Pau de Canela, Lisbon

cafe, city, overseas, vanilla slice

Avenida da Igreja 2, 1700-204, Lisbon, Portugal
paudecanelapastelarias.com

On a combined business/vacation trip, I flew into Lisbon around lunchtime on my first ever trip to Portugal. Lisbon’s airport is very close to the city centre, and even closer to my hotel in the Entre Campos neighbourhood north of the city centre. So close that rather than take a taxi or the metro, I decided to walk from the airport to the hotel. The distance was not a problem, but the day was hot and sunny. Before we left, Mrs Snot Block & Roll had suggested that we could stop about half way and have a drink at a cafe. Checking on Google Maps, I had located a likely sounding cafe named Pau de Canela (“Cinnamon Stick” in Portuguese), with good reviews.

Portugal is famous for its traditional custard tarts, the pastéis de nata, but when we arrived at the cafe what caught my eye were some intriguing looking vanilla slices. They were labelled “mil folhas”, which is clearly the Portuguese equivalent of “mille feuille”, so that was a good start. Mrs SB&R ordered a coffee and grabbed a mil folhas for me. No sausage rolls in sight, alas, so it seems we still have a thing or two to teach the Portuguese about baking.

Pau de Canela

The slice has a traditional looking construction although it is quite flat and the custard is a thin single layer sandwiched between two very thick sheets of flaky pastry. The custard is a very dark yellow colour, darker than almost any other I’ve seen, and there’s not a lot of it. The pastry looks nice and flaky, and is topped with the traditional white icing with brown swirly pattern running across it diagonally. The slice is supplied on a plate with a knife and fork. Being in a foreign country, I’m a bit reluctant to commit a diplomatic faux pas by eating it wth my hands in front of a busy cafe crowd, so I rely on the cutlery.

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Robertson Pie Shop, Robertson

bakery, country, nsw, sausage roll

4400 Illawarra Highway, Robertson, New South Wales
www.robertsonpieshop.com.au

I’ve driven past this place many times, but usually on the way home from a day trip to Bowral, after already filling up on country baked goodies (perhaps at the Gumnut Pattiserie), so I’ve rarely stopped here. It has a good reputation for its pies, and they offer both a wide selection of savoury varieties, as well as sweet ones.

Coledale shelf

So one fine day I took to the road with Mrs Snot Block & Roll and our dog Canine Snot Block & Roll for a leisurely road trip down the coast via the Grand Pacific Drive and the spectacular Sea Cliff Bridge, which was built to replace the old coastal road along the bottom of the Illawarra Escarpment after it fell into the ocean. This is a much more scenic drive than the freeway on top of the escarpment, and affords many places to stop and enjoy the views.

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Sunny Vi Huong Hot Bread, Gladesville

bakery, city, nsw, sausage roll, vanilla slice,

239a Victoria Road, Gladesville, New South Wales

I was passing through Gladesville late one morning when I felt the need to stop and have a break, and a snack. After parking the car, I used Google Maps to search for a bakery in the strip of shops that runs along the main artery of Victoria Road. It showed Baker’s Delight (a bread bakery chain – no hot food or cakes), Sunny Vi Huong Hot Bread, and Art of Baking. I tried Art of Baking first, but discovered it to be a super fancy wedding cake place, with no actual cakes for sale – just a door leading to a tiny room with enough space for maybe three people to stand, with a counter where you sign up to place an order for a $1000 cake. I clearly wasn’t going to get a sausage roll here.

Sunny Hot Bread

So I walked down a block to Sunny Vi Huong Hot Bread, nestled on a corner spot by a narrow laneway. Now I’m not one to judge a book by its cover, but I was not particularly surprised to find that this was a Vietnamese bakery, almost indistinguishable from the dozens of others that populate suburbs all across Sydney. They usually do a good range of French style breads, plus the odd pastries. The better ones use the bread and fresh ingredients to assemble banh mi pork rolls, as this one offered from a display case at the front of the shop.

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Hayden’s Pies, Ulladulla

bakery, country, nsw, sausage roll

2/166 Princes Hwy, Ulladulla, NSW
haydenspies.com.au

Away for a long weekend at Lake Conjola on New South Wales’ south coast, I checked out the top eating joints in the area. The number one ranked eatery in the nearest large town of Ulladulla was Hayden’s Pies. And before we left, a work colleague of my wife informed her that while we were down there, we had to try Hayden’s Pies. So naturally we did.

Hayden's Pies

The main strip of Ulladulla is situated running up and over a steep hill from sea level at Ulladulla Harbour. Hayden’s Pies is situated on the site of a large hardware store just over the crest of the hill from the centre of town, the the Princes Highway – or the Princes Pieway as indicated on the sign.

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Drummoyne Bakehouse Cafe, Drummoyne, pt. 2

bakery, cafe, city, nsw, vanilla slice

Last time I visited the Drummoyne Bakehouse, I reviewed the sausage roll and one of the two different vanilla slices available. Yes, they had two types: one with vanilla icing, and one with iced sugar on top. I chose the vanilla icing, and the slice earned the maximum 10/10 with its combination crisp shard-like pastry, rich vanilla custard, and extra vanilla and sweetness from the icing.

This time, I had to try the second option. After selecting a pie for the savoury part of lunch, I took it and my icing sugar slice over to Drummoyne Park, to sit in the shade of a tree and let our dog play in the grass while eating.

Vanilla slice, Drummoyne Bakehouse

The slice is the same construction as the icing version, with the only difference being the dusting of powdered white sugar on top in lieu of the pale yellow icing. The three layers of pastry looks crisp and well baked, thick and biscuity, with lots of flakes evident. The custard is pale yellow and creamy looking.

As with the previous slice, the first bite threatens to demolish the slice, with shards of pastry going everywhere and soft custard oozing out from between the pastry pressure plates. Blobs of custard drip onto the paper bag and I have to manoeuvre the slice carefully through all three rotational axes to avoid more falling out. It’s a nibble and lick job, as biting the layers just squeezes more custard out.

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Christophe’s Pâtisserie Française, Lindfield

bakery, city, nsw, sausage roll, vanilla slice,

364 Pacific Highway, Lindfield, New South Wales

It’s been a long time between drinks here at Snot Block & Roll, mostly precipitated by the acquisition a few months ago of Scully, our toy poodle puppy. Raising a puppy limits time available for other activities, alas reviewing sausage rolls and vanilla slices among them! But happily Scully is growing into an adolescent dog and is becoming trained, so it’s easier to take her on trips and to find spare time once more.

On this fine spring day, partly cloudy so not too hot, we ventured forth on an expedition to a small local market at East Lindfield. It was indeed small, but pleasant because it wasn’t the same stallholders who travel around the north Sydney area and can be found at a different local market each weekend. There was a burger van and a stall selling Russian food like blinis and pirogies, but we decided to leave the market and seek out a bakery nearby: Christophe’s Pâtisserie Française at Lindfield proper, a short drive west.

Christophe's Patisserie

Christophe’s is part of a row of old style narrow shop fronts directly facing the Pacific Highway in its role as the main artery through Lindfield. It’s noisy and there’s nothing but a strip of bitumen footpath between the highway and the shop fronts. But the patisserie invites with a display of delicious looking French pastries in the window and an impressively boastful array of certificates plastering one window with pictures of gold and silver medals. These turn out to be local business awards, so not an especially wide competition, but still, presumably it means there is something worth checking out here.

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Ryan’s Bakery & Coffee Lounge, Blayney

bakery, cafe, country, nsw, sausage roll, vanilla slice,

125 Adelaide St, Blayney NSW
www.facebook.com/Ryans-Bakery-Blayney-115751028489238/

Blayney is a small town on the way from Bathurst to Cowra. We had occasion to stop on the way through for lunch, so naturally I sought out a likely looking bakery for a bit of blogging research. We spotted Ryan’s Bakery & Coffee Lounge, and grabbed a table outside despite the 11°C temperature, since we had a newly acquired puppy in tow and couldn’t take advantage of the warm seats indoors.

Ryan's Bakery & Coffee Lounge

The place had a rustic, country style menu, with a selection of pies the most exotic of which was “bolognese” and a special “sweet chilli chicken”. The woman behind the counter hovered near me as I eyed the selection of cakes and pastries, even following me along the counter as I did my survey to the far end, where I spied what looked like a couple of trays of vanilla slices… except with hot pink icing! I asked the woman if they were vanilla slices, and she said yes. So I considered my order.

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Trappers Bakery, Goulburn

bakery, country, nsw, sausage roll, vanilla slice,

4 Sowerby St, Goulburn, New South Wales
trappersbakery.com.au

One fine autumn Saturday we took a driving trip to Goulburn, the first inland city established in Australia, proclaimed as such in 1863. Goulburn is mostly known as a former stop on the long drive between Sydney and Melbourne, and held the distinction of having the most patronised McDonalds outlet in Australia. But with the opening of the Hume Highway bypass in 1992, many travellers now avoid stopping in the city, and it has reverted to a more sleepy country nature.

The Big Merino

The biggest tourist attraction in Goulburn is The Big Merino, a giant concrete sculpture of a ram. Directly across the street from the Big Merino is Trappers Bakery, which was the first hit when I pulled out my phone and searched for “best bakery in goulburn”. So we pulled into the large car park for what is obviously a very popular place. Trappers Bakery is housed in a large rural style brick building with a corrugated iron roof, and it was doing a roaring trade around lunch time, with customers arriving every minute or two. Not only is it a bustling food stop, but adjacent is the Trappers Bakery Motel, offering rooms for travellers on the road.

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Maggio’s Italian Bakery, Cammeray

bakery, city, nsw, sausage roll, special

463 Miller Street, Cammeray, New South Wales
maggios.com.au

The previously reviewed Cammeray Cakes has closed down, but just a few doors down the street now sits Maggio’s Italian Bakery. This is an establishment that was spawned out of the nearby Maggio’s Cafe, which has been an institution in Cammeray since 1998. The new bakery shopfront takes some of the strain from the always busy cafe, allowing people to buy loaves and take-away cakes and pastries without battling the sit-down clientele of the cafe.

Maggio's Bakery

Being an Italian bakery, they are heavy on cannoli, biscotti, bomboloni, and various tortes, but they didn’t have anything resembling a vanilla slice when I scoped the place out. They do however have a pork sausage roll, as well as a small selection of meat pies. I ordered a roll and retreated to a nearby wooden seat under a shady tree outside to inspect their take on the Australian classic.

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Inter Desserts, Artarmon

bakery, cafe, city, nsw, sausage roll, vanilla slice,

Shop 2, 130 Hampden Rd, Artarmon, New South Wales
www.facebook.com/InterDesserts/

I’ve walked past this place several times on exercise-driven peregrinations, and often been tempted by the luscious looking cakes and pastries on display, but had never been in the right state of hunger to pop in and try something. But on a long Sunday walk I arrived here around lunch time, and decided that now was the time. The cakes looked great, but obviously I had to sample the sausage roll and vanilla slice first.

Inter Desserts

It was a hot day, with the sun beating down hard outside, so I chose one of the two small inside tables and grabbed some cool water from the jug on the counter, while waiting for the woman behind the counter to bring out the selections. The sausage roll comes on a rectangular white plate, while the vanilla slice is served on a traditional circular one.

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