Petite Bouchée Patisserie is a small-batch bakery that was born out of the owner's childhood dream to own a pastry business. 

Nancy Claro fell in love with cooking at a young age, while others were into cartoons, she was turning on the TV to watch Chef Pasquale. 

Serving customers and interacting with the public came easy to her while growing up with her grandparents who owned a health food store. 

At 17 years old, Claro started working part-time in retail at Holt Renfrew. The job manifested itself into a 25-year long career with the company, where she kept a side hustle running a catering business for artisan sandwiches. 

Claro's love for pastries took over when she was 42, a single mother at the time, she left retail and decided to enroll in the Baking Arts program at George Brown College. 

Not long after she was working as a pastry chef at Adega, a high-end Portuguese restaurant, it was here that she formulated some of her now best-selling desserts at Petite Bouchee. 

Claro calls having a bakery of her own "a dream come true", it makes sense because you can taste and see the passion she has for her sweet creations. 

The owner only uses one small mixer for everything she bakes in-store, saying it makes a difference in taste to concentrate on putting love and effort into small batches rather than mass-producing baked items.  

Walking inside, you'll be greeted by Claro as if you're catching up with a family member, she'll make sure you're taken care of with whatever you desire from her display case of goods. 

Petite Bouchee has a range of classic French pastries, vegan bread, sweet tarts and cakes, with a mix of Claro's housemade desserts and others from pastry chefs around the GTA. 

One of Claro's proudest creations is her Classic Chocolate Cake (one slice, $6.50, whole cakes $23.00). Black Cocoa powder is used in the batter which gives it a richer, much darker colour than the brown you may be used to seeing.

Cream cheese fudge frosting is generously piped onto the exterior, so you'll get a smooth bite with the taste of pleasantly sweet and spongy cake. 

The Creme de Caramel ($4.95) is perfectly sized for one-person. The original recipe calls for milk, but cream is substituted for this one, giving it a silky texture. With ribbons of caramel sauce the flan is doused in, you'll be in awe of how it melts in your mouth. 

If you're not into sweets and prefer something more savoury from Petite Bouchee, grab one of their Butter Croissants ($2.95). Out of this world soft and humming with buttery goodness, these pair well with a coffee or latte on the side. 

The Pecan Tart ($6.50) is worth a second visit to the bakery. A brown sugar butter crust has a texture of a cookie that hugs onto the gooey, caramel filling inside. A handful of pecans inside of each adds a nice crunch, sure to get your taste buds going. 

Petite Bouchee faces a residential area near the Junction Triangle, take a walk down the West Toronto Rail Path to find their storefront.