BITE-SIZED BLURBS: BROWN BUTTER CAFE

Our Bite-Sized Blurbs are our honest opinions about a local restaurant, bakery or café that aren’t part of a larger Gracilianca series! Bon appétit!

The focus of this bite-sized blurb is the buns at Brown Butter Cafe! These popular buns are elusive - the flavours change weekly and are posted on the Brown Butter Cafe Instagram every Friday. At the time of writing this review, you must pre-order (the buns come in a box of 4), and pick-up is for the following Wednesday, Thursday or Friday from 2-3PM! There are only a limited number of orders available so make sure to get your pre-order in quickly if you see a flavour you want to try!

Previous flavours have included the following:

Sweet - Lemon or passionfruit meringue, yuzu custard, creme brûlée, cherry cheesecake, milk tea, red velvet, blueberry lemon, salted egg yolk, tiramisu cheesecake, gingerbread cheesecake, s’mores, Vietnamese coffee, ube

Savoury - nacho, scallion, curry puffs

Sometimes they do collaborations with Yelo’d Ice Cream and Bake Shoppe where Brown Butter Cafe supplies the buns and Yelo’d supplies ice cream pucks, for ice cream bun-wiches!

Locations: (780) 752-9900, 1528 - 91 St SW, Edmonton, AB T6X 1M5

Items on the menu: Leche flan bun (box of 4 buns for $17/box). This flan recipe is from one of Brown Butter Cafe’s own, Kat’s family recipe!

Tell me more: Brown Butter Cafe is a locally owned and operated cafe, located in the deep south of Edmonton! It opened in late 2017, and is owned by Heena and Michael - a couple who first met each other in culinary arts school at NAIT! Their menu includes coffees, bunwiches (you have GOT to try their good morning bun-wich… it deserves its own review - coming soon!), and bowls!

They are open limited hours only though, so please be aware of this! At the time of writing, they are open Monday through Fridays 8AM-3PM, and Saturdays 9AM-2PM!

For the purposes of this review, C & G split a box of 4 buns to try!

So, how was it? We were fortunate enough to have our lovely friend M (who makes a guest appearance on this blog from time to time - stay tuned!) place the order and pick it up for us - thank you, M! Ordering was as easy as sending Brown Butter Cafe a DM on Instagram (or you can call them as well), and as said previously, pick up is only between 2-3PM on Wednesdays through Fridays. It makes it a little difficult to be able to obtain these buns if you work full-time office hours like we do, but never fear…. on our next day off, we will be back for these delightful tasting buns!

For our rankings, we’ll be looking at a few categories, taste, presentation, and value!

TASTE:

C: 4.75/5 - This tasted like heaven in my mouth! The bun itself is soft, and then you get to the filling which is the lightest, fluffiest whipped flan I’ve ever tasted. There was a LOT of whipped flan inside which I appreciated! Definitely a fulfilling dessert for me.

G: 5/5 - Never had anything like this before! It was delicious. The flan inside the bun was light and tasty and the bun itself was a great vehicle for the filling. It was sweet, but not too sweet; soft, but not too soft...you could say it passed the Goldilocks’ test for me -it was just right!

PRESENTATION:

C: 4/5 - The buns came packaged in a clear box - seemed sturdy enough and easy to transport! Nothing too noteworthy about the presentation, but the buns looked

appetizing and weren’t squished together!

G: 4/5 - Agreed with C - there was nothing remarkable with the packaging, it just did what it needed to do! All of the buns all came intact, which was much appreciated.

VALUE:

C: 4/5 - I’m not really sure how much buns should cost but these buns worked out to be $4.25 each + GST. Considering that cronuts are roughly the same price (refer to our YEG Cronut Quest reviews if you haven’t read those already!), I think that the buns would be comparable to the cronuts and as such, $4.25 seems like a reasonable price!

G: 4/5 - These seemed like pretty good value to me! They weren’t just ordinary buns - they were quite delicious and filling, and a dessert in their own right! I think $4.25 per bun was a fair price.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Would you get another order of buns again?

C: 100% yes! I thought these buns were bunderful! In fact, they were bun in a million…. Alright, I’ll stop but all my buns are intended! I’m excited to see what flavours are coming up!

G: I liked these buns and I cannot lie! Yes!

Disclaimer: This review is not affiliated with or sponsored by Brown Butter Cafe - views expressed are solely our opinions!