http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/sour-cream-chocolate-cake-2/Detail.aspx

It makes a huge batch. I got 16 full sized cupcakes and 24 mini cupcakes out of it!

And the second purpose of my blog post, is to say – now I know why you have to use castor sugar if it says castor sugar! I made the cupcakes two days ago, and today reaching for one of them, I can see little white speckles all over them! On closer inspection, it is undissolved sugar! The recipe doesn’t say castor sugar, and since castor costs more than normal sugar I used normal….. learnt my lesson! No impact on taste or the inside though.

I find this case’s texture excellent for shaping, and making children’s cakes, it is very sturdy but still soft and crumby. Hope you find it useful!

Beneath the stained glass arched entrance is a clear glass display of beautiful pieces of fine cake art.  It is soooo hard to choose from – tiramisus, mousse cake slices, gigantic macarons sandwiched with ganache, and their signature three texture chocolate mousse cake to name but a few..

They also have a good selection of family sized cakes, all too delicious to eat – topped with gorgeous strawberries, macarons and other jewels of adornment.   The style is less crazy, definitely not plain classic, each one a beautiful work of art that seems too good to ruin by eating.

What paticceria in Sydney would dare not offer a macaron. These chubby cuties sandwiched generously in ganache and irresstible in their pastel beauty.

I’d say that once word of this places gets around, there certainly won’t be many cakes for FoodieChat to photograph!  And the lady behind the counter was so nice, urging me to take piccies – unlike an unnamed new bakery in the Strand which haughtily said “we will be having professional photographers do our publicity”. Obviously unaware of the power of you guys, my readers!

If you can’t eat cake all the time, and let’s face it, breakfast is definitely offlimits, they also offer a selection of danishes, croissants and banana bread. OK, so still cake like, but everyone eats these

If you have time to eat in, definitely definitely try their cafe menu.  The paninis and sandwiches are gorgeous, true to their Italian style, and very good value at $14 each.  Oh, and there’s also the amazing antipasti too.  I can definitely see this place becoming one of my regulars.  But maybe i shall have to force myself to take the stairs each time, just to make myself deserve that last bite of cake  Marie Antoinette would certainly feel at home here!

Just in time for the Sydney International Food Festival, Bacco is also offering high tea for $45 per person.

www.bacco.com.au

Located on the corner of the main drag of the pedestrian part of Chinatown (corner of Liverpool and Harbour streets), next to Mamak, it is famous for its taro pearls.  Syrupy bases of shaved ice are topped with all manner of asian specialiaties including Azuki beans, mung beans, lotus seeds, tapioca pearls – the combinations are endless, and you can also have silken tofu based desserts too.  And both can be served hot or cold.

The famous taro pearls are also served with sweet potato pearls.  Steamed taro/sweet potato is rolled with glutinous rice flour and served in syrup.  I don’t know if it was my serve, or because of the hot business on that day, but my pearls were slightly too chewy and not sweet enough.

Shaved ice, pearls, beans, and the taro/sweet potato pearls with azuki beans peaking at the back – a refreshing summer’s treat. And bowls so huge – don’t eat lunch first, as it is a meal in itself!

This is the signature herbal dessert.  Don’t be put off by the “herbal” description.  Have you ever had grass jelly? It’s like that.

A bed of very finely shaved ice – it’s so fine it’s like snow! It’s covered with grass jelly at the pearls.  Extra toppings are $0.60 each. And costs $5.50 itself.  I was ssooooooo full after eating this after my lunch.  I’ll know next time to share or go on an empty stomach!  can’t wait to see what’s next in Haymarket!

Bring on the summer!!!  http://www.meetfresh.net/

Inside the store, it’s even cuter, with pink cupboards, pink and brown checkered floor and rows and rows of perfect cupcakes behind glass display cabinets. (I didn’t notice this lovey dovey couple on the left until I got home, the guy blended so well with the decor ).  The restaurant has a row of benches where you can eat it (it costs more though) and enjoy a coffee.

All the treats from the book are on display here.  The most popular is the red velvet, and of course the traditional vanilla cupcake, each is adorned with a lick of pastel cream.  New flavour of the day was the earl grey tea flavour.

These mounds of calories and goodness were in fact rocky roads, rather than rocky road topped cupcakes as I had imagined.

Apart from the cupcakes, Hummingbird Bakery also has large cakes. Sadly, I didn’t realise you could buy these by the slice, until too late

Despite the fact that I was still full from lunch, I decided I did not want to carry around a cupcake whilst shopping. So I had to eat one there. Eating in costs just slightly more – but at least it allowed me to dissect what’s so good about these cupcakes After much agonising deliberation, I decided on a chocolate cupcake for something different, swathed in a gorgeous lemon coloured vanilla frosting.

The cake to icing ratio was less pleasing to me than to the traditional American audience (ie 50% cupcake 50% ‘frosting’!), however the cake was deliciously moist without being sickly sweet, and the icing wasn’t grainy at all, and quite buttery.

I highly highly recommend the book, the cupcake recipe does in fact have sooo little butter, which means that you can eat them relatively guilt free

Buy the book from Amazon here

THe cut through the middle test:  Fair distribution of colour, but still a bit too much pink.  Not burnt on the inside.

Crumb was okay and the icing was fairly even (on this slice at least hahaha), but still dry for my liking   Big fail!   I concluded:  It’s not me, it’s not the contestants, it’s the word “moderate” to describe the oven temperature.  Everyone’s oven is different. Whilst moderate generally means 180 degrees, my oven is fan forced so I should have turned it down 10 degrees.  Who knows what the CWA oven is like?  So “moderate’ could have meant a bit range of potential fails    Oh well… better luck next time.

Link to the recipes:

http://www.cwaofnsw.org.au/newsEvents/generalNews.do?newsId=3368

Step 5: I lined two tart tins with baking paper but for the traditional way, just simmer off some of the liquid until the caramel is thicker, then lay a whole sheet of puff pastry on top and put it in the oven.  For my way, lay the apples nicely in a spiral, then simmer the sauce until it’s thicker, and then pour over the apples.  Lay the pastry on top.  Step 6: Bake in the oven until puffed and the edges are very brown and the sauce is caramelised.

Final step: carefully invert onto a plate and serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Eat immediately whilst still warm and whilst the pastry is crispy.  Cooked and eaten in 40 minutes

At the time it was chilling, I made the lemon curd. It didn’t make any difference to substitute half the butter for margarine. but you do need the full 3 lemons. It seems like alot but it’s not.  I had to add over 4 times the amount of cornflour though, to thicken it to spreading consistency.

As I chilled the curd in the fridge and let the tart case cool, I whipped the egg whites. I used a round tip nozzle to pipe it onto the pie.

So here’s the final product out of the oven.

So it’s a bit uneven coloured because of my grill. I’m sure if I had a blowtorch though it would have been fine.

Next time I might add more butter into the pastry as it was a bit hard, but overall, quite okay for a first attempt.  but there’s hundreds more recipes to try as well from that book! It’s an essential for your technical cooking collection as well as just to turn through with a cup of chocolat chaud!

OK so Masterchef has finished, all this free time now without TV to watch- what better to do than to test out the recipes! First up, the Aria chocolate tart.  I didn’t bother with the macarons, the sorbet or the chocolate glacage slick, but the tart seemed appealing enough.  So.. as you can see, my first attempt wasn’t exactly Masterchef quality, but it was ssooooo nice.  I made the mistake of lifting it off the tray before it had set, so I disturbed the top setting. And also you can see where I patched up the pastry which actually was quite crumbly. You do need to flour the board well to roll.

Definitely key tips are to let the pastry rest in the tin. And also, I halved the dough recipe and made one third of the filling recipe, which was enough for one tart and three mini tarts.  Cut with a heated knife to get a good edge.  Delicious strawberries! The recipe is found here: http://www.masterchef.com.au/aria-chocolate-tart.htm

Every year for the Sydney Festival, I like to try one of the Fast Festival Feasts where you get a main course and a glass of wine for $25.  This year, Wildfire, at the Overseas Passenger Terminal was the choice; where we had kingfish, with one scallop tortellini and romesco sauce. Great sauce, but sadly I think the fish had seen better days and was ready before our 6pm arrival.  Nevermind, we moved onto dessert.  A very interesting looking dessert menu, we decided upon the doughnut box, and the nougatine souffle, both $18.  The donut box was in fact 6 mini donut holes, which come with 3 test tubes and pipettes of sauce – raspberry, white chocolate, and chocolate, which you squeeze and inject into the donuts!  The donuts are covered in sugar and cinnamon and set in a pretty box with a shot glass of caramel and chocolate mousse.  Not too sweet which was good.

The souffle was the chef’s choice and was a good balance of light and airy whilst actually having a bit of substance – usually I find souffles like eating a cloud of nothing.  It came with a chocolate crackle type thing on top of an ice cream segment; and the same shot glass with a chocolate cigar in it.

Unfortunately, the Sapphire Princess had docked and so rudely interrupted what would have been a great view of the Opera House.  Next time I want to try their wood fired churrasco – $69 per person for all you can eat meat and a great view to boot. 

A brilliant way to use excess carrots, these mini bit sized cupcakes will be a perfect addition to a high tea party or to surprise supper guests or even as part of a petit four! Good for the cholesterol conscious as it uses oil not butter.

To make the icing just mix sugar, margarine and milk until almost sti ff but still mixable. Then pipe stars on top.

Here’s the recipe:  http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/carrot-cake-mini-cupcakes?autonomy_kw=carrot%20cupcake&rsc=header_9