Re-fuelling at Taste Cafe

Hello, hello! Not that it's of any consequence to anyone who may read this but...I am now the proud owner of GREEN P-PLATES!!! Yes, I passed my Hazard Perception Test yesterday :D And good thing too, since my P1 licence was due to expire in a mere two days @_@"

I got to the City South RTA an hour earlier than I was supposed to, so I decided to check out some of the neighbouring cafes. A display of mini macarons in Taste Bakery on Foveaux Street, Surry Hills, caught my eye. So in I went, looking for a sugar rush before I braved the HPT.

I got a baggie of four mini macarons, in the flavours of sesame (shown above), apple & cinnamon, coconut, and green tea.

And also a coffee. Campos!

I guess it's a lot harder to bake mini macaron shells compared to 'normal' sized ones. By which I mean keep the insides moist. The ones which I had were very crunchy. Still, the flavours delivered, and these made for a tasty snack. I wholeheartedly attribute my success to these little babies :D

Green tea

Coconut

Apple & Cinnamon

Taste Bakery & Restaurant

38-44 Foveaux St, Surry Hills NSW 2010

Phone: (02) 9281 7228

Azuma Patisserie, Sydney CBD

Mamak is notorious for its mile-long queue around dinner time. With this in mind, a friend and I decided to pop into Azuma Patisserie, located in the Chifley Plaza near Townhall Station, for an afternoon snack before we dined a-proper at Mamak later in the evening.

We ordered a mixed berry chiffon cake to share, and a small bowl of green tea frozen yoghurt each. The berry chiffon was on special - I think it was because we went close to the closing time. Nevertheless, it was cotton soft. And not too sweet, which pleased my savoury-loving friend to no end.

Personally, I don't think of chiffon cakes as desserts. They're just too...healthy tasting. And we all know that frozen yoghurt is good for you, because it's...frozen yoghurt :D 

We joked that we needed the extra sustenance to last us the long wait in the Mamak queue, but we really were starving by the time we were seated after an hour-long wait! Guess we made the right choice to stuff our faces with cake and ice cream beforehand!

Azuma Patisserie

Ground Floor Regent Place Shopping
501 Greorge Street Sydney NSW 2000

Website: http://www.azuma.com.au/

Best macarons in Sydney?

Okay, I admit - compared to the hardcore macaron fanatics out there, my knowledge of macarons is a mere rain-drop to their vast sea of wisdom. Still, I pride myself on making grandiose, evaluative statements on subjects that contain zero potential for ever being proven scientifically.

So, I'm going to assert here and now that that the BEST MACARONS in Sydney, nay, in the world, are the ones from the La Renaissance Patisserie in The Rocks, Sydney.

Is this not a thing of beauty? Perfectly domed shells which are subtle in sweetness but delightfully varied in texture as my teeth breaks through the crisped surface into the gooey interior. And all this encasing a wondrously flavoursome filling that always delivers on whatever is advertised on the placard. In this case, a smooth buttercream of chestnut and pear. My favourite flavour combination in a macaron to date.

Look at the gorgeous feet on those shells! And what made the experience of eating this all the more special were the golden flecks scattered all over the russet-hued shells. An edible brocade, that's what this macaron was.

On this occasion, I also had a coffee flavoured macaron, and a few hours later, a dark chocolate one.

The coffee mac delivered a much needed dose of caffeine (although, perhaps this was more psychological :D). The perfect pick-me-up.

Unfortunately, the dark chocolate one had hard, crunchy shells. This, however, did little to dampen my enthusiasm over the exceptional macarons at La Renaissance.

As the old adage goes: "Don't let one bad macaron spoil the [insert collective noun for macarons]." Or something to that effect :D I maintain that La Renaissance has the best macarons Syd...I mean, the world!


La Renaissance Café Pâtisserie

47 Argyle Street The Rocks
Sydney NSW 2000

Phone: (02) 9241 4878
Fax: (02) 9241 4870
Email: orders@larenaissance.com.au
Opening hours: 8am to 6pm, Seven days

Pasticceria Papa, Haberfield

Or, to be more specific, a pal and I pigged out on pastries at Pasticceria Papa on a fine, Sunday morning :D

 

As it so happened, I was seized by an inexorable wave of guilt on Saturday evening for my week of relative inactivity, and felt compelled to go outside for a walk at least. I felt much better twenty minutes into my turtle-paced "jog", and the rush of endorphins this precipitated opened my mind (and stomach) up to all sorts of naughty foodie ideas for Sunday's breakfast.

(An aside: Isn't it simply fascinating how the mind of a foodie constantly seeks to delude itself by coming up with wilder and more colourful justifications to indulge? Just sayin')

Anyway, I've been craving Italian sweets ever since I watched the Cake Boss episodes on cannoli and lobster tale pastries. I looked for recommendations for Italian bakeries in Sydney, and the one with the most rave reviews by far seemed to be Pasticceria Papa, situated in Haberfield. Since I've always found it a bit creepy to do foodie trips on my own (since nothing says "desperate" quite like downing a whole slice of cheesecake by myself while no one's watching), I texted a friend to see if she was up for a early Sunday run, with Pasticceria Papa's famous ricotta cheesecake for breakfast as a reward afterwards. She said "yes"!

(This is the pal. She's my exercise companion, and also my partner in crime when it comes to weekend foodie trips :D)

We met up at 6:30am this morning at my place, and jogged a leisurely 6km to Haberfield, chatting the whole way with ever-increasing degrees of breathlessness. Hey, talking and running at the same time is hard! I'd spent the night before committing the route on Google Maps to memory, so we found the Pasticceria with minimal fuss.

 

First, though, we decided to check out a bakery that was nearby, since my Pal wanted to get some bread. This place had the most amazing looking loaves: 

  

My friend got a brioche and a little piggy head. She bought me a piggy head too :D I went back for a bread shark, so impressed was I by their mastery in dough-shaping.

Then it was off to Pasticceria Papa!

WOW, so many choices. I knew I was definitely ordering the ricotta cheesecake, having heard people all over the foodblogging scene wax lyrical about it. I also got a long black espresso. It's my caffeinated beverage of choice to accompany sweets.

  

My friend ordered an Italian doughnut and a latte:

 

I tried the doughnut and it was sweet, soft and fluffy, not at all like the gluggy, saccharin, oil-drenched ones you get from those horrible chain stores (Krispy Kreme, I'm a-lookin' at you). But the star was definitely the ricotta cheesecake. I've never had cheesecake like this before. The actual ricotta cheesecake part was sandwiched between two biscuity "crusts", so it was more like a pie. But, as the Bard said: a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. i.e. I loved it!

   

I then went back and ordered a ricotta cannoli, and what I thought was a chocolate cream-filled sfogliatella napoletana (aka. puff pastry shell in the same of a lobster tail), but turned out to be a brioche-y cream horn.

 

The cannoli was extraordinarily good. Perhaps even better than the ricotta cheesecake. OH YUM.

 

The cream horn was kinda blah. Didn't like the chocolate filling at all. I think it was some kind of custard. It tasted like it was made with chocolate powder, or flavouring even.

 

Pal and I both got some stuff to take home to our families. I paid $25 for my box of goodies! It was a real treasure chest, though :D

 

Since we couldn't run holding onto a huge box of Italian desserts, we were content to just walk back and discuss possible candidates for future Foodie Fun Runs (lol, that's what I'm calling these trips from now on). We're thinking Lebanese sweets next!

The walk back helped me to work up an appetite (again). I proceeded to go Yum Cha with my family!

I think it was most appropriate that I wore this shirt to both eating events, lol :P Lookee, it's a silver pig!

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend.Time to get back to the uni grind!

Pasticceria Papa

145 Ramsay Street
Haberfield NSW 2045
(02) 9798 6894

Website: http://www.pasticceriapapa.com.au/

Chinese Red Bean Flaky Pastries

I must apologise in advance for my woefully inadequate knowledge about Chinese pastries. In my defence, I come from the Northern part of China where dessert items such as the egg tarts one sees so often at Yum Cha, or the 'Wife Cake' (lao po bing/low paw bang) are not nearly as ubiquitous as they are in the Southern region. I don't even know the proper names for these flaky red bean pastries I made earlier today.

I feel that's the case with a lot of Chinese pastries that I eat, and that bothers me. It seems like the least I could do while I'm tearing something apart with my teeth is to know what it's called.

My decision to try my hand at making this particular pastry was actually borne out of necessity. You see, during a trip to Tokyo, Japan this last summer holidays, I went slightly nutso on the food front and purchased almost an entire suitcase-worth of edibles, including two packets of this amazing Hokkaido adzuki bean paste from an imagawayaki store in Shinjuku. At 1000 yen per packet, they're almost double the cost of any red bean paste you can get from Asian groceries in Sydney. And there was some drama transporting here in the first place, since they were deemed unsuitable for carry-on baggage by the Japanese custom officers, since they were classified as "liquids" @_@ Once we did get them re-packaged as check-in luggage, they...never turned up at baggage claim in Sydney.

Anyway, it turned out that someone else had taken the box with our bean paste, and we had their last-minute check-in luggage instead. Long story short (or as short as I can make it at this stage), we initiated a swap, and got our bean paste back. The whole point of this very long-winded tale is to underscore the shame that would come out of chucking the bean paste out past their expiry date after all the trouble we had of getting them here. And the date was getting perilously close. And hence, the red bean flaky pastries we have here.

As you would have seen from the second picture in this post, I made the pastries in a variety of shapes and forms. They were, in actual fact, made from the exact same dough of the exact same quantity, only rolled and folded differently. There are two sources I want to credit with te success of these pastries. Firstly, the recipe for the pastry dough provided by Suanne at Chow Times. Secondly, a post by SeaDragon at Corner Cafe, which detailed a precise step-by-step guide of how the pastry dough out to be prepared and rolled in order to get all the effects seen below. Thank you very much!

The recipe for the pastry dough called for lard, which may bother some people, but which I myself was fine with. This is, of course, coming from someone who was raised on jellified animal innards :D Don't be tempted to substitute the lard with butter. I have a suspicion that doing so will, firstly, cause the pastry to burn at the temperature it was baked (185°C or 360°F) because of the milk fats in butter (something I recently learned off George on Masterchef), and secondly, completely alter the taste and texture of the pastry. Although this may look like the Asian equivalent of puff pastry, the texture is closer to a shortbread than anything else. Without the buttery taste, of course. It's crumbly...and flaky! Lard definitely gives it a distinct taste. Try it for yourself before you make any judgements! 

And, because the dough itself isn't flavoured strongly, the taste of the red bean filling (or whatever filling you choose) really shines through.

The thing that I am particularly proud of for this pastry is the leopard skin pattern effect created by my 'special' eggwash. LOL, it was actually a mistake. I misread the proportions for the eggwash on SeaDragon's site and substituted one of the ingredients and, lo and behold, prettiness! :D