783 Military Rd, Mosman, New South Wales

Having already procured lunch from elsewhere, I decided a dessert was in order, and found Homestyle Bakery on the busy main street of Mosman.

This is one of the anonymous shopfront bakeries with functional but perfunctory ageing steel and glass sliding doors that are ubiquitous in suburbs crying out for a little touch of urban renewal to spruce them up. It’s operated by a Vietnamese woman who serves me with a minimum of fuss, as I photograph the tray of offerings that bears the label “French vanilla sliced”.

I take my $4 slice to a nearby bus stop to sit on the bench while I partake. The slice is tall and imposing. It has three thick slabs of very crisp biscuity pastry, displaying a structure made of many thin layers. The underside of the bottom layer shows a pattern of ridges, impressed from a rippled baking tray. The two layers of custard in between are light yellow, and appear very smooth and creamy.

Picking it up, the slice is difficult to eat without squeezing the thick layers of custard everywhere. The pastry slabs are crisp and firm, while the custard is soft and yielding. It is in fact so messy that I can’t keep my fingers clean enough to take a photo with the slice partially eaten. Said custard is more like a thick cream than an egg custard, and it has a subtle, sweet vanilla flavour. The whole construction is sweetened by a dusting of plain white icing sugar on top. The pastry is quite passable, but the custard is too non-custard-like. It’s not bad at all, really… just not quite good either. This slice earns higher than average more for the generous quantity than being a typical exemplar of the ideal vanilla slice.

“French vanilla sliced”: 6/10