Sort-of Secret: Cosette Coffee, a bakery near High Park serving top-notch pastries, desserts and a cookie that is out of this world

The sort-of secret: Cosette Coffee, a café and bakery near High Park serving owner Christina Cho’s take on traditional French pâtisserie. You may have heard of it if: You have a nose for good croissants, madeleines and cookies. But you probably haven’t tried it because: You’ve bypassed it in a rush to get to Keele station, which is right across the street.

Making a cookie isn’t rocket science—unless you’re at Cosette Coffee, a café and bakery by the northeast corner of High Park, where owner and former aerospace engineer Christina Cho is quietly producing top-notch pastries, specialty desserts and what may be the city’s best cookie.

“Aerospace is very similar to baking, except the project timelines are five years long, while a cookie takes less time to make,” Cho tells me as we watch head baker, Yoonjee Jeon, fold together ingredients for one of the bakery’s most popular items, the milky walnut cookie.

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Nothing that goes into this cookie—butter, eggs, flour, sugar, chocolate, walnuts—is unfamiliar, but the finesse with which Jeon handles the dough is eye-opening. It stays perfectly opaque for the entire time she handles it, without a hint of the oily sheen that usually develops on homemade dough. According to Cho, this is by design: the prep kitchen has precise temperature and humidity controls.

Biting into a milky walnut cookie, you understand that the butter within was handled with a level of care normally reserved for satellite components. Its crispy crust, chewy mantle and ethereal interior make it feel a bit like you’re eating three different cookies simultaneously. It is also possibly the greatest delivery mechanism ever devised for walnuts.

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“I don’t like cookies that are too sweet. I also don’t like small bits of nuts—I want big pieces. The purpose of the dough should be to hold the ingredients together,” says Cho, who’s partial to the café’s Maldon-salted caramel cookie, another creation that upends all cookie expectations, this one made with delectably salty caramel-infused pastry.

But cookies are just the tip of the iceberg at Cosette. Cho first developed an interest in baking when she was in high school in Korea, taking classes at a local pastry school with pâtissiers from France and Japan. After graduating from TMU with a degree in aerospace engineering, she decided to pursue her passion instead, opening Cosette during the pandemic with encouragement from her business partner, Suyoun An. Together, they’ve created a well-appointed, fine-tuned sanctuary for high-octane pastry—a kind of NASA for butter. The madeleines are perfectly moist and flavourful: the chocolate one is coffee-like in its depth and richness; the lemon is zingy and refreshing; and the matcha is vivid with smooth tea flavour. The croissants are fluffy and ethereal, and the sandwiches Cho makes out of them are inventive and satisfying (my usual order contains five different types of caramelized mushroom).

It isn’t every day that you’re surprised by a muffin, but Cosette’s wild blueberry is truly great—fluffy, with just the right amount of fruit and topped with an addictive cookie crumble. The dacquoises are perfect too: the triple berry is jammy and satisfying, and the caffè latte is like a cloud. Eat pretty much anything here and Cho’s love of baking immediately shines through.

Cosette Coffee, 1715 Bloor St. W., @cosette_coffee