef at All the Best Fine Foods, remembers buying the double-fudge Girl Guide cookie from neighbourhood kids. “I still love a Girl Guide cookie now and again… but to me I think it’s nostalgic,” he says. The former Cub Scout takes a local approach to his own baking when he puts fresh home-made preserves, such as concord grape jelly, in his cookies.
1101 Yonge Street. (416) 928-3330.
If it ain’t broke…
Luke Donato, of Wanda’s Pie in the Sky, buys the mint chocolate cookie every year to share with his mother and wouldn’t change it for the world. “It tastes like tradition and heritage… I think they’re perfect,” he says.
287 Augusta Avenue. (416) 236-7585.
Not-so-tasty tradition
Radi Jelenic is one Toronto baker who isn’t so sweet on the Girl Guide cookie. The Sweet Gallery pastry chef has been baking for over 50 years and thinks the shortbread Girl Guide cookie could take a lesson from his European traditions. “I think they’re very bland and plain. They look so pale. And they’re not as tasty as the Viennese cookie,” he says. At Sweet Gallery, he mixes butter, icing sugar, egg yolk and flour to turn his cookies a buttery yellow and then fills them with apricot jam. “Those are real butter cookies,” he says.
694 Mt. Pleasant Rd. 416-484-9622.
Visit the Canadian Girls Say… photography exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. 317 Dundas Street West.(416) 979 6648.