12-Micron, Sydney

If you're looking for a place where you can do drinks, dinner and dessert, then look no further than 12-Micron in Barangaroo. We're here for the dessert bar, having heard about the dessert tasting menus. There's options of 3, 5 or 7 courses, but we decide to order a la carte among 6 of us for more variety, and also so we can say, "One of everything, please!" The desserts arrive, colourful and artfully plated, making for an impressive spread. There's some interesting ingredients as well, like native Australian rosella, quandong and finger lime. Each element on each plate is beautiful and packed with flavour, but sometimes the components seemed to be fighting for the spotlight rather than working well together. My surprise favourite was actually the Pyengana cheddar dessert as it had a nice balance of sweet and savoury. It was an interesting meal, but none of the dishes were a stand-out for me, so I probably wouldn't be rushing back any time soon!

TL;DR: Fine dining desserts with unique flavours
Favourite dish: Pyengana cheddar, milk chocolate, plum, honeycomb
Would I return?: Probably not

12-Micron
Tower 1, Level 2, 100 Barangaroo Ave
Barangaroo NSW 2000
Ph: +61 2 8322 2075
Open 7 days, 12pm til late

Barangaroo

Mood lighting

Table setting

Cocktails

One of everything, please!

Earl grey, mandarin, white chocolate, peppermint - $19

Pineapple, coconut, sago, mint - $17

Pavlova, quandong, strawberry, white chocolate - $18

Peanut butter, rosella, toast ice-cream - $22

Chocolate, passionfruit, rainforest lime, muntries - $24

Pyengana cheddar, milk chocolate, plum, honeycomb - $19

Carrot, cream cheese, liquorice, blood orange - $18

The Choc Pot, Burwood

Calling all chocaholics! By now you've probably been to Max Brenner, Lindt cafe, Oliver Brown and the like, so it's time to put The Choc Pot on the top of your chocolate cafe list and get there stat! Mainly because of this....

Molten choc pot - $12

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Molten choc pot - $12

This is The Choc Pot's signature dessert, the molten choc pot. It's like a chocolate fondant, complete with a gooey, molten centre and in case there wasn't enough chocolate, some extra molten milk and dark chocolate has been drizzled on top.

Sexy chocolate innards

Honeymoon Dessert, Hong Kong

I don't generally like Asian desserts - the beans and the soupy things don't do it for me. But, I do have a soft spot for glutinous rice and mochi desserts so everytime I'm in Hong Kong, I head to Honeymoon Dessert for a sugar hit.

We arrive around 11pm on a Friday night and it is packed... so packed that there are people spilling out of the shopfront waiting for a table. The branch that we go to has limited seating (as with most of the other ones that I've been to) but the turnover is fast so it's not too long before we have a table.

Papaya and white fungus soup

Mango glutinous dumplings

Bourke Street Bakery, Surry Hills

 

Pastry has a funny way of cheering you up even on the worst of days. Even though I had to wait 30 mins for a bus from Sydney Uni to Surry Hills, and walk for 40 mins back to the city since I got sick of waiting for another bus, once I sank my teeth into the sweet and savoury pastries from Bourke Street Bakery I quickly forgot all about it.

Beef brisket pie - $5.30

I met up with Sir D in the park for a late lunch break and we set up our own little pastry picnic on the grass. I took a bite out of the beef brisket pie and my mouth was filled with tender beef and a thick, flavoursome gravy. Needless to say, the pastry was oh so buttery and it flaked everywhere - a sign of good pastry!

(L-R) Pork & fennel and Lamb & harissa sausage rolls - $4.50 each

Christmas Tree Meringues and the Sydney Food Bloggers Christmas Picnic

Photo credit: Simon from the heart of food

Oh yes, it's that time of year again - when shopping centres play carols that get stuck in your head for the rest of the day, and reindeer horns and red noses start appearing on cars around Sydney. It's Christmas, which means it's also time for the 2nd annual Sydney Food Bloggers Christmas Picnic!

As usual there were copious amounts of food present which were arranged on the makeshift dining table. As much as I wish I had the stomach space to try everything, I never quite get around to it all but everyone's contributions looked delicious!

Clockwise from top left: Ribs by Billy from A Table for Two; Macaron tower by Cleony from I Eat Sweet; Chocolate Christmas tree by Lisa from Lisa Perkovic; Orange, pistachio and cardamom cupcakes by Angie from Angie Lives to Eat (and Cook)!

There were more sweets than savouries as expected and even though I keep telling myself to make a savoury item for the next food blogger meet-up, I ended up making a sweet item... oops! Luckily there were savoury contributions from other people but you had to be quick otherwise you missed out (case in point: Billy's ribs - gone in 60 seconds!)

Clockwise from top left: Mini pecan pies by Rhonda from The Dainty Baker; Mini Christmas puddings by Vivian from vxdollface; Cheese bread by Tammi from Insatiable Munchies; Strawberry Santas by Ayana from Absolutely Ayana

I ended up making meringues to bring to the picnic. Midway through beating the egg whites I realised that I could Christmas-ify them up by colouring them green and putting little stars on top. And voila - Christmas Tree Meringues!

These were really easy to make, and also relatively quick although they do need to be in the oven for a while. Even though it's only egg whites and sugar beaten together, they do become strangely addictive and I may or may not have munched on a few on the way to the picnic...

A big thank you to Helen from Grab Your Fork and Suze from chocolatesuze for organising the picnic, I had an awesome day! Looking forward to the next one already :)

Apple and Cinnamon Macarons

After making some successful macarons with lemon and passionfruit fillings, I wanted to try and flavour the shells themselves. Sir D is a big cinnamon lover, and since cinnamon and apple go together like a fat kid and cake, I decided to make cinnamon flavoured macaron shells with an apple compote.

It's been a while since I made my last batch of macarons and I seemed to have lost my touch. The first batch of cinnamon macaron shells failed miserably with cracks appearing on the surface. The second batch was much better because I stood in front of my oven and watched them lke a hawk, but some of them still had a few imperfections on the surface. Seems like I need a lot more practice!

To make the cinnamon flavoured macaron shells I replaced 5g of the icing sugar from the basic macaron recipe with 5g of ground cinnamon. If you like it more or less cinnamon-y just adjust the amount of ground cinnamon you replace for icing sugar.

I was really happy with the overall flavour and that the shells actually tasted like cinnamon. Sir D thought that the combination of the apple compote and the cinnamon shell reminded him of McDonalds apple pie! And anything that reminds people of pie has to be a good thing :)

Macaron Day at Adriano Zumbo, Balmain

The queue outside Adriano Zumbo

It takes something special to motivate me to get up early in the morning, but the promise of 66 flavours of macarons at Adriano Zumbo's Macaron Day has me jumping out of bed bright and early on a Saturday morning. Despite the rain and the cold, the crowds have gathered for the event and though we arrive at 9am, there is already a queue outside the store.

Oh HAI!

An hour later and we're finally just about to step inside the shop and look who else is here! Suze and Phuoc weren't far behind Sir D and I in the queue.

(L-R, T-B) Pinenut gianduja, Pecan danish, Peanut butter and jelly, Pear vanilla macadamia, Passionfruit

The whole window display and the glass display inside the shop is filled with macarons galore! Such pretty colours!

(L-R, T-B) Salted butter popcorn, Salt and vinegar, Salted butter caramel, Salmon

With the macarons priced at only $2 each, it was hard to not go crazy and get all of them. The store was completely decked out in macarons with only a few loaves of bread sitting on the shelves on the wall. It was like entering Willy Wonka's chocolate factory except with macarons instead =D Macaron-tastic!

Sugar Hit @ Azuma Kushiyaki Bar and Grill

Azuma Kushiyaki was one of the SIFF Sugar Hits I most wanted to go to last year, but by the time I got around to booking they were already full up! I was quite disappointed but this made me want to go even more this year and I made sure I booked nice and early to avoid missing out again.

Azuma Kushiyaki Bar and Grill 2010 Sugar Hit - $20 (including dessert wine, cognac or green tea)

The SIFF Sugar Hits are available througout October from 9pm onwards for $20 which includes a dsesert as well as a glass of Brown Brothers dessert wine or Hennessy cognac. The dessert offered at Azuma arrived in two cute little black boxes. The container on the left had a matcha green tea ganache tart, a wasabi chocolate ganache tart, a petit almond financier and a macaron. The macaron had a face piped onto it which was a very cute touch, and the flavour and texture were spot on as well. I wasn't a big fan of the financier or the wasabi chocolate tart. The wasabi and chocolate combination just didn't do it for me, but it did leave my tongue tingling! The green tea ganache tart had a nice strong green tea flavour and the ganache was super smooth as well - this was my favourite out of all the parts of the Sugar Hit.

Tarte Aux Pralines: A Lyonnaise Specialty

I was super jealous when I found out that my sister was going to France on exchange for 6 weeks. I was even more jealous when I found out that not only was she going to Paris but also to the French capital of gastronomy, Lyon. Thankfully she was kind and after tantalising me for 6 weeks via email about eating foie gras and macarons and quenelles (which Lyon is famous for), she brought home some foodie gifts including a book on macarons, a kilogram of chocolates from Lyon and these strange pink, rock-like things called pralines.

I asked Charm what it was and she said it was pretty much ground nuts and sugar. Why it was pink I'm not sure, but these little pink rocks form the basis of the filling of another specialty food of Lyon, the tarte aux pralines. Although my sister helped her host family make one during her stay in Lyon, she had forgotten how to make it so I stumbled through the French instructions attached to the packet with my year 10-standard knowledge of the French language.

It ended up being simple enough though - I just had to make my sweet shortcrust pastry, dissolve the pralines in some cream and pour it into the baked pastry and let it set in the fridge. When I added the pralines to the cream and it started dissolving it turned a bright red colour and here is the finished result:

It was rather lurid and to be honest the striking red colour was a bit off-putting at first. But I cut myself a slice and tasted it.

It was sticky and sweet with some crunchiness from the nuts and a subtle almond flavour as well. As much as I liked it, the sugary-ness meant that a small slice was enough for me, but Charm really enjoyed it and she ended up finishing it off in the next few days. I'm hoping that means it's a sign that my version of this special dessert from Lyon was close to the real thing!

Bourke Street Bakery's Strawberry Vanilla Brûlée Tart

There's always one thing that I absolutely HAVE to get every time I go to Bourke Street Bakery, and that's a strawberry vanilla brûlée tart. I went to Bourke Street Bakery a few weeks ago late in the afternoon and I was so disappointed that they had sold out of them that I went back the next week just to satisfy my craving. And oh it was so good, the crispy, buttery pastry with the creamy custard filling and of course, that crunchy, slightly bitter toffee on the top.

Sadly Bourke Street Bakery is quite far from me and so I thought I'd try making these yummy tarts at home using the recipe from the Bourke Street Bakery cookbook. It was surprisingly straightforward and to me the worst part was having to wait for the pastry to relax because I just wanted to bake them, blowtorch the hell out of the sugar on the top and devour them all!

Ok, so I admit I was still impatient and I didn't go through all the resting periods for the pastry which is why it shrank in the oven. But apart from having slightly shallower tart shells, the pastry was still as flaky and crisp as I remember it to be from the actual shop. I was also a bit ambitious with the amount of strawberry puree at first so when I put the custard into the tart shells it started to displace the strawberry puree that was in there - that's why there's not much strawberry in the photo unfortunately.

I've provided the original recipe below but since I only had 6 small tart tins that weren't quite the same size as specified, I just adjusted the measurements for my requirements. I found that even after doing that I still had some leftover strawberry puree but you can always use this as a topping for ice cream or another dessert. Or just do what Sir D did and drink the leftovers!

Max Brenner, Sydney

Even though our meat-fest at Löwenbräu Keller saw us rolling out the door, we were on the prowl for more food to satisfy our dessert stomachs. Max Brenner seemed like the perfect place to indulge in some sweet, chocolatey, post-dinner goodness - and also because we all sorely miss the bald man since his departure from Chatswood :(

Giant choc-almond cookie - $4.00

We manage to grab one of the last remaining tables and make our selections from the menu. Queen Chu chooses a chocolate chip cookie which she generously shares with everyone. It's got pretty good crunch factor and I love the extra melted chocolate drizzled on top. Sir D and I end up scraping the plate with spoons just to get at all the chocolate!

Italian thick hot chocolate (milk) - $5.50