A hidden secret @ Antique Patisserie

I have walked past this cafe many times, but I have never been in before, because it just looks like a tiny shop from the outside selling cakes.

Since I was bored that day, I wandered in, and saw the sit in area, so I ordered the Raspberry pistache and breakfast tea. The interior of the shop was cosy and victorian, like a big dolls house, with wallpaper and white skirting boards.

The tables and chairs were also victorian, and the tea cups and pot, very English in style.

Anyway the cake tasted lovely, tangy raspberry complimented with nutty sweet pistachio mousse. Garnished with a macaroon, which also tasted sweet, and chewy with bits of nuts in it. The perfect cake was rounded off with a nice cuppa!

 

Chewy elastic ice-cream @ Mado

My second returning visit to Mado, their ice-creams are the best, I ordered the Turkish bomb, lovely and chewy, not too sweet, plain ice-cream mixed with pistachios, apricots, and coconut. A creamy full bodied ice-cream just at the right sweetness. It takes a few seconds to get used to, the gooey texture, and the difficulties in trying to spoon it out. The Turkish bomb reminded me of the nougat, chewy but cold, full of ice-cream, and lots of texture, real coconut shreds, and the delicate apricot and pistachio.

The ice-cream owes it texture to the main ingredient “Mastic” a resin cultivated from Mastic trees in Greece. ( For the real greek ice-cream, however in this case Salep)

However they do not the taro milkshake they had before, which was nice.

Buffy the bakery @ 波菲 Buffy's Bakery

The name of this bakery reminds me of buffy the vampire slayer, however the bakery there is fabulous.
I really like their simple packaging, they have used self adhesive plastic bags.

I have brought good buns from here before, but the shop looks different to the one in Tsuen Wan. Anyway today I got the pistachio souffle cake and the seaweed crunchies.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Souffle cake:It was so dreamily delicious, I need to get more next time, I was expecting some sweet old cake, but it was soft like chiffon, and the pistachio paste in the middle was smooth as truffle.
The pistachio paste was very nutty with a slight bitterness.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Seaweed crunchies:Not as good as it should be, like all Asian bakeries, all the savouries items will taste sweet.
However its textures and shape is exactly the same as the british JACOB’s Twiglets, a wheat based crunchy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiglets

Sweet Middle Eastern delicacies @ 阿里吧吧 Ali Baba

At first, I didnt realise this little shop sold delicacies of dried fruit and chocolate.

When I went it, I was amazed at the selection, very rare and exotic choices of dried cactus fruit, dried figs, dried dates, dried apricots, dried apple, dried aubergine and various nougats.

One of the pistachio nougat I tried was interesting, it was pistachio in grape jelly, the grape taste was real grape extract too, rather than the fake grape essense or the wine flavour type.

My favourite nougat was the pistachio nougat sandwiched between the apricot, the nuttyness and sweetness of the nougat infused with the sour fruitiness of the apricot.

The candied fruits tasted quite the same for most of them, except for strong tasting fruits such as dates, or strawberries, the candied cactus fruit had a waxy skin, just like the dates, and many rock hard seeds in it too.

The candied aubergine tasted starchy.
For middle eastern delicacies, they contain alot of figs, dates, and apricots.
Although the sweets were really nice, I found the occaisional sand/grit in some, most probably blown on the fruits when they were being sun-dried.

Pistachio and apple yoghurt @ Starbucks

With the craze of Froyos, I decided to get some yogurt, but not the frozen ones this time, and not the pre-packaged ones.

The yoghurt here consists of three layers, the bottom consists of sliced apples, then yoghurt and then on top it was sprinkled with pistachio nuts.

The apple slices at the bottom were somehow cooked and preserved with a fresh colour and not rusted.
It still had a crunch to it.
As for the pistachio, it only contributed to like 0.01 of the whole serving, it may as well of been a garnishing rather than part of it.

The yoghurt which i wouldnt classify it as real yoghurt, had froyo taste.
It didnt have the slightest of tartness of cultivated yoghurts, also the texture was not even yoghurt, it was more like aired cream tasting like froyo.

Another froyo joint in TST @ Orangi Yo

Another self service Froyo joint in TST, when I went in, it reminded me of Myogurt in Wan Chai, both featuring green and orange on the logo.

There were so many flavours, but they didn’t have Candyfloss froyo, it probably doesn’t taste good as commented by others, but I still wanted to try it.

The flavours that day were:
Chocolate, Vanilla, Banana, Pistachio, Cookies and Cream, Red velvet cake, Coconut, Green Tea, Mango, Taro, Original, Green apple, Pineapple, Orange and Lychee.
In the end, I chose Pistachio, Banana, Red velvet cake and Taro.

To be honest, they all tasted roughly the same, except for the Red velvet cake, which had the strongest taste, and that one flavoured by Cranberries.
The texture of the yogurts were icy, and not creamy, more like a milky sorbet.
The toppings were basically the same as everywhere else, fresh fruit, cereals etc, so I didn’t really pick much.

 

 

Fraisier @ Sift Patisserie

Sift has always been on my list to visit, but whenever I attempted to go, it was either closed, booked by press or in the blazing hot summer.
The cakes there are takeaway only, so a definite no-no in heavy rain or heat.

 

Anyway finally went on a fine spring day, there were two cabinets of cakes, one end was cupcakes and the other side was macaroons and pastries.
I bought three macaroons, Jasmine, Pistachio and Caramel.

Frasier and Jasmine macaroon

 

For the pastries I couldn’t decide between the Frasier and the Pistache, but in the end I got the Frasier because it looked better.

 

 

The Frasier was made of a layer of almond joconde, then a layer of pistachio crème mousseline with fresh halved strawberries and topped with Italian meringue. The Joconde is an almond sponge cake, containing almonds, it differs from other sponge cakes by having whole eggs (rather than just yolks) beaten with sugar and ground almonds before the meringue is folded in. Joconde is baked in thin layers on baking sheets. Joconde is used to make linings for the outsides of charlottes, a traditional French raspberry mousse cake, and other Bavarian mousse cakes.

The Pistache was Pistachio mousse, raspberry cream, pistachio joconde and pistachio dacquoise.
The dacquoise is the nut meringue layer.

The Frasier tasted much better than expected, the strawberries were ripe and fresh, and the pistachio crème mousseline gave it some nutty taste, the texture of the pistachio crème mousseline was like the silky praline filling and not too sweet, then the final sweetness came from the Italian meringue which was smooth and creamy. The strawberries mellowed out the heaviness of the whole cake by its natural berry taste.

I like to cut my Frasier so that there are equal amounts of crème mousse, strawberry, sponge and Italian meringue.
The strawberries have been placed appropriately so that the cake can be cut into three parts equally then cutting it in the middle.

 

 

Macaroons:

Jasmine:
This was the first one I tried; the texture was sugary and then melted in the mouth.
There was no jasmine taste at all, but a slight aftertaste.

 

Caramel:
This was slightly bitter and salty, but tasted quite nice.

L:Pistachio R:Caramel

 

Pistachio:
This one was the best, light and nutty.

Overall all the macaroons were good and not too sweet. The cakes tasted as good as it looked, not