good morning.

a fine way to start the morning, and the week, is to break open a new box of tea and brew a pot. T2 have a shiny new boutique beneath the old gowings building in the city — perfect timing, really, for i was in the market for a new breakfast tea.

in the shop, there is english breakfast tea of course, and irish. but there is also sydney breakfast (scented with bergamot) and melbourne (vanilla). i was curious about the indian breakfast tea, and asked enough questions (fewer than you’d think necessary) that the countergirl packed a little sample — “enough for a small pot,” she said — in a baggie for me to take away. i love that!

in the end i came away with the morning tea, a hearty blend of broken leaf tea, according to the spiel on the box. and it’s true; it’s the kind of robust tea that tastes of the bush from which it was plucked.

it was the perfect foil for a wedge of coconut brioche, a light and chewy bun in a sturdy helmet of sugary desiccated coconut — reminiscent of something from a chinatown bakery — which i had procured on yesterday’s excursion to petersham.

we don’t really do mother’s day, but y’know, any excuse to have cake… so two mums and two kids and a sister and a brother descended upon honeymoon patisserie for second breakfast. i made it through the wall of people at the counter, only to be confronted with a second, more impressive obstacle: what to choose.

there were slices of a brown slab cake with pink icing and silver dragees, three layers sandwiched with cream and custard. i resisted. there were custard tarts in three sizes, and i had been thinking about them all morning, and yet… i sort of wanted bacon and eggs, so i picked their opposite: a rather ostentatious caramel tart. and a jam donut. and, because i don’t like playing favourites, the coconut brioche to go,

the donut was excellent. dense and chewy with a generous smear of sugary red jam. it wasn’t hot, but that was part of its charm. i should’ve gotten the big one. should’ve maybe not gotten the caramel tart, because after i ate that, i felt somewhat unbalanced. (it must be said that the caramel was lovely and soft, and very compelling. it compelled me to eat its entire self after all.)

afterwards, we ran around the park, and worked up an appetite for baked beans on buttered toast. normalcy returned.