sydneys best brownie

So my boyfriend and i have been searching for the best brownie ever since we met after trying a rather delicious one at a tapas bar somewhere.

To be fair, we havent been searching very hard as I have been on a diet, I think we have only had 2 or 3 brownies since this search began a year and a half ago, but still, we havent forgotten about it.

I heard about sweet infinity bakery from a friend, and following a link on their website I saw that NQN had dubbed theirs as sydneys best brownie.

So off we went on an early saturday morning to check it out...

The brownies are $4 each and massive.

Twice the size of the brownies alot of bakeries offer these days, and when the lovely girl at the counter handed me the bad of goodies I was delighted to feel how heavy the brownies were... clearly packed full of chocolatey goodness. I am not normally a chocolate person, but brownies are the exception. I adore them.

After taking one bite it was clear these were strong contenders for sydneys best brownie.

The top and bottom were crisp and chewy, and the centre was so moist and gooey it was almost liquid as it ate them in the hot sun.

They were amazing I dont know how they managed to make something so gooey and fudgy stay together without melting into a little puddle of fudgey sauce... these would be delicious with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

excuse the dodgy photos... but you get the idea!

http://www.sweetinfinity.com.au/

My second macaron! and third.... fourth.. fifth....and more!

*sigh* I really should find something interesting to write about to fill these gaps in between when I treat myself to some unealthy and exciting food... but alas I feel my mid-week calorie counting diet would bore the pants off you!

Luckily however I have chosen this saturday as a good day to have a few treats.

My first port of call?

Macarons!

Yes ever since trying my first at the rocks a few weeks ago I have, of course, wanted more.

So I popped down to the lindt chocolate cafe near my work to buy this beautiful bag of goodies.

I am such a sucker for packaging, and lindt certainly deliver on packaging =) the bag is actually embossed, not just printed on, embossed!

I was very excited to see the lindt macarons were much bigger than the last ones i had tried. MUCH MUCH bigger in fact!

There were many delicious flavours, I chose coconut, pistachio,peach, rose,vanilla, and milk chocolate. There was a couple of other flavours, champagne passionfruit strawberry blueberry and hazlenut but im not really a fan of fruit flavoured things, and well, I felt I had enough =)

When it came to tasting I was a little disappointed....

The peach and coconut both had very fake flavours, I only had a small bite of these and graciously offered them to my boyfriend to finish.

The pistachio tasted nothing like pistachio which was a shame, but it was sweet and white chocolatey, which was not bad, but unfortunately the roselli and vanilla also had similar tastes.

No strong flavour just alot of sugar and white chocolate.

The milk chocolate one was strong and chocolatey, and rather reminded me of a brownie.

his was my favourite simply because it had a distinct flavour, and wasnt as overpoweringly sweet as the others.

So far the macarons I had at the rocks are definately winning in taste, but lindt win in value as their macarons are huge!

More tasting is definately required to find the perfect macaron....

The great pie hunt

So the second part of my halloween adventure involved fulfilling my search for pumpkin pie.

I phoned Buppas bakehouse (king st newtown) to ensure there would be a slice available for me (I refuse to miss out!).

I decided to make mini pumpkin pies for christmas, but felt it was necessary to know what its supposed to taste like... I have heard some bad reviews about pumpkin pie, mainly that its too sweet..

(pumpkin pie, $6 a slice)

The filling in this pie was much lighter than i expected it to be, I had been imagining a quite dense heavy filling but this was not the case.It had a strong taste of nutmeg (it reminded me a little of the wobbly little old fashioned bakery custard tarts), it was sweet and moist, certainly not too sweet, but very rich.

The only let down was the pastry, the bottom was a bit damp, which i suppose it so be expected with that sort of filling, and the crust was a bit hard and lacked any sweetness, it was almost savoury.

But overall, very enjoyable! I hope my attemept to bake mini ones turns out well =D

The girl who ate Halloween!

So, its Halloween this weekend and I found myself all alone with the boyfriend away for the weekend.
Whats a girl to do? Why, ditch the diet for a couple of days and enjoy some baked goods while shopping! Of course!

I start off the day with my favourite:

young coconut juice =) Then I hit the town...

Stop one: Chinatown.

Now I am lucky enough to live in ashfield, which has a couple of little asian bakeries. Living so close to these has made me quite partial to things like mochi balls and red bean pastries. So I headed off to Chinatown to see what else is on offer.

At St honore on Sussex st I bought a cocktail bun, a taro mochi ball and a coconut tart.I was tempted by my usual favourites chestnut buns and red bean buns, but decided to be adventurous and try something new.

The coconut tart reminded me of the tarts my grandma makes at Christmas. It was nice and sweet but a little bland, and not moist enough for my liking.
The mochi ball was very nice but tastes much like the plain ones I usually get, nothing made it disctinctly taro flavoured, I had never tried sweet taro before, only savoury taro root, so I had been looking forward to tasting something different. And I enjoyed the cocktail bun but couldn’t finish it, it tasted a little too buttery for me.


At no.1 cake I got a shallot bun and a red bean cookie.
The shallot bun was nice, the bread was very soft and sweet with lots of shallots.And the red bean cookie was deliciously crumbly with lovely sweet nutty bean paste.
I also got a mango pancake, this was one of my favourites, the pancake was blank and tastless but inside there was a deliciously soft sponge, sweet cream and lots of very fresh mango.

Last stop was Emporers Garden bakery for a chestnut tart. The tart was disappointing I have to say.
The pastry base had a coating of chocolate which was rather cheap tasting and hard, the sponge inside was lovely and softy, but the chestnut puree was rather bland, tasting neither sweet not chestnutty.

I also got a ‘date paste cake’ which looked like a mini moon cake. I am quite sure they gave me a lotus seed cake which was sitting in the next container by mistake, as the filling tasted much like lotus seed paste, and nothing like date. I didn’t mind cause I enjoy lotus seed paste, but it wasn’t what I ordered…

I also, amazingly, got some Christmas shopping done (so early!) my little sis loves stores like morning glory, so I was finding it hard not to buy everything in Chinatown for her.

Stop two was Fernades patisserie Marrickville.
I picked up a sweet potato biscuit, almond tart, and a custard tart.

The custard tart was not so much a tart as a big firm round piece of custard. It was very sweet, nice, but nothing special.
The Almond tart which I expected to be my favourite was disappointing the parstry was lovely and flaky with yummy almonds and a sweet glaze on top, the filling was a lovely texture, very moist, but it was flavoured with amaretto essence which I absolutely hate.

The sweet potato biscuit was probably my favourite, chewy and moist and delicious. But very sweet, and with an almost gritty taste sometimes.It was only small but I couldn’t eat it all at once as it was so sweet.

Last stop was Pie Face.
I have been wanting pecan pie for a long time, and when I saw these mini ones I got very excited!

I always forget how little I can eat now that I have been dieting.. so as a result of my eyes being much bigger than my stomach there is a lovely little box of cake halves sitting at home waiting for my boyfriend hehehehe.....

Vodafone Cupcakes

Let me tell you about a few things I love:

Freebies, I adore freebies, I will generally take anything thats on offer even if I am sure I dont want it.
Cupcakes, I dont think its the taste so much as I find them adorable. Despite rarely eating a cupcake due to my boring diet I have several cupcake cook books and frequent cupcake stores just to look..!
And lastly, miniature things. I find anything in mini form delightful, I also am quite fascinated by things that are much bigger than normal.

So you can imagine how happy I was today to get these:

(excuse the dodgy photography)
From http://www.thecupcakebakery.com/, courtesy of vodafone and work, free, mini, cupcakes!

I wont be eating them, but couldnt be happier anyway! And a special someone will be even more happy than me when he gets to eat them for dessert...!

The great pie search....

I went to America last year, and as I was still strictly dieting did not partake in many treats.

Upon returning my biggest regret is that I didnt try...

....pumpkin pie!

So can anyone tell me where in the sydney/inner west area I can find some??

I intend on making them for christmas however I would like to try some first or else who knows how mine will turn out! haha....

Fishy Ice Cream!

I love asian grocers.

I have no idea why, I love exploring all food stores really but asian grocers are a particular favourite.

I often look a bit out of place as I am staring at all the weird and wonderful food in amazement, and usually leave without buying anything, not only this but I am often the only caucasian person in the store.

A new asian supermarket opened near my house so I decided to go exploring.. and I spied this:

Fish shaped wafer filled with vanilla ice cream and red bean!! HAHA!

I had to have it, firstly I looove red bean (I tried it for the first time a few months ago inside a mini mooncake that I bought because it was cute, and have been an addict ever since. ) and secondly... its so cute!

He looks so sad??

the inside:

Taste wise it was not amazing.

The wafer was dry and tasteless, the red bean couldnt compete with the coldness or amount of ice cream, but it wasnt bad, well worth the $1.20 for such a cute thing.

My First Macaron. =)

I was a bit naughty this weekend, which I feel bad about cause I have a terribly delicious and unhealthy weekend planned next week.But I did alot of jogging so its ok.. anyway onto the interesting stuff.

..... I have a confession. Until this weekend I had never eaten a macaron...I have seen so many enticing pitcures on various food blogs.. and heard so many wonderful reviews I decided that next time I saw some I would have to try them.

So this weekend I found myself at the rocks.

The first thing I saw at the rocks was this massive boat:

(its crazy...You could see what they were watching on the gigantic television screen on the boat from across the water!!)

Then while walking around the markets I spied a lady holding a tiny box with 3 macarons in it....

I had to hunt them down!

So I saw a patisserie and checked inside... success!!!

I bought 3 Macarons... rosewater and buttercream, salted caramel, and olive oil and white chocolate ganache. ($10 per 100g)

I cant believe it took me this long to try these! They were delicious! The crisp shell, moist sweet inside... yum....

The rose one was amazing, will definately be trying more of those. The caramel was nice but slightly too bitter for my taste, the bitterness somehow didnt balance well with the amount of sugar, but it wasnt bad, the olive oil and white chocolate was a bit of a let down, the macaron itself was nice but the white chocolate ganache had a bit of a.. fake taste.

So overall, I am definately a newly converted Macaron lover, but will obviously need to do alot more 'research' i.e eat lots more.(I have been promised a trip to Adriano Zumbos in balmain for my birthday which is coming up so I will probably have to give in to temtaion and try quite a few then!)

The Macarons were followed by a dinner not worth mentioning (lets just say the reason I for what I though to be a very good value nicoise salad was that it contained a tin of that horrible mushy sandwich tuna....)

Part Two

Alright so I don't actually believe myself worthy of the title of a fully fledged foodie, so I do use the term loosley.. but the things is, once I started dieting, and started analyzing everything I ate I really started to appreciate every bite of food.

Now that I had to think so carefully about what I was eating I found myself very aware of the look of the meal, the flavours of the meal and really making sure I enjoyed evey bite.

In fact I became a little obsessed. I would find myself walking into supermarkets and bakeries just to gaze at the beautiful and strange things to eat (I particularly love doing this at asian grocers).
I would look through menus online even if I wasnt planning to eat there. I bought mountains of cook books. I also developed a love of the many cupcake bakeries popping up all over sydney (even though to this day I have only eaten one)

I started to think I was going a little mad after people started to get fed up with me detoruing past cake displays and the like.

Then one day my boyfriend advised he wanted to go out for chinese dumplings, he had heard that ashfield was the best place to get dumplings.
I found his request a bit strange as he had never shown any inclination towards dumpling eating before but none the less I was happy to scour the internet for reviews of ashfields chinese shops.

And from her review of one of these I discovered not quite nigella, whose blog I have been stalking ever since.

After my revelation about the existance of food bloggers I stopped thinking I was going a little mad, and decided that even if no one is going to read it I would get past my fear of online social networks (yes, I know its rather sad for a 22 year old...) and make a blog.

I dont expect this to be read by many (if any) but as my family and friends do not really care in the slightest about food, and are no doubt sick of me talking about it, at the very least I can get it off my chest on here!

The Story So Far

Ok so, to explain where this blog came from theres really 2 parts to the story.

The first part is the healthy part.
About a year or 2 ago, I did not love food, I loved eating. I didnt really care if it tasted nice or if I was full, I just ate and ate, I was of course rather large, and rather miserable.

Then I met my lovely boyfriend, and became very happy. So happy in face I finally got motivated to do something I had been wanting to do for such a long time... I started looking after myself and being healthy.

I started just by making healthier choices, salad instead of chips that sort of thing... but I would always convince myself, 'oh, go on, you have been so healthy all day, just one little piece of cake for dessert..' and soon would find myself eating everything in sight.

From this I learnt I am an all or nothing type of girl... I can easily say no to all 'naughty' (aka delicious) foods, but cannot stop myself at just a little bit.

Once I figured this out my diet became easy and the weight fell off.
I learnt as much as I could about health and nutrition and my normal diet does not include sugar, fats or oils, or processed food. Its also worth mentioning I dont eat red meat or chicken, and I count calories.. rather strictly.

I bet you think that sounds rather dull.? Certainly not behaviour worthy of a foodie title?
You may be right.. but there is more to the story....