toronto cookies

This baker is making cookies shaped like iconic Toronto restaurants

You can eat at the Real Jerk, or you can just eat the Real Jerk — in cookie form. 

A Toronto baker has been spending the last few weeks baking up cookies shaped after some of Toronto's most well-known businesses and they're almost too adorable to eat. 

Alicia Didow has been showcasing some of her Toronto cookie art via her IG account @whiskedbyalicia for about a month now. 

Some of her most recent cookies include a few of the city's prettiest businesses (from the outside, anyway) like Piano Piano and the Cocktail Emporium

The 32-year-old baker, who has been making cookies all her life, says she was working full-time in a kitchen but was laid off at the beginning of the lockdown. The idea for Toronto cookie art came to her during one of her strolls through the city. 

"I started to admire houses and architecture, that's something I've always been interested in... and I was walking on the Danforth and stopped in front of Square Boy." 

"I thought, wait a minute, what if I turned this into a cookie?"

The elaborate orange and black cookie of the iconic Greek burger joint was the first of several more sugar cookie designs to come: baked goods that Didow calls "a love letter" to the city's entrepreneurs. 

"I think at the end of the day, with how crazy things have been, the small businesses in the city... have really taken a hit. I just thought it'd be a fun way to support them, give them some exposure, and show them some love." 

Aside from the process of baking the actual cookies (she sells them for $10-$12 each, with a minimum order of six), Didow adds really informative descriptions with her cookie Instagram posts.

Her latest post on the Leslieville knitting cafe Purple Purl and its role in the 2013 Daniel Radcliffe film The F Word is especially satisfying for Toronto trivia buffs and cookie-eaters. 

Didow has since done spots like Mexican joint Chula, the Jamaican spot Chubby's, the Polynesian-inspired Miss Thing's, and east side institution Maple Leaf Tavern, just to name a few. 

"I'm going to keep going," says Didow, though she might start doing something a little different. 

She's now looking at designing restaurant interiors, with an eye the beautiful design at King West's Oretta, which she wants to turn into a postcard-type of cookie. Ambitious, yet delicious. 

Lead photo by

Alicia Didow


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