Tag Archives: slice8

Two Brothers, Lane Cove

cafe, city, nsw, restaurant, vanilla slice

6-8 Burns Bay Rd, Lane Cove, New South Wales

While still under COVID-19 restrictions, Mrs Snot Block & Roll had a necessary appointment at her optometrist in a nearby suburb, so we had an excuse to make a small outing of it, picking up a coffee (for her) and a sweet treat for myself along the way. The normally bustling Lane Cove shopping village was a bit more sparsely populated than usual, with most of the shops and cafes open for business. One of them was Two Brothers Cafe Restaurant, which, while not open for seat-in dining due to the rules, was serving take-away drinks and snacks.

Two Brothers, Lane Cove

In the front window was a tray of vanilla slices!

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Knight’s Bakehouse, Castle Hill

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

159 Ridgecrop Drive, Castle Hill
www.knightsbridgeshoppingcentre.com.au/directory/knights-bakehouse-bakery

Following Scully’s successful Delta Dogs audition and my snack at Shepherd’s Artisan Bakehouse, we went a couple of hours later on a quest for lunch. Searching the Castle Hill area located a suburban bakery that we decided to check out, in a smaller local shopping centre than the massive Castle Towers across the other side of Castle Hill. This was Knights Bakehouse (which also eschewed any apostrophe, in the same way as Davids Cakes, reviewed recently).

Knights Bakehouse, Castle Hill

Also similarly to Davids Cakes, they had two types of vanilla slice, a traditional yellow custardy one with passionfruit icing, and a “French” vanilla slice, with a more creamy style filling and an icing sugar topping.

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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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The Prolific Oven, Santa Clara, California

bakery, cafe, city, overseas, vanilla slice

3938 Rivermark Plaza, Santa Clara, California, USA
www.prolificoven.com

I was on a business trip to Santa Clara in California, to attend meetings at the Intel headquarters there. On the day I arrived, I checked into my hotel, and then went for a walk to find the nearest cluster of shops. This turned out to be Rivermark Village, a new looking outdoor shopping mall in the Californian style, with a bunch of shops surrounded by an expansive area of asphalt dedicated to parking the hundreds of cars that Americans use to get everywhere. I wasn’t particularly intending to get anything to eat, but I passed a bakery called The Prolific Oven, and popped my nose in for a quick peek to see what sort of things they had.

The Prolific Oven

Perusing the cakes and pastries, my eyes were stopped and riveted by what was obviously a vanilla slice, but with a bright red topping! It had the traditional wavy lines of white icing, but decorating a translucent and visually appealing red glaze. There was only one left in the counter, sitting on a large tray with a fresh raspberry next to it. I deduced that this must be a raspberry vanilla slice. I had to have it!

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Bakehouse South Coogee, South Coogee

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

142 Malabar Rd, South Coogee, New South Wales
www.bakehousesc.com.au

A sunny late autumn morning is perfect for a morning tea, and for exploring new bakeries. We took a drive over to Coogee and continued south to the Bakehouse South Coogee, which sits on a traditional corner store site surrounded by residential properties, and right across the street form the sprawling old Randwick Cemetery, which is situated on a gentle hillside with wonderful views.

Bakehouse South Coogee

The bakehouse is busy, with plenty of locals popping in for a coffee and a croissant or something a bit more substantial. Besides bread and pasties, the bakers do an impressive line in cakes, with a couple of dozen mouth-watering varieties all on display. One is an amazing looking multi-colour iced rainbow cake, which is also available by the slice, sitting right next to the huge vanilla slices.

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Glenorie Bakery, Glenorie

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

930 Old Northern Rd, Glenorie NSW
www.glenoriebakery.com.au

Glenorie sits an hour or so’s drive from Sydney, in the rural northwestern region that seems to have escaped rampant suburbanisation and remains a haven for people who prefer a slower pace of life, wide open fields, and properties large enough to raise horses on. Amidst the small clusters of villages that exist to support this lifestyle sits the shopping region of Glenorie, with a supermarket and a handful of small stores selling scented soaps, hand made rag dolls, and antiques. And amongst these is the Glenorie Bakery, which seems to be a modern building but constructed in the style of a century old woolshed.

Glenorie Bakery

Walking inside reveals an expansive interior space, filled with all manner of antique farming, baking, and retail equipment. The decor is “1900s farmhouse”, and rust appears to be the decorating material of choice. There’s an old… plough or something hanging from the ceiling, wooden wagon wheels reclining against the walls, and sheafs of wheat decorating large rustic wooden shelves containing enough knick-knacks to stock a large antique shop or rural museum. There are some large dough mixing machines which look like they were retired some time before the Second World War.

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Oaks Avenue Patisserie, Dee Why

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

9 Oaks Avenue, Dee Why, New South Wales
facebook.com/Oaks-Avenue-Patisserie-9-Oaks-avenue-Dee-Why-NSW-181289418550820/

On a leisurely weekend drive to the beach suburb of Dee Why, we popped into Oaks Patisserie for an afternoon snack and cuppa. This is a small bakery on a somewhat dingy old retail strip just around the corner from the busy Pittwater Road, so the ambience is not great. Inside, however, is a mouth-watering array of cakes and pastries, which look colourful and artfully assembled. I ordered a sausage roll and vanilla slice and they were delivered by staff to one of the two outside tables for us to contemplate.

Oaks Avenue Patisserie

The sausage roll looks promising enough at first sight, with golden flaky pastry and ever so slightly burnt bits on the ends. However, on the first bite a different experience is revealed. The pastry is a little on the dry side, not greasy or buttery at all. The pastry case has pulled away from the meat filling, leaving a hollow space in between, but pastry is actually middling to okay.

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Mara’s Italian Pastry, San Francisco

cafe, overseas, vanilla slice

503 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, USA
www.sanfranciscorestaurants.com/maras-italian-pastry/

I was visiting San Francisco for a conference, and outside of conference hours I spent some time exploring the city. The North Beach area is famous for its Italian heritage and modern day Italian restaurants. Mixed in with the pizza and pasta places are a few little pastry shops. One is the famous Stella Pastry & Cafe, which I’ve visited before and is so good that I wanted to return for dessert after a dinner nearby. But alas, for the week that I was in town, Stella’s was closed for renovations!

Mara's Italian Pastry

But this being North Beach, fortunately I didn’t have to go far to discover another Italian pastry shop. I was walking down Columbus Avenue when my eyes were drawn to the sugar-laden windows of Mara’s Italian Pastry. This hole-in-the-wall was a tiny cafe with only three small tables inside, and a counter loaded up with biscotti and other baked goodies. The real treat was in the front window, however, which contained succulent looking fruit danishes, poppy seed cakes, slices, rolls, and countless other delicacies. There were also a couple of trays of square dish pizzas, cut into slices, for anyone silly enough to come in here and want something savoury.

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Delitalia Gourmet Foods, Crows Nest

cafe, city, nsw, vanilla slice

84-90 Atchison Street, Crows Nest, New South Wales
www.superfresh.net.au/superfreshcrowsnest.html

Delitalia is a cafe and Italian delicatessen on the premises of the giant Superfresh greengrocer in Crows Nest. I buy fresh fruit and vegetables here sometimes, and this is also the supplier for the imported Italian pasta that I get for cooking fancy pasta meals. Besides the usual fruit and veges, the deli stocks a wide variety of meats, sausages, cheeses, and Italian groceries, including ready to heat-and-eat items such as arancini and lasagnes. They also have a cake section in the attached cafe, with ricotta cakes, cannoli, biscotti, shortbread, and numerous other delights. And nestled amongst these is the good old Aussie vanilla slice, but with an Italian twist.

Delitalia Gourmet Foods

I ordered a slice and sat at the indoor tables – there are also a handful of al fresco tables just outside on the footpath. It’s served on a plate lined with a sheet of paper, with a fork supplied for eating. It’s a very attractive looking slice, with a multifarious layered appearance. From bottom to top, there is a layer of golden brown pastry with plenty of flakiness evident, topped by a layer of dark yellow custard with a slightly moist appearance. This is topped by a second layer of custard, much lighter in colour and more dry looking in texture. Then follows a repeat of these three layers, topped by a third layer of pastry, which is in turn topped by a slab of white icing with the traditional crosswise lines of brown dragged into an alternating zig-zaggy patten by a skewer during the icing process.

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The Flaky Tart, redux, Kirribilli

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

4 Ennis Rd, Kirribilli, New South Wales

In a first for Snot Block & Roll, this is a re-review! Mr Coker wrote up his original review of The Flaky Tart bakery in Kirribilli some time ago. As the review was very good and the bakery is not too far away, I decided to sample the wares myself. And then I figured why not write up my own conclusions!

The Flaky Tart

A bit of research reveals that The Flaky Tart is not a one-off shop here under the Harbour Bridge at Kirribilli, but is actually a branch of the better known Flaky Tart bakery of Rose Bay, on the south side of the harbour. Perhaps I’ll have to travel over there one day to sample its wares as well.

But on this fine sunny day in Kirribilli, I purchased a sausage roll, vanilla slice, and because I was very hungry, also a chicken and mushroom pie. I found a wooden bench seat nearby, perched on the side of the steeply sloping Ennis Road, overlooking the shops and restaurants of Broughton Street below. As I sat, an inquisitive seagull appeared – perhaps the very same gull that eyed Mr Coker’s samples in the previous review!

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