My first taste of Le Croissant

I was given a orange cake from Le Croissant (1204 Toorak Road, Camberwell) yesterday.  It was magnificent... I even loved the box and am going to keep it (repurposing it for cards/knick-knacks, because it is so pretty and a good size for storing things). Orange cake has a very strong orange peel flavour (which I like... it makes it seem less sweet... almost savoury).

I have heard about this shop and driven past it many times, but am yet to visit... This cake has made me want to visit even more.  I am not able to make cakes like that... so even and neatly decorated... I am definitely more of the rustic cook than the fancy pastry chef... This cake definitely had the WOW factor...

I have moved the candied orange on the cake (for ease of cutting)... it looked even better before.

The gateau for Lucy's Birthday

Ginny made an amazing gateau for Lucy's birthday on Saturday.  I have never seen a cake so tall and decadent.  It had flake on the top of chocolate icing with cream and fruit layered between the vanilla and chocolate cake.

The flavours were even more delicious the next day...

Home made ice cream sundaes

I enjoyed a week of luxury care at the Epworth Freemasons in East Melbourne.  Each morning friendly man with a bow tie knocked on our door to take our order for lunch, dinner and the following morning's breakfast.  This was no ordinary hospital food, mind you.  This was fine dining... better than some restaurants!  We were allowed to select entrée, main and dessert from a delicious menu.  I hopped in to turkey with cranberry sauce, roast beef sandwiches, steak, cheesecake (pictured below), while my better half tried out dumplings, chicken breast with coleslaw, chicken and avocado toasties (as shown below), pork belly and lamb rump.

The most exciting part of the meal was a tall glassful of home made ice cream with a long spoon!  We had 3 scoops of that day's flavours, including strawberry (with chunky strawberry pieces), chocolate (rich dark), mango (with sauce), raspberry sorbet, banana (reminded us of banana lolly flavour), as well as rum and raison (with cookie bits).

Chocolate chip mint whey whip

Today I tried the chocolate chip mint whey whip ice-cream and was pleasantly surprised.  The flavour is good. The presentation is unusual - all the choc chips are on the top rather than mixed in.  I assume this is due to the freezing process.

I was interested to see Leo's stocking a lot of single serve tubs of gourmet ice creams.  Is this a new trend?  The expensive gourmet brand single serve portion (rather than the family size tub)?  Will it help those with diabetes or does it just make you want to try more flavours?

Lemon Meringue Pie

My sugar levels have been a bit low, so I decided to try out a lemon meringue pie last night.  Mum used to make it with a cake base (rather than pastry).  I didn't get the lemon layer quite right, because it soaked into the cake rather than sitting separately on top of the cake and under the meringue (however I didn't wait for it to cool long enough either).

Needless to say, there were no complaints from the boss:

Sugar free ice cream is already on the shelves

Just when I thought I had come up with a great new business idea, I visit Leo's and find it already exists. Sugar free ice-cream is available in tiny tubs for $5.50 in burnt caramel, strawberry, banana and chocolate flavours:

Making my own ice cream

In the last week, I have tried to make ice cream twice. I have been disappointed with the results. I used a simple recipe from Yummly:

- thickened cream, whipped
- condensed milk, gently folded in (60% sugar)
- vanilla essence, added

Frozen overnight. The result was far too rich and hard. Just simply sweet frozen cream. Yuk.

The second time I used evaporated milk (12% sugar), but the whipped cream collapsed and the passion fruit I added sank to the bottom, so I whizzed it up with banana and milk to make a smoothie. However I do not really enjoy the flavour of full fat cream. It is too rich for my palate.

It works in a milkshake though!

Baclava Ice-Cream at Mesa Johnston Street Fitzroy

On Saturday night we had a delicious dinner at Mesa in Johnston Street Fitzroy.  For starters we enjoyed saganaki, soft bread, chargrilled beef rissoles, zucchini fritters and calamari.  For main I had the moussaka (divine) and for dessert, the boss and I ate baclava ice-cream (I'm watching my sugar these days).  It was excellent, but I realised how sweet honey is.  I haven't eaten honey for months and the sweetness hit me with surprising ferocity.  The nuts in pastry were also very rich, but the creamy ice-cream was delightful. Yum 9/10

Hall's Gap, Grampians Victoria

We ventured out to Coola's ice-creamery in Hall's Gap on the weekend.  They had home made cones and Norgen Vaas ice-cream. I tried the ginger (nice big chunks of ginger in a creamy ice-cream) and passionfruit (real pips and sauce swirled through the ice-cream).

My other half had boysenberry and mango.

 

 

Lunch at Wen & Ware in Ballarat was very nice.  Especially the passionfruit fizzy drink and cake!

 

 

 

Yum!

 

Noerdenfine, Torquay

We discovered a wonderful artisan ice-creamery on Bell Street Torquay over the weekend.  I tried Cherry Ripe (excellent fine chocolate pieces, coconut and real cherry) and passionfruit (great flavour with real passionfruit pips) in a nut-encrusted chocolate dipped waffle cone.  The other half tried jaffa and cherry ripe.  He was not sure if the jaffa was more gelato style (his taste buds were exhausted after a long weekend of very rich food).  He thought the cone was fantastic.

The shop is opposite the caravan park and I couldn't help wondering if a Scandanavian backpacker came to Torquay, fell in love and decided to open an ice-creamery so they could stay.

This was probably the ice cream highlight of my summer holiday.  We also visited Jock's in Middle Park and I was very impressed by his passionfruit flavour as well as the coconut lime.  Unfortunately I ate it too quickly to take a photo.