From Montréal we get a gateau recalcitrant as Providence burns

Our colleagues from France paid a visit to Montréal over Thanksgiving. There they also speak French - sort of.  Every Francophile on the planet knows that français québecois is different than what the Parisians speak. But what they speak in Lyon is probably different that how they speak in Paris.  How they speak in Strasbourg is really different from all the rest because it is part German or Alsacienne...but that's another story altogether.

The First Harvest Bakery of Montreal

I'm happy because it is in French.

Anyway our visiting colleague was happy to come across a boulangerie and picked up a few items to bring back for cake hour.  We don't know exactly what they are called, however.   One of them is supposed to be a chocolate cranberry something.  The other is like a cheese pastry something.  Neither of them was a cake really. At least not as we understand a cake.  They were more like breads. But the French refer to them as cakes and so we leave it at that.

Two choices from Québec

Chocolate Cranberry Cake

Cheesey Bready Cake

The chocolate cranberry selection was good.  A bit of an odd combination actually and given the size of some of the "cranberries" we wondered if they were in fact cherries.  But la françcaise insisted it said cranberre or something like that. They were sour so we let them pass as cranberries. (Maybe they were sour cherries!)

Are they cranberries...they seem a little big!

The other cheese Danish-like bread had a few issues.  For the first thing it also had the crystallized sugar pieces on the top when it was purchased.  They apparently melted in transit.  The sweetened cheese stuff also sank down and ended up being rather thinly distributed given the size of the bread, er, cake.  Not that this made it bad.  It's really something for quality control at the Boulangerie Première Moisson. That means the First Harvest Bakery, BTW.

Where did the sugar go?

The cheesy stuff kind of disappeared also!

We did enjoy them. The only issue with the cranberry version was that it was a little difficult to cut hence the nom de cakehour gateau recalcitrant.  You can translate that yourself.  If you look at the picture of what was happening in the background you would think we were eating cake as Providence burns a la Marie Antoinette or Nero.  But it is merely and optical illusion of a great sunset shining through some distant buildings.

This thing doesn't want to be cut!!

Is Providence burning?