ragingyoghurt

Category Archives: cake

so, the second kid-free friday went according to plan. dropped her off at playschool just in time for morning tea. in the midst of quiet munching children, there was a place set at the table for her, a bowl containing a slice of apple and a slice of orange. she was hesitant and shy and nervous, but the magnetic pull of the fruit was too strong.

i walked into the city, and on to surry hills, to the ray hughes gallery, where the most amazing show by lucy culliton, “domestic science“, is on for another week or so, so hurry! hurry over to see it.

it’s a hundred and sixty-five paintings and drawings of the best cakes, preserves, decorated arrowroot biscuits, knitted dolls, coat hanger covers, stuff at a regional show, all painted with love and gusto, candy colours, dabs of paint so high off the board you want to lick it. well, i did anyway. i mean, i did want to. lucy culliton is probably my favourite contemporary australian painter, and not just because she paints glorious buckets of hot chips and sauce, or trays of fairy cakes; her series of cactuses is as gorgeous as the rest. i had come to the gallery with a secret mission: i wanted to buy one of the paintings for myself.

because how much higher will her star rise? and how affordable will a painting be at the next show? and how much do her paintings fill me with joy?

plenty. i walked through the exhibition once, and again, and i saw how many red spots were on the main wall already: the lamingtons had been sold, and the festive iced cake covered in sprinkles. i tried to imagine that one of the remaining cakes could be mine: a second-prize orange cake; a doily covered in pink-iced cupcakes; a cream-and-jam-filled victoria sponge (truly the most lickable of the lot). i paced the wall for half an hour. i had to leave, and i walked down the street to the bourke street bakery, where i sat on an orange milk crate on the sidewalk, and meditated over a pork and fennel sausage roll and a belgian hot chocolate. it fortified me.

when i returned to the ray hughes gallery, ray hughes — who had earlier seen me with my nose mere centimetres away from a chocolate cake — smiled and gestured at the woman in bluejeans and cowboy shirt sitting opposite him, beneath the wall of plenty. “this is lucy,” he said.

and what i said was, “i think that one of these paintings is mine, but i don’t know which one yet.” and then, because she looked quite mystified, i said, “i think that i am going to buy one; i just haven’t worked out which one.”

because she does not know me, she asked, “cake or knitting?”, and she was friendly and kind and above all, unprecious, and told me about the names she had written on the winners’ certificates — emmylou harris had won for the pink-iced cupcakes, and how she had visited a dozen or so regional shows and distilled the best into this fictional, best-of-the-best lithgow agricultural society show, (and how lithgow wasn’t actually the hotbed of homecraft that she’d conjured up), and how she’d been a graphic designer a long time ago and gotten tired of the routine and gone to art school and would never go back to moving type about a page…

and i paced back and forth some more, and at times she would take this piece or the other off the wall and bring it into the sunlight, so that i could see just how luminous the cream filling in the victoria sponge really was, and how supple the red jam. and i wandered into the back room for respite, this little room filled with lively and understanding portraits of barnyard animals and exotic parrots; lucy’s friend rachel fairfax had accompanied her to all the country shows, and had documented the animals as lucy studied the food and craft.

and when i slunk back to the wall for maybe the fourth or fifth time, she laughed, not unkindly. i told her i’d narrowed it down to two: the pink cupcakes on the doily, and the resplendant packet butter cake, which showed me something more to love every time i came back to it. she put them side-by-side on a bench, and then it was clear.

we shook on it, and she placed a red dot next to #81. my first piece of art! i felt pretty great.

and then i got home, and minutes later my print rep called to let me know that the proofs of the book were online for approval. we signed off on them just after 4pm. and then i felt extremely great.

i think though, that i will have to go back to the show, to see it all again without that spectre of needing to buy something gnawing a hole in my belly. bring on kid-free day the third!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 April 2007 at 10:28 pm

permalink | filed under around town, art, cake, shoping

torn.

torn between sleep, or blogging, or watching brainless tv, or “reading” that 754-page edition on american vogue that i found at the library last week. 754!

the book project? yes, a mere 124 pages, but it still lingers, the way a cartoon character leaves a dust cloud in the shape of itself after it’s skedaddled. the book lingers as the final, last-minute sunday midnight change to the final last-minute friday 5pm change. it lurks as the too big postscript files that refuse to be distilled on my seven-year-old computer that has to run select programs in classic mode. it taunts as the limit on the client’s bank transfer which prohibits the upfront payment being made to the printer which prevents the printer from telling me if the files i sent through last week are ok.

as it turns out, hmm, not really, which is why 6GB worth of raw postscript files are right now being burned onto DVDs for a second time lucky.

so let’s think back to happier times. like last friday, when i finally returned to adriano zumbo pastissier, and casually asked the counter boy (not adriano this time), “what flavours are the macarons today?”

rose. olive oil and vanilla. gianduja.

i don’t know that i could really have considered choosing just one, so in the end i got just one of each.

these are great macarons. they are hefty with moist and crumbly almond body — not like the weird, dessicated hollow shells i have encountered in other, lesser macarons — and their ganache fillings unusually soft (“runny” sounds bad, but really, it is so good). the rose one, gorgeous pink and all heady perfume, had a filling with a sort of evaporated milky flavour. it reminded me of bandung, that lurid indonesian beverage of rose syrup and milk, which i am quite partial to. i’m guessing it’s actually a white chocolate-based concoction.

the olive oil registered, not unpleasantly, on the roof of my mouth. it was an intriguing sensation: the ripe flavour without the oiliness, coupled with the fact that it was actually a sweet biscuit. i didn’t detect a lot of vanilla flavour in the filling, but the texture of it was sublime. i had been curious about this particular macaron since reading about robyn's pierre herme specimen, so now, curiousity sated and fond memories remain.

the gianduja… i think i’d really rather have a piece of actual velvety gianduja, studded with whole hazelnuts. but in macaron form, it was a classy hazelnutty biscuit with a not overly chocolatey finish.

and what business did i have, traipsing into patisseries on a friday afternoon?

friday morning, i had dropped the kid off to her very first day of playschool. i was kid-free! she’d been talking about going to school for some months (though i think the fact that she’d get to carry a backpack was the main attraction), and when we went for the open day a few weeks ago, and she saw that the kids in possum room were in the midst of a ballet class, she lunged at the door making little clawing motions (much like a small marsupial, no?) and said, “can i go in? and do ballet?”

thursday morning, when we attended a brief orientation session, and she discovered the sandpit in the back, she threw herself belly down in the sand, and swam around in it for a good while. she painted a picture in yellow and purple on the classroom easel. she went headfirst down the play yard slide.

so. friday morning, when i dropped her off, she got all quiet, and concentrated on the toy acquarium table while i made myself scarce. when i called to check on her at 11, she was busy with playdough. when i returned to pick her up at 4.30, after a day of grocery shopping and errands, she was busy making a plastic vegetable dinner at the wooden stove, and the afternoon’s face painting was now a half-butterfly smeared away from cheeks down. she was giddy with excitement and smiling. she can’t wait to go back again. phew.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 April 2007 at 10:50 pm

permalink | filed under cake, kid, werk

for breakfast this morning i had a cup of black tea and six (eight?) daim candies. it didn’t have to be that way; i had considered walking up the street into rozelle, to the newly-opened bagel house cafe. when i rode the bus past yesterday the doors had finally been thrown open, and there was plenty of hot, steamy action in the back. but it would have been too indulgent, no? to go out for fresh bagels when there were still three from saturday in the freezer? probably not.

this week past, i’ve eaten my way through toasted fruit bread, blueberry bagels (twice), swiss cheese and tomatoes on toast (that was tuesday, when i thought i should eat something that wasn’t just sugarbread, in preparation for the afternoon’s bloodletting), and yesterday, delicious spelt crepes stuffed with spinach and fetta, and topped with sticky fig jam, at the fair trade coffee company (i had tea).

the day before, breakfast had been the last three profiteroles from the profiterole cake. backtrack: the thursday before good friday, the last day of term, the boy’s staffroom had given him a farewell cake: a dozen or so custard-filled puffs, arranged on a large shortbread biscuit base. the whole structure was covered in chocolate and sprinkled with tiny coloured sugar flowers. oh, and foil-wrapped chocolate eggs strategically positioned in the swirly chocolate border. he got through a couple of profiteroles that night, and then friday, he left it in the fridge when he drove off into the big brown. so there i was, alone in the house with most of a profiterole cake for company. what to do?

it was easier than i thought, a profiterole here, a couple there, throughout the week, though the chocolate was compound, mixed up to have that certain oily consistency that you don’t really object to until it’s too late. you know how it is: you eat two profiteroles, and feel fine about eating the third, and that’s when it wreaks its revenge.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 April 2007 at 4:33 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast, cake, chocolate, drawn

ladies.

there is a tiny shop next to the pub across the road from the supermarket in balmain, where, up until quite recently, you could buy orthopaedic footwear or health socks or heart moniters. to be honest, i’m not even certain that this is what the shop used to sell, because i never looked too closely. and then it closed, and the shopfront was all boarded up, and a couple weeks ago it seemed like there was a flurry of dusty shopfitting going on, but i didn’t give it too much thought beyond, “ooh, they’re putting in a counter. i guess it’ll be a cafe.” because of course, balmain needs more cafes.

this afternoon as i barrelled past with a hessian bag of groceries on a shoulder and a crate of nappies under an arm, i registered in my periphery a vision in pink. in the shop window, it seemed that biscuits — bright pink biscuits — had been attached to a wire frame in the shape of an egg. it was a large three-dimensional egg, ~~and there were yellow chicks about~~. as i got closer (and closer!), it became painfully clear (o exquisite pain!) that the biscuits were actually unsandwiched macaron halves. [edit 11/04: and also, i have just walked past again to have another look, and what i had originally thought to be yellow chicks are actually yellow macarons, painted with bold black stripes, and sandwiched with wings! bumblebees!]

i peered through the window, and was momentarily confused, because there appeared to be only a single pastry in the display case inside. but then curiousity got the better of me and i entered, to discover that the counter running the length of the shop (more of a corridor, really) did hold a small selection of rather lovely-looking little cakes after all. no macaron though; perhaps they had all been used up for the window decoration. perhaps, like the rest, they had sold out in brisk holiday trade?

a cute italian boy ran the shop. he had a little steel dumbbell through his eyebrow. “do you make all this?” i asked. he did: cakes, tarts, viennoiserie, chocolates, and perhaps… macaron. the name of the shop is adriano zumbo. that’s him.

i asked if he made macaron regularly. he said that he did, just not over the holiday weekend, and that every day there would be two flavours for consideration. and did he make exotic flavours too? yes, occasionally. he said that macaron didn’t seem to be as wildly popular in sydney as they are overseas. it’s the new cupcake, i said, and also no-one really sells them here. there is the lindt shop, i said. he retorted, as though it were a bad thing, that theirs are mainly chocolate-based. and then i told him that i used to go to beb on broadway, but they seemed to have closed their shop. he looked surprised, and pleased, briefly. he said that when he goes to france, he eats nothing but macaron, they are so good.

the walls of the shop are grungy, painted mute colours over brick. ~~the floor is recycled wooden floorboards, polished to a golden sheen.~~ [edit 20/04: the other wall is recycled wooden floorboards, polished to a golden sheen. the floor is polished concrete, painted red.] the counter is plain white, topped — jewellery-shop-style — with a clear display case. from this case i bought his last envie: a tart of raspberry and dark chocolate ganache (the pate sucree is crisp and fine, the filling is lush and smooth with tart, squishy raspberry surprises all the way through). and for good measure, a raspberry-dark chocolate truffle (might have to leave this one until tomorrow). all for a little over $6.

if you catch the 442 from town hall, you could be there in under 20 minutes.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 9 April 2007 at 9:03 pm

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate

[ a picture of a baked treat: a slab of pandan cake topped with a good smear of red bean paste, enveloped in puff pastry; it has been baked, in its entirety, with a sprinkling of polo topping, and then sliced down the middle and filled with buttercream. in the background, a steamed pork bun. ]

there you go.

’round about noon yesterday, after we had walked through the ten courts of hell, and climbed the winding path up the hill which culminated in a vibrant tableau of the journey to the west, it began to drizzle. we were damp and sticky from a moist, 34 degreed morning, so we took it as a sign to climb back into the car and leave the feral gorillas for the next trip.

the rain was pelting down by the time we got to crystal jade kitchen, and the queue for a lunchtime table was long. from the bakery annex, i put together a quick inflight care package for nellie; she was booked onto KLM, so she’d need all the help she could get.

CRYSTAL JADE CAKERY
( JUNCTION 8 ) PTE LTD
1 Cake Cup 1.05
1 BBQ Pineapple Bun 1.24
1 Pineapple Kaya Bun 1.33

and for myself, just to make me feel better,
1 R.Bean Pandan Cake 1.33

it worked, i think, though it hasn’t stopped raining. everything around me, indoors even, is limp and damp.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 March 2007 at 11:39 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, nellie, snacks, trip

out in the western suburbs on thursday, during a lunchtime lebanese feast with the kids at ice, i received a txt which said: “maeve is hot and grumpy and wilt. we will come home.”

hungh.

they had only been gone two nights. i was midway through a bottle of intriguing tamarind fizzy, and reaching for my third helping of rice and lentils. i hadn’t been out to granville in about three years, but there were projects to discuss… and isn’t it nice sometimes to be more than an email address? and shouted lunch at the intern’s farewell luncheon? even when it’s crazy hot outside? yes!

after, ben walked me to the new cake shop in town, el sweetie, all shiny marble and wood panelling and boxy leather couches and as promised, a monster, flat-screen tv. of course, the monster trays of lebanese sweets were much more enticing, especially this one: kashta with pistachio.

a layer of crumbly cake, then crushed pistachios, then moist and delicately scented kashta, then more crumbs and a scattering of more nuts. you know how sometimes you have a piece of baklava, and it’s good and all, but you think that maybe it’s too cloying sweet or too nutty? this cake has none of those problems. my slice survived the train and bus rides home, and was divine with a cup of vanilla tea later that afternoon.

shortly after, the boy arrived back home too, with a limp child draped on his shoulder, and car, boots, clothes awash with vomit.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 14 January 2007 at 9:03 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, lunch, werk

you know that episode of “friends”, where joey is halfway through reading “little women”, and it’s not looking too good for beth, so to spare joey any trauma, rachel puts the book in the freezer? i wish someone had taken the copy of “oscar and lucinda” i was reading, and shoved it deep, deep in the frosty depths of one of the three freezers in the old house at the rock.

but, no. and now, trauma. i’d thought it would be a good chronological following on from “the secret river”. how can a man, peter carey, invent such a story within the confines of an average-sized human head? my head tries to blog a lucky last entry for the year, and i get distracted on some other page, pondering the second chance to avail myself of the complete “sex and the city” boxset, with portable pink dvd player, now only $269.83… and an hour (and one fireworks display) later, i’m finishing paragraph number two.

tops.

i looked out the balcony earlier this afternoon, and saw the barge moored a little way off, and it struck me like a kick in the guts, that it had been a whole year since i posted pictures of the amazing fireworks display i’d seen, just me perched on the balcony railing, and i remembered it so clearly, like it was maybe just a couple of weeks ago. not fifty-two.

but so. a week in the parched country heart of new south wales, with not too much to do but read about new south wales a hundred and fifty years ago. midway through, i asked the boy, “i wonder, if all the migrants ever left tomorrow, would the aborigines go back to their dreamtime existence, or would they…” i wasn’t sure exactly how to continue: would they successfully take over the lifestyle shaped by this many years of white settlement? would they keep sniffing glue and petrol? would they embark on a crazy spree of looting and pillaging?

but the boy, being quick, seemed to pick up where i had trailed off. “well, the centrelink cheques would dry up pretty quickly, wouldn’t they?” which, i guess, still leaves the question unanswered. thinking, on the outside, is most unproductive.

but for the most part, in the last week, we sat around, moving from one room to another, trying to find the cool room on the hot days, and the warm room on the strange freezing ones. we ate ham, ham, ham over days and days, and then for a change we headed up (twice!) to the chinee restaurant at the rock bowling club, the only restaurant in town, and the only eating establishment (out of two) open over xmas.

short soup, honey king prawns, sizzling beef, prawn crackers, fried rice (with ham), vegetable omelette, combination chow mein, satay chicken, steamed dimsims, garlic king prawns, mongolian lamb, sizzling black pepper steak, deluxe combination. and a plate of hot chips, thanks.

we cut slabs out of the tray of baklava from the hellenic bakery, warmed them in the microwave and topped them with blue ribbon vanilla ice cream. we went through tins of beetroot. we sliced more ham off the bone. we devoured a festive pavlova, green in the base and crowned in a cloud of pink whipped cream. there were two birthdays, and four birthday cakes. there were boxes (and boxes) of lindt chocolates. on the last night, there was a magnificent sausage sizzle with fifty or so assorted snags, a large glass bowl holding two tins worth of whole baby beetroots, a small melanine bowl of buttered, salted corn. a pity, the salad from a couple nights before did not make a re-appearance: sliced hard boiled eggs and sliced celery, in mayonnaise. yum.

two hours now to the big fireworks display. the nine o’clock one — family fireworks — which this year could be seen from our balcony, and which must have cost an extra billion or so dollars, only succeeded in perplexing the kid. head buried in the boy’s shoulder while we two gasped and wowed, and really meant it! they can make pink fireworks which explode into the outline of lovehearts! and this new one, which quietly puffs out into clusters of golddust, just lovely.

happy new year. see you ’round.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 31 December 2006 at 8:36 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, breakfast, cake, chocolate, dinner, lunch, snacks, trip

the boy has a different relationship to food than i have. in that he seems not to need it. sort of. case in point: on any given schoolday, he will break fast with a large mug of sweet, milky coffee, all the sustenance required for a day of beating (metaphorically) classrooms-full of disinterested, grunting teenage boys into submission. in theory, there is recess, and lunch, but apparently there is playground duty to be done at recess, and like, detention or something, everything, to attend to at lunch, so he goes all day without eating. he arrives home in the mid-afternoon, grumpy and hungry, and growling, “i haven’t eaten anything since last night.” but still, wearing this hunger like a badge of pride.

can it be that all the other teachers are not eating all day either? what is the teachers’ federation doing to earn their annual membership dues? what are they striking for if not for recess and lunchtimes for all?

yesterday, there was an extended period of rustling, organisational noises upon his return, and then he lumbered downstairs to announce, “i just bought $170 worth of groceries.” part of it, at least, had gone towards the 6-pack of toilet paper under his arm. “i bought us lots of treats,” he said. “i think it was because i was starving when i got to the supermarket.”

and so, there is a tower of tinned sardines in the pantry. there is bacon in the chiller, and vanilla coke; ice cream in the freezer; just one packet of timtams on the counter, because the other is already open, and stashed away in the fridge.

maybe the teachers’ union isn’t doing such a bad job after all. (oh yes you are, slackers!)

as for the rest of the household… you must have already surmised that we are obsessed with food. we build playdough cakes during the day. “this is pretend food,” i stress, “so we just pretend to eat it.” she holds a sticky bun a half centimetre from her mouth, and says, “eat, eat, eat.”

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 November 2006 at 4:09 pm

permalink | filed under boy, cake, kid, snacks

last night while on the phone to my mother, after she had told me all about how she skipped the last day of her gardening society trip to the flower expo in thailand to go shopping instead, and found a really good blue and white jacket that she ended up not buying [hey, i know you think this is a great story, but i wrote it in one sentence, while she told it to me over ten heartbreakingly slow minutes], she said, like an afterthought, “oh, it’s your birthday tomorrow right? so, happy birthday!”

to which i replied, “i know! don’t you feel old?”

she said, “me? how old will you be? thirty four? actually, you know, you don’t look a day over twenty two.”

which is the same problem that momo had a couple of weeks ago, and which i figure is the way our mothers cope with having aging children.

this morning i awoke to no bread in the house, so i defrosted two krispy kreme doughnuts that had been hibernating in the freezer for, um, whenever it was that i cashed in my free dozen doughnuts card that kk sent me for my birthday last year.

and then me and the kid took a walk up the street to buy a loaf of bread, and a small selection of celebratory cakes. why buy one cake, when you can compile a little birthday cake buffet platter? $12 buys you a good representation of the classics: cupcake; lemon curd cheesecake; chocolate tart. barely out of the shop, maeve had wilted onto the sidewalk, begging for pink cake. when we got home, she ate all the dragees, and then all the pink frosting, and then most of the cake. it was a dense, buttery crumb.

twenty minutes later the aunts arrived, with a bunch of gerberas and a white chocolate mudcake, so we all had a sitdown with cups of tea. these days maeve can do a pretty convincing rendition of “happy birthday to you”, and if you’re not quick enough at the end, she will also blow out the candle. just so you know.

when the boy came home that afternoon, he said, “there’s a lot of cake in the house,” for you see, he had come home with a large nutmeg cheesecake. but after dinner at the old skool pizzeria up the street, where in a fit of genius he ordered the ‘touch of summer’ pizza: prawns, bacon and pineapple, i could only manage the wispiest little sliver of cheesecake.

the lemon curd cheesecake will just have to wait for breakfast. the chocolate tart… it’ll keep. i don’t say this too often, but i’m all caked out.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 November 2006 at 8:58 pm

permalink | filed under boy, breakfast, cake, dinner, kid

it was a cakey sort of weekend.

saturday morning, me and the kid walked up the hill to the church fete. i’d been working up her enthusiasm since the day before, saying things like, “do you wanna go to the fete?” and “we’ll meet our fate at the fete!” and “there’ll be cake!”

back in may, we went to the fete at birchgrove public school. there were singing children, judo displays, a giant slippery dip, a petting zoo, lote tuqiri, and a cake stall with interesting, upmarket offerings such as austrian apple cake and an $18 loaf of banana bread.

there were no famous people at the church fete — well, i suppose god was probably there — but the cake stall was brimming with affordable treats. when we passed by the second time and maeve made a lunge for the pink cupcakes, the old lady behind the table reached into a large jar and handed her a biscuit. it really doesn’t get more affordable than that. but still, a ziplock bag of apple slice and a pink cupcake set us back just $3.50.

we bought a pair of wooden salt and pepper shakers ($2) and a handful of children’s books (four for $1), by which time maeve had finished her cupcake, so we headed out to the “cafe” area and had a plate of scones with cream and jam ($2.50). all before 11.30am.

8 o’clock sunday morning, i said to maeve, “hey, do you wanna go on a train today?”. she seemed agreeable: “oooookay.” this was good, because saturday night i’d discovered that the olympic park market had a sweet pudding theme and was all things cake!

as it turns out, it wasn’t all things cake — just a ho-hum row of tents selling stuff and another row of tents selling regular festival/market food and, at the end of it all, a large tent with a bunch of empty tables and a demonstration kitchen up front; after the bus and two trains out there, we’d still arrived too early for things to have been set up. so we found a playground, and watched little sk8er bois at the skate park, and chased magpies, and examined the magnificent pole display outside the main stadium, and wandered back to the big tent to find that the first demonstration started in 15 minutes!

it was just enough time to join a short queue for dutch poffertjes, and to secure a table not too far back from the stage. our healthy serve ($6.50) of bite-sized pancakes, fried in purpose-built moulded pans, in what looked like quite a bit of melted butter, until golden-crunchy-brown on the outside and fluffy on the inside, came topped with a warm blueberry compote and icing sugar. it’s true what they say, a dusting of icing sugar makes anything look good, even when it’s served in a plastic takeaway tub.

but now, here’s joanna savill introducing the husband and wife patissiere team from beb fine patisserie on broadway. today they would show us how to whip up a frangipane tart with cinammon chocolate ganache and caramelised pears, in just over half an hour. olivier offered such tips as “it’s a fruit tart, so don’t be afraid to put big chunks of fruit in it. when i go out and buy an apple pie, and you see the apple filling, it’s only 1mm thick… it makes me… it makes me crazy!!” and “when you make a ganache, if you use chocolate with 50% cocoa, the you would use the same amount of cream. if you use a higher cocoa content, then you must increase the cream in proportion, accordingly. for example, if you use 120g of 72% cocoa chocolate, then you should use about 150g of cream. because the higher the cocoa content, the harder the chocolate.” beatrice (beb) weighed in with, “you can use any fruit you want, according to your tastes. but if you use just almond meal in your frangipane, then you can use raspberries or blueberries; if you use some hazelnut meal in the pastry, the taste is stronger than just almonds, so maybe for the fruit, you should use apples or pears.”

there you go: pastry-making, a sort of exact science.

maeve was surprisingly obliging, even after the poffertjes ran out, sitting through the display of mixing and melting and joanna’s inane patter. it was only in the last minutes that she went a bit limp and began to emit a whining noise. even pointing out the trays of sample tarts that would soon come around didn’t help. but when the server came by and handed the lady at our table a slice and then whisked the tray away without looking our way, the child (and i) were stunned into silence. from the two spoons on a tiny plate, it appeared that we — strangers! — were meant to share the tiny slice. clearly, they assumed that we would be brought together in the spirit of cake, but they had no idea of the child’s appetite… and besides, our table companion had already licked the plate clean.

some desperate arm waving soon set things right; there is no such thing as pride when it comes to chocolate dessert.

the next demonstration was a stawberry marscarpone cake from yellow bistro in potts point, but we were crashing towards naptime. a steaming hot japanese-style pork bun ($3), all tart and gingery on the inside, was enough sustenance to keep us going on the two trains and one bus back home.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 August 2006 at 1:26 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, kid

Category Archives: cake

Click

Search

Categories

Archives