Unit 101/7 Hoyle Ave, Castle Hill. New South Wales
yourexquisitecake.com.au

In another old unpublished review, I find myself in the north-western suburb of Castle Hill. I’d made a trek out here to visit a game shop to browse their selection of board games and see if I wanted to buy something. Alas, I discovered when I arrived that their shop is in fact more of an industrial estate showroom, and only open three days a week – not including the day that I’d chosen. Undaunted, I sought a local source of nourishment and decided to try Exquisite Cakes.

Exquisite Cakes has a premises in the Castle Hill Homemaker Centre, the sort of large place you find in industrial areas that has a bunch of furniture showrooms, carpet and floor tile places, hardware stores, and similar businesses that need huge floor space to show off their wares.

Exquisite Cakes seems to mostly be a special event cake bakery, as it has dozens of fancy wedding and birthday cakes on display, although it also has a counter with biscuits and muffins…

… and small cakes and savoury pastries for sale. And there are a few tables and chairs outside under a plastic weather shelter, where you can eat your choices with a cup of coffee that they also supply. They didn’t have any vanilla slices, but they had sausage rolls and a selection of pies, so I chose a roll and one of the meat pies.

The sausage roll is small and flattish in shape, and very uninspiring looking. The pastry is pale, showing it could have been baked a touch longer, but it looks acceptably flaky. The meat filling visible at the ends doesn’t promise much, neither in appetising appearance nor in stomach-filling quantity inside that flat roll of pastry.

And oh god, it tastes even worse. The filling is bland and thick and goopy, more like a paste of breadcrumb stuffing than a sausage of actual meat from a farm animal. It has a slight tomato-ish flavour, but has no herbs or onions in evidence, and a really odd, sour aftertaste. The pastry is flaky, but indeed a touch undercooked, with the interior layers soft and claggy. It’s not terrible – I’ve had far worse. But it isn’t good in any way whatsoever. The pie turned out to be better. And honestly the cakes look fine, although I didn’t sample any of them. But definitely avoid the sausage roll.

Sausage roll: 3/10