Easter’s Over – Cacao Easter Egg Masterclass

Greetings everyone 🙂 Hope you’ve all had an amazing Easter and have indulged in too much chocolate (if that’s even possible!). I didn’t have time to blog during Easter because my parents and sister (Win Win) was here to visit. But unfortunately, Win Win had to leave after a week, while my parents are still here for another 2 months yay!

Humpty Dumpty displayed used over 40 kgs of chocolate!

Even though Easter’s over now…I still wanted to blog about the Cacao Easter Egg Masterclass I was invited to by Cacao and Tink PR a week before Easter ~ It was like a mini reunion for us bloggers because most of us had attended the Pizza Competition at Grosvenor Hotel a couple of weeks before. At this event I was joined by Shellie, Cherrie, Ashley, Lianne, Peach Water, Brunch Addict Agnes and Amy. So good to see everyone again 🙂 Special thanks to Lianne for letting me use some of her photos xox

The class was held at the Cacao store in St Kilda, which is actually their first store and everything use to made here until the demand outgrew the capacity ~ I’ve driven past this store many times but never visited and was surprised to see that they did not have their delicious macarons and chocolates, but also a range of cakes. I’m definitely going to come back and try them sometime soon.

Dark Hot Chocolate

Cacao was very generous and offered us a drink to start the night ~ After seeing photos of the ice-cream chocolate Shellie and Cherrie had, I was so tempted to get it. But it was getting a bit chilly that night so decided to go for the dark hot chocolate instead, it was deep, rich and smooth everything I imagined ~

Canapes

They were also very thoughtful and provided us with some savoury canapes such as mini quiches and mini salmon rolls 🙂 Great as most of us had gone straight from work and hadn’t had the chance to grab dinner, while I had been working from home and grazing on snacks all day ~

Photo Credit: Lianne (Food Made With Love)

Julia then introduced us to Tim Clark one of the co-owners and creator of Cacao Fine Chocolates along with Laurent Meric. I was quite flattered when Tim actually recognised me as I have visited the Cacao store in Doncaster before and had tagged him in my Instagram posts ~ he immediately said “You have a sweet tooth don’t you?” LOL how awkward…everyone knows!

Tim Clark

We were then led into the kitchen where it had a large marble bench, Tim explained that we were going to make a very special Easter egg that had a tiny sphere inside that was filled with salted caramel and chocolate. Even thinking about it makes my mouth water 😀

Spread spread spread ~

First things first, tempering the chocolate which it an incredible shine and also that ‘crack’ sound when breaking into it. To temper the chocolate Tim melts the chocolate, then spreads it over the marble bench top and uses a bench scrapper to push it back into the middle and then spreads it out again.

Swish Swish Swish

He repeats this a couple of times until the chocolate cools to around 28 degrees. Tim said the best way to check this is with your lip as it is around body temperature or with a thermometer if doing this at home 🙂

Easter egg moulds & salted caramel crystals

Once the chocolate has been tempered it is now ready for use and can be used to make the egg shells AKA molding. Note it’s important to polish the molds with some cotton pads before using them to ensure it gives a shine to the eggs shells. Using a ladle fill the molds to the brim and then using one swift move tip it over and scrap it clean with the pastry scraper.

Photo Credit: Lianne (Food Made With Love)

Before it sets, we sprinkled the Salted Caramel crystals Tim had previous made for us ~ so pretty like brown diamonds hehe

Photo Credit: Lianne (Food Made With Love)

Now that the shells are done, we had to make the salted caramel chocolate spread that will be used to fill the chocolate spheres also going into the Easter Eggs. I have bought this salted caramel spread before and still have a jar at home, it is so delicious and addictive, I’m warn you not to make it unless you have very good self control. I clearly don’t hahhaa 😛 If you’d like the recipe let me know and I’ll email it to you ~ Tim said it’s ok to share if not I will try and blog about it soon ~

Photo Credit: Lianne (Food Made With Love)

Once the spread was made it was time to pipe them into the pre-made chocolate spheres, we first filled it with salted caramel, then topped it with melted chocolate then closed them together. This keeps getting better!

LOL at Iron Chef Shellie 😀

Photo Credit: Lianne (Food Made With Love)

Tim had placed our Easter eggs into the fridge to help them chill and set, but he said that ideally it should be left in room temperature for 24 hours to allow it to set naturally to create the shiniest finish ~

Rub Rub Rub 🙂

Once the Easter eggs were removed from the molds, we placed one of those salted caramel spheres and placed it in the middle of one shell. Then this step surprised me, I had always wanted to know how the egg shells stuck together, and it’s actually done by placing a baking sheet into the oven and warming it. Then gently rub the egg shells onto the warm baking sheet and as the edges have slightly melted, gently place on shell on top of the other. And if all works well…they stick together 😀

Assembling the Easter Eggs

There you go! That’s our finished product! Milk Chocolate Easter egg with a secret salted caramel surprise! I am so proud of us 😀 Team work! Also I am never ever going to take an Easter egg for granted ever again! It’s a long process and requires a lot of skill, which I don’t have yet 😀 But I have promised myself that I am going to practice and next year I am going to make my own Easter eggs to give out to my family and friends!

Finished product

Unfortunately, I don’t think you can buy this Easter egg anymore since but you can still buy Cacao’s other chocolate goodies and if you haven’t tried their macarons, you definitely have to go try! The pisatchio flavour is my favourite.

Cacao’s macaronsl

I would like to thank Tim and everyone else at Cacao as well at Julia for inviting me to such an interesting, fun and chocolate-filled class 🙂

Daisy@Nevertoosweet attended this event as a guest of Cacao Fine Chocolates and Patisserie and TinkPR

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Macaron Maddness – Ladurée VS Pierre Hermé

I think it would be a crime if I went to Paris and didn’t try the macarons from Ladurée and Pierre Hermé 😀 I have heard so much about these two patisseries and even though I have tried macarons from Laduree quite a few times as they recently opened in Sydney and Hong Kong. It’s the first time I tried macarons from Pierre Hermé so excited! Just wanted to do a little comparison between the two macarons masters 🙂

Laduree in Paris

Starting with Ladurée, I’ve had their macarons from their store in New York, Sydney and also Hong Kong. Even though their macarons are quite delicious, I found there to be inconsistencies with the texture of their macarons.

Laduree macarons from NYC

Laduree from NYC

Like the macarons, I had in New York to be more on the softer side, with a softer shell and the ganache in the middle was also creamier. I really enjoyed these macarons from the Laduree in NYC, I think they’re the best ones I’ve had even better than Paris 😦

Laduree macarons from NYC

I was very excited when Laduree opened in Sydney and when I found the chance to visit I was over the moon 🙂 But then I realised the macarons were very expensive $3.2 take away and $4 dine in wow…

Laduree prices in Sydney

But then I found these macarons in Sydney to have a much tougher texture and very very chewy. I have heard that this may be because, they freeze the macarons and import them from Switzerland. I’m not sure if this will change the consistency, but I wasn’t too impressed with them. Even though flavours were fantastic especially their salted caramel and pistachio macaron.

Laduree in Sydney

I’m not sure if this will change the consistency, but I wasn’t too impressed with them. Even though flavours were still good especially their salted caramel and pistachio macaron. They are my all time favourite!

Laduree macarons from Sydney

I have heard from HK Epicurus that only the macarons in the Paris Laduree is actually made there, the rest are made from a factory in Switzerland and both HK Epicurus and Tina both agreed that their macarons are best in Paris. So I was quite excited to finally get to try the ‘real’ deal 😛 I actually didn’t get to try that many Laduree macarons this time, as I was going around too many patisseries hahaha but I did get to try a few when I visited their Laduree restaurant on Champs-Élysées.

Laduree macarons from Paris

My sisters and I tried these macarons as part of the Brunch set we had there, which I will blog about another time 🙂 We could choose 3 macarons of our liking, so we got the salted caramel, chocolate and dark chocolate flavour. I immediately found a difference once again in the texture in the macarons, they were definitely softer and more delicate than the ones I got in both Sydney and HK. But they were slightly firmer than the ones in New York. In terms of flavours they were slightly sweeter and probably the best, I really liked their salted caramel it was sweet, salty and just heavenly! I suspect its the use of the French butter 😛 There wasn’t a vast difference between the chocolate and dark chocolate macaron, except one tasted slightly more bitter.

Pierre Herme in Paris

Now moving onto Pierre Hermé macarons, there are quite a few Pierre Hermé stores around Paris, but I failed and only got to their store in the Galaries Lafayette deparment store on our second last day. I was slightly disappointed as it was a rather small store with only macarons and other dry packaged goods such as chocolates.

Pierre Herme macarons

From memory I think Pierre Hermé had a more diverse range of flavours for their macarons and ones that I found most interesting was the chocolate and foie gras 😛 Yup I tried it and I’m not sure whether I like it or not lol it had a rich chocolate ganahe but then the foie gras flavour. The rest of the macarons I chose more traditional flavors such as dark chocolate, salted caramel, rose water and of course pistachio 🙂

I found flavours of the ganache simply too hard to resist, once again just like the macaron shell they had the perfect consistency and also balance of flavours. I think it is safe to declare ‘Pierre Hermé’ makes the best macarons I have tasted! Now I just wish I could take a whole cargo ship full of them back with me…and I really wished that they would last longer so Mr Bao could try 😦 Oh wells… I guess that’s just a good excuse and reason to go back to Paris don’t you like?

Pierre Herme Macarons

Clearly in this battle ‘Pierre Hermé’ has won just everything about them size, texture and flavour was all spot on! While Laduree had some good flavours, overall, I was quite disappointed by the ones I have had in Sydney and Paris and surprisingly found the ones in New York to be better. Now my lovely Readers I would like to ask have you tried Laduree and Pierre Hermé before? Which one do you like more? 🙂

Laduree 
75 Champs-Élysées 75008 Paris, France
PH: +33 1 40 75 08 75

Galeries Lafayette
40 boulevard Haussmann 75009 Paris
PH: +33 (0)1 43 54 47 77

Macaron Class – The Olive Tree Cooking School + Giveaway *Winner Announced*

Mr Bao infuriates me! Why you ask? It’s because he’s always complaining that he’s ‘baked out’ that I bake too much and too frequently and he’s always forced to eat it… then I’ll get annoyed and give all my baked goodies to friends and colleagues who actually appreciate it. But then he’ll say ‘hey…how come I don’t get any cookies…you’re not even going to leave me one slice?’ ARGH I can never win 😛 But there is one thing that he likes…and he’s always going on about how it’ll be wonderful if I could make them at home… and that’s MACARONS!

Yup the very much loved French little meringue biscuits the one and only ‘macaron’! I’m gonna accuse him of being a ‘trend follower’ because I was the one who introduced him to macarons (he’ll argue and say he introduced me instead). It started last year when I bought him La Belle Miette macarons, then it was La Maison Du Chocolat in HK and Laduree in New York. We have gone on bit of search for the best macarons 🙂 I have done a lot of research and have read lots of books, blogs and magazines about making macarons at home…but I never had the courage…there are quite a few components and steps to make them…and if you make a mistake during one of steps, there really is no turning back. Anyhow, back in April this year, I found a really good Living Social voucher which offered a 4 hour macaron class at The Olive Tree Cooking School for only $59 per person. I immediately bought two vouchers and decided to bring Mr Bao with me, so he will also know how DIFFICULT it was to make them at home! Even though we bought the tickets in April, because of the popularity of the macaron classes and with the voucher, classes were booked out till August lol so I kind of forgot about the coupons until a week before and made sure Mr Bao took the day off work 🙂 The Olive Tree Cooking School is situated in Frankston, a coastal suburb of Melbourne, for most people who do not live in this area, it’ll probably be at least an hour long drive. I’m quite familiar with the area, because Dad use to take me fishing here ~ so even though it was bit of a drive there Mr Bao and I didn’t really mind. We already made plans to walk along the beach and eat at the local Italian restaurant there after the class hehe Our class started at 10am, so we quickly made breakfast at home and then rushed into our car, traffic was quite good so we got there early at around 9:40am. We drove past the cooking school once, as its on the main Nepean Hwy, so just keep an eye out, if you’re coming from Frankston city centre, Olive Tree cooking school will be on your left and will have white walls. We were a bit surprised to find that the cooking school also doubled us as a lovely double storey house, we saw the front door but wasn’t sure how to get in, then we were greeted by the CUTEST dog I have seen! He was like this huge white ball of fluff hehe ~ His name is Bear a Samui! I really wanted to take him home! He didn’t bark at us or anything, very quickly, a lovely man wearing a chef’s jacket came over and opened the door.

Thanks Garry for sending me this picture 🙂

That is Garry Cowled ~ who is the instructor for the day, he has over 40 years of experience working as a chef and teaching at TAFE and other food related businesses.

Hi Garry 🙂

Because we were a bit early, I had the chance to talk to Garry one on one, I even told him about my food blog and asked if he would mind if I took photos and maybe did a post about it. Garry was so pleasant about it all and said as many photos and questions I like 😀 As you can see, Garry has also won many awards, most notably the Culinary Olympics in Germany where he participated and cooked on behalf of the Australian team. Even with all this experience Garry remains one of the most down to earth Chef I have met 😀 he is so passionate about cooking and also teaching others how to cook. Very quickly the other student arrived as well, poor Mr Bao was the only guy in the class hehe, Garry is so generous that he has given me permission to share his macaron recipe ~ I will be sharing the recipe as well as other bits and parts of the lesson in this post .

Recipe – Salted Caramel Macarons from The Olive Tree Cooking School  Ingredients
Macaron Shell  – Italian method
200 grams almond meal
200 grams pure icing sugar
160 grams aged egg white (2 x 80 grams, approximately 4 eggs)
200 grams caster sugar or granulated sugar
50 mls water
Gel or powder colour for macaron shells

Tips 
– Almond meal can be moist to try it out, spread out on a baking tray for several hours
– To age egg whites, separate the day before and leave on the bench covered to reduce moisture in egg whites. This will help them whip much better

Method – Macaron Shell
1) If egg whites have been in the refrigerator, leave out until room temperature.

2) Place almond meal and icing sugar into a food processor and pulse until incorporated be careful not to over mix as oils from almonds may make mixture clump together.
3) Pass almond and icing sugar through a drum sieve and mix thoroughly with 80 grams egg white, until it becomes a paste and leave to one side.

4) Place the water in a small stainless steel saucepan and add sugar. Start boiling process washing the sides of the saucepan with a pastry brush but NEVER stir, as this will create sugar crystals forming on the size of the pot. In the mean time, place the other 80 gram of egg whites into an electric mixer with the whisk attachment. You can also add the colour to your macarons at this step with the sugar syrup. Using a sugar thermometer to monitor the sugar syrup once it is at 110 °C, turn the electric mixer on and whisk egg whites until stiff peaks.

5) When the sugar syrup reaches 118°C, quickly dip the saucepan into cold water to remove latent heat Pour in a gentle stream into the egg whits without hitting the whisk.

7) Continue whisking until just cool – approximately 7-8 minutes.

8) Fold the meringue into the almond mixture in a couple of additions. The amount of folding will depend how high you want your macarons to rise. They more you beat the more your macarons will rise. The less you beat the mix the lower the rise. It would be approximately 25 to 30 folds until the mixture is glossy and will run off the spatula or run back into itself.

9) Using a 1cm (size 10) piping tube, pipe onto baking paper lined or Silpak and pipe to the size of a twenty cent coin (Aussie dollar :P)

Our macarons don’t look too bad!

10) Using some force bang the tray against the kitchen bench top to flatten macarons shells and leave until touch dry. May take longer in humid weather.

11) Preheat oven to 135°C fan forced, bake for 16 minutes, test before turning the oven off by gently touching and if the macarons can be gently removed from the baking paper, if still soft and sticky return back to over for an extra 2 to 3 minutes.

12) Cool on trays before lifting off and pairing them ready to be filled.

Tip
– Piping the macaron shells is probably the most difficult, try not to apply too much pressure
– Make sure the shells are touch dry before they are baked to avoid cracking
– Every oven is different, you may need to change the temperature to bake the macaron shells

Salted Caramel Ganache
150ml thickened cream
25 grams Copha
125 grams sugar
40mls water
250grams milk chocolate – finely chopped
80grams unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon fine salt

Method

1) Place the copha and cream into a small pot and place on the heat to boil.
2) Pour the water into another small pot. Pour the sugar over and place on the heat, boiling the sugar to caramel stage. For maximum flavour heat sugar until it is a golden brown but be careful not to burn.
3) Gently pour the boiling cream onto the caramel, being extremely careful as it will foam very quickly. Mix together.
4) Pour the hot caramel over the chocolate and stand for one minute before mixing thoroughly with a wooden spoon.

5) When the caramel chocolate mixture has cooled blend in the softened butter and salt with a wooden spoon or a stick blender.
6) Cool thoroughly before beating on a mixer with a beater attachment until creamy and glossy.

Assemble macaron
1) Once salted caramel ganache is cool and pliable, it can be transferred into a clean piping bag once again with a 1cm (size 10) nozzle.

2) Pair and line the macaron shells to make it easier to pipe the filling, put a nice dollop in the middle of one shell and very gently place the other shell on top and twist together.

Tip
– Do not forcefully push the two macaron shells together as it can break the shell or too much filling will come out the sides
– Try not to under fill or over fill, you want enough filling to see and taste but not too much that makes the macarons sickly sweet.

Voilà! Salted Caramel Macarons!

Sorry I was too busy eating the Salted Caramel Macarons so this is actually a picture of the Chocolate Peanut Butter macarons my bad! 😛

Mr Bao and I had a BLAST at The Olive Tree Cooking School 🙂 We both thoroughly enjoyed the macaron class and from Mr Bao’s smile on his face…I think he was very happy and satisfied with his first ever batch of macarons! Garry was a fantastic teacher he was down-to-earth, friendly and very experienced. I also liked his casual approach to making these delicate meringue biscuits, he made me feel confident that I can also make these macarons when I get home and all ingredients he used were easily attainable at the supermarket.

All students were given a $20 discount next time we booked a cooking class and because I enjoyed this class so MUCH I have decided to give away both Mr Bao and my voucher to ONE lucky reader 🙂 So you can also book a class and learn how to make macarons!!! Macaron classes currently run on Monday nights and Saturday morning, but Garry said he is happy to run more classes if there is high demand and also provide a discount for groups of more than 6 people 😀

To enter this little giveaway:
– Leave a comment and tell me if you’ve tried making macarons at home before and was it a success? 🙂
– Giveaway ends on the 31st of October
– You may reenter daily, one entry a day
– Winner will be chosen by random.org and announced on this blog and notified via email
– Open only to Victorian residents (Sorry!)

The winner 🙂 

And the WINNER IS Jenny from Ichigo Shortcake 🙂 YAY! Congrats!

Good luck everyone ~ and hope you will also try making macarons at home soon! It can be quite difficult the first time but I think with some practice we can all be macaron masters 🙂

The Olive Tree Cooking School
623 Nepean Highway
Frankston South VIC
Australia
Garry Cowled
Phone. 03 9708 8110
Mobile. 0427 966 007
mail@olivetreecookingschool.com.au

This is not a sponsored post, this is a personal giveway to my Readers:)

Daisy and Mr Bao @Nevertoosweet personally paid and attended this macaron class 

Dilmah Charitea – Thank you Not Quite Nigella

Before I start with today’s post, I would like to say a HUGE thank you to Lorraine from Not Quite Nigella, for giving me two tickets to the invite only – Dilmah Charitea event that happened a couple of weeks ago. I am so sorry for blogging it so late, work has simply been crazy and I’m just finding it hard to catch up with everything 🙂

A little background about how I won tickets :P, I saw on NQN’s blog that she had an wonderful giveaway and 2 lucky readers were to win 2 tickets to the exclusive Dilmah Charitea, held at the Botanical Gardens on the 3rd of September ~ I was so persistent hehe leaving comments everyday, Sorry Lorraine if I spammed you 🙂 but I really wanted to go because for one I love high teas and have been itching to go and two I think it’s for a great cause!

Eventually, a late Saturday night, I checked my email and got an email from the PR company who organised this event, letting me know I had won tickets to Dilmah’s Charitea and it was going to be held on the following Monday! OMG I was freaking out…I had hurt my foot and the doctor had put me on bed rest…but I really really REALLY wanted to go! So… against Mr Bao’s wishes and my doctors wishes 😛 I took the afternoon off and went! Don’t worry all is well, I made sure I wasn’t walking much and sat down once we got there 🙂

Gosh I feel so silly, but even though I’ve lived in Melbourne all my life, this was actually the first time I had visited The Botanical Gardens, but trust me it will NOT be the last time~ it’s so pretty inside, with the lake and the green grass and black swans hehe. Not sure when but I have told Mr Bao we must have a picnic here when it’s warm enough! Any one else who would like to come?

The event was held at the function room inside the Botanical Gardens ‘The Terrence’, a small yet spacious ball room ~ with nicely decorated tables I was then also very lucky to have found out before attending that Adrian from Food Rehab, was going to be there as well! I was once again very lucky and even more excited, because I had been following Adrian’s blog for a long time, and had wanted to meet him in person ~ he was so kind to have saved Mr Bao and I seats.

Soon after we sat down a girl walked up to me and asked if I was ‘Daisy from Never Too Sweet’. I was a little shocked at first but then quickly realized it was Jenny from Ichigo Shortcake! Turns out she was the other lucky Reader! You all need to go hop over to Jenny’s blog, her photos are always perfect and reviews are fair and honest 😉 Check out her post about the Dilmah Charitea event too ~

Source: Peter Kuruvita

Patrick Kuruvita acclaimed restaurateur and chef, was the host of this event. and started explaining his experience with the Merrill J Fernando (MJF) charity. He was so sweet and friendly to everyone ~ Then very quietly the waitresses came over and put two 3 tier stands filled full of savouries in front of us.

There were generous servings of everything, starting from the bottom there were a selection of sandwiches. Then in the middle layer it was mini pies, sausage rolls and quiches then to the top was a little brioche piece with duck breast.

Between Ricky and I, we tried most things, and everything was really fresh especially the sandwiches which is hard to find with high teas, as they are usually premade.

The mini pies and sausage rolls were also nice but we much preferred the sandwiches. The duck brioche was lovely too but we felt that the duck was a little underseasoned.

It was then followed by Mr Merrill J Fernando himself giving a short speech, telling us about how founded Dilmah tea and also the charities he has help fund.

Did you know Dilmah is the first company to sell Single Origin Ceylon tea, I have always known Dilmah tea for obviously their tea, but never did I know how sustainable and ethical they were. Mr Dilmah was happy to buy tea leaves from local Sri Lankan tea growers at a higher price, if this meant that the tea was grown ethically and no one is exploited.

It really touched me to see and hear the different types of charities Dilmah does and the number of people it has helped ~ This means, when you drink Dilmah tea you are not helping yourself, because tea had lots of antioxidants. But you are also helping the community that the tea came from 🙂 this is definitely a WIN WIN situation ~

Shortly after the video it was time for the most important part of high tea. The scones and SWEETS ~ there were nice plump and slightly golden brown scones on the bottom tier, followed by chocolate coated strawberries, miniature pastries and chocolate truffles.

Now high tea would be high tea without scones, and scones wouldn’t be complete without jam and cream! I don’t really like cream…but when I have scones…I always slather a huge slab on hehe ~ the scones were light and fluffy, the strawberry jam was also delicious, but I don’t think it was Chantilly cream it was just whipped cream.

I was a greedy little piggy and got to try one of everything hehe yay! Mr Bao didn’t really eat much he was more interested in the savoury lol the mini lemon curd tart was nice but I think I’ve seen it before at some cafes, the chocolate coated strawberry and chocolate truffles were rich and sweet. The macaron was surprisingly soft but Mr Bao liked the strawberry filling ~

But the Orange and Almond baklava DEFINITELY stole the spot light! It was SO delicious! I loved the orange syrup that was used and the soft crunch the almond gave! I think one of the best baklavas I’ve had lately 😀 No surprise it was the winner.

Two hours flew by us and very quickly the event ended, as we walked out the door, we were both given a gift bag full of Dilmah tea and gifts. Dilmah is so generous, gosh I felt bad, not only did we go as guests, but also got to take home such a packed bag full of gifts. I did manage to share some of the Dilmah tea with my friends and colleagues ~

The Dilmah Charitea event is definitely going to be one that I will never forget, meeting the Fernando family, Peter Kuruvita, Adrian and Jenny, it’ll be perfect if Lorraine was there too. It was also very eye-opening to learn so much about the history of ceylon tea the wonderful things the Dilmah does to help those in need.

Daisy and Mr Bao @ Never Too Sweet attended the Dilmah Chartea event as guests of Dilmah and Not Quite Nigella 

Sunday Bliss – Sweet Crumble

I just realised I have been posting more and more recipes on my blog and the recipe page is slowly growing in size  ~ but I think it’s time to do a review and not any review ~  a review of a newish bakery I found in Malvern – Sweet Crumble.

Sweet Crumble opened up in March this year and since finding out about it, I have been meaning to visit…but never got around to it~  so finally on Sunday, Mr Bao and I had brunch at home then slowly made our way there. I was really interested to find out from an Instagrammer  that some of their cupcakes were kosher dairy free so good for those who are dairy intolerant or vegan 🙂

We were so lucky that we found parking right across Sweet Crumble on the usually busy Glenferrie road. I immediately smiled seeing the sign ‘Sweet Crumble’ it reminds me so much of Magnolia Bakery in NYC ~Then when I walked it, I was totally grinning from ear to ear, because I knew it was going to be a blissful afternoon  ~ it’s so pretty inside, with vintage chairs, tables and all the glass jars filled with cookies and lollies.

Then we were confronted by this huge cabinet full of cupcakes, macarons, cookies, biscotti, cakes and more. I had to stand in front of it for a good minute absorbing everything that was in front of me before I could decide hahaha Mr Bao didn’t care what we ordered, he just wanted a Chai Latte Iced Frappe and that was it ~ gosh I love eating out with this guy hahaha he lets me choose everything 😛

Red velvet cupcake dairy free $3.5AUD

Even though there were lots of different cupcakes, I immediately knew I wanted to try the red velvet cupcake ~ just like my mocha, I always get that at cupcake bakeries to me it’s like the benchmark if their red velvets are good, the other cupcakes are usually good too hehe. The had the normal sized cupcake or the smaller size but not exactly mini which was a dollar cheaper, it may shock you but I actually chose the smaller cupcake 😛 so then I could order more desserts and try other things hehe ~ Unfortunately, though neither of us liked the red velvet cupcake here at Sweet Crumble, the cake itself was a little dry and too dense. But the most disappointing would have to be the frosting, because this is a dairy free red velvet, it wasn’t the traditional cream cheesecheese frosting, instead it was a sweet yet slightly rubbery icing, I think they must have used vegetable shortening to imitate the butter cream texture.

Macarons $2.5AUD each (Left coconut, right espresso)

Next up was the macarons ~ they had quite a few flavours, if I could I would order them all hehe 😛 but we had a dinner date that night, so we had to control. I wanted something out of the ordinary so I chose the coconut and Mr Bao needed a coffee-fix and ordered the espresso flavour. Starting with the coconut macaron it had a nice shell but was slightly crunchy but it tasted lovely, with a strong hit of coconut yummmmm. Then Mr Bao’s espresso flavoured macaron was just as good with a genuine coffee flavour and not that artificial flavouring.

Passion fruit cheesecake with salted caramel $6.5 AUD

You didn’t think I’d be done right hahaha so I went back and ordered a passion fruit cheesecake with salted caramel base, Mr Bao loved this cheesecake, saying it was smooth and velvety. I really liked it to, but did think the passion fruit was a little too sour and tangy compared to the cheesecake ~ but still very delicious!

Chai Latte Frappe $6AUD

Mr Bao was really intrigued by the flavour hehe ~ he really liked it describing it as refreshing with a light chai flaovur and very milky, I had a sip and thought it was quite nice too but the flavours weren’t very strong and think it would’ve been better if there was less milk hehe

Toffee Caramel Frappe $6AUD

I’ve always liked caramel but lately, I can’t get enough of it hehe ~ just like Mr Bao’s Chai Latte, flavours were subtle and tasted very much like plain milk with hints of caramel ~ it was definitely refreshing especially after eating some desserts, but being a sugar freak hehe I think it needed to be sweeter hehe

Peppermint Tea $3.5AUD

I think Mr Bao had too much dessert ~ and needed to order a peppermint tea to refresh his palate hahaha 😛 the tea bags are actually from Henry London, which I have heard of, however, haven’t had the chance to try their teas. It was refreshing with a strong peppermint flavour, but think we are use to and prefer T2’s tea instead.

Sweet Crumble also sells and stocks a range of goodies ~ such as their homemade honeycomb, biscotti, cookies and also mini Bonne Maman jam jars ~ they are sooooooooooo SUPER cute I couldn’t help but get them hehe ~ the honeycomb is so delicious! Crunchy, sweet and just yum 😀

Mr Bao and I sure had a blissful afternoon here at Sweet Crumble ~ There were some hit and misses, but as a whole it’s a definitely a great place to have afternoon tea with friends or grab desserts. A great addition to the dessert scene in Melbourne hehe hope you all have a blissful weekend too 🙂