Chocoholics, anonymous. Welcome to the Smooth Festival of Chocolate!

Welcome to the best city in the world!! 

And this was made even better with lots of velvety delicious chocolatey desserts. With brilliant weather like this, The Rocks gets incredibly busy - but thanks to the forethought of the organisers, the event was spread out to avoid heavy crowds at any one spot. 

However, queues are not avoidable... Especially the popular stalls like Black Star and of course, Zumbo, whos endless creativity had fattened up who knows how many sweet tooths like myself. 

Two out of 4 Zumbo goodies here. After consuming so many items, it was really hard to remember what they were... one with chocolate mousse, pastry, passionfruit custard; the other was chocolate, raspberry, caramel, custard... Something or other. Both yum, not over sweet, classic Zumbo! Thanks for existing.... 

The most popular Zumbo goodie however was the reinvention of the Golden Gaytime. And I believe that was the most popular dessert of the event!! Ice cream + caramel sandwiched in chocolate macaron shells, coated with chocolate and nuts. It was Golden Gaytime on steroids. Amazing was not enough of a word to describe it! 

If I had to find fault in it... It was not easy to eat. Too big for a mouth, and it was quite ready to fall off the meager popsicle stick. Thankfully the chocolate and nut shell stayed put so we were able to hold on until they were consumed!

There were of course plenty of other goodies - some I managed to devour, like the Profiterole Project's freshly piped creme patissiere that lured me to their stall and the crunchy toffee didn't disappoint; Others I could only look at while my pancreas protested.... I stared at the gorgeous creations from Black Star and Textbook Patisseries and could only say, NEXT YEAR ... At least the watermelon cake (this year it's white chocolate watermelon cake) should still be available from Black Star. But the other desserts? Hopefully they will stay on in their respective patisseries for at least a little longer. 

I did have one of these colourful croissants - how beautiful are they! It was a cherry ripe croissant - chocolate croissant with cherry custard. Flaky croissant, light tang of the cherry, excellent breakfast :D

From a distance, that smoke was a tantalising advertisement for something savoury! We could spot the smoke from Circular Quay! This was a very welcome break from all the sweetness - charcoal chicken/pork skewers with a deliciously thick and sticky sauce, which was gloriously sweet and savoury and finger licking good (better than KFC, by far!!). And with that, we soldiered on for more sweetness....

However apart from having to queue to get my food (and these food stalls were really quick so the wait was minimal), I refused to queue to enter the chocolatiers' hall or the Lindt Lounge. But it was a great idea having chocolatiers indoors - the sun wouldn't have been too kind to the delicate chocolates!

This year unlike the previous two, I missed out on the blogger/social media special treatments because I didn't check the emails early enough. Oops ... So I missed out on VIP passes to the dessert demonstrations... but my trusty camera zoomed in to one of the goodies just to say, yup I was there.... even if I was on the side line, watching other VIPs eat what should also have been mine :p

Thus passed another glorious Spring weekend at the most beautiful place of the most wonderful city in the world. One never grows tired of it.... <3

CS

Autumn Brunch at Crows Nest

I've already gotten rusty at this after missing just one tour - First it was not giving enough time to plan out the tour properly, then it was grabbing my camera sans battery (I was sensible in taking the battery out for a charge the night before...), and now I'm at a loss at where/how to blog!

Maybe it's all the drinking the night before. I'll use that as my excuse.

Being a local, there were much opportunities to check out the establishments in Crows Nest. To survive here, one would have to serve extraordinarily good food, thanks to the demanding customers and our ever-more-sophisticated foodie culture in Australia. There was no shortage of good coffees, bakeries, cafes, restaurants and wine bars with brilliant and clever menus. And that's all fine by me!

Our day started at La Baguette, a small French style bakery on the upper end of Willoughby Road. We started with a few - just a few - pastries and tarts - a fluffy and light coconut macaroon, an eclair (filled with creme patissier), and a layered chocolate pistachio cake (with a lightly crunchy wafer base). Our favourites: creme caramel on a tart base (wobbly!) and a dark caramel tart - not too sweet,  thick, gooey, slightly bitter caramel, good depth of flavour.

We wandered down the hill and noticed a new place called Caffe Villagio, and decided to find out what they're like. There weren't many sweet offerings on the menu so we ordered all of them - (1) rose water and honey, (2) blueberry and (3) choc mint cake and ice cream, and Persian tea to wash it down with.

The orange blossom Persian tea had a subtle but distinct orange blossom flavour, not overpowering; the ice creams and the cakes - essentially trifles - generated a few surprised 'oohs' as we dug in: Fragrant rosewater with sticky honey was a hit, as was the lightly tangy blueberry cake and of course, the old favourite choc-mint combo. The gang was divided, but I think the rosewater may have won us over just a little more than others...

We continued down Willoughby Road and decided to resume the French theme as the dessert menu at Le Bouchon restaurant included some very classic offerings. Of course my recent trip to France had nothing to do with it....

Cafe gourmand arrived and we were shocked as they were sumptuous and generous: we expected bite sized samplers, but they were substantial enough to be shared among us (iles flottantes - 'floating island' - poached meringue on custard; opera cake; vanilla creme brulee; berry clafoutis). These were very good desserts, classic and well made, thumbs up for each of them. Crepe Suzette was flamed in front of us which was a lot of fun. Bailey's creme brulee was rich and smooth - thank you for not being runny or curdled!! The cheese board (goats cheese, comte, blue and a semi-soft) arrived and was a much welcomed break from our sweet indulgence. And of course, what's cheese without a bit of wine ... A little French Malbec went down smoothly, perfect for a languid, sugar-induced stupor of an afternoon.

Thank you Crows Nest, our 3 stops were all substantial and enjoyable. And very grateful for the unusually high turn out (of 9 people!!) which helped us consume a large variety of sweets! Apologies for the photos ... not quite my usual standard but I only had my old phone to go by!

CS