Pastry: Hideously under baked and soggy 3/10
Presentation: Somewhat unique and pretentious 4/10
Value for money: $7- Ridiculously priced and well below par 3.5/10
Overall score: 4.5/10
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Filling: Delicious tasting, overly set vanilla custard 7.5/10 Pastry: Hideously under baked and soggy 3/10 Presentation: Somewhat unique and pretentious 4/10 Value for money: $7- Ridiculously priced and well below par 3.5/10 Overall score: 4.5/10 A trendy Melbourne styled cafe in Port Fairy selling a decent coffee and freshly baked pastries is what I envisaged. Admittedly the coffee was great, but the vanilla slices being sold her are extremely confusing. Lets start with something positive - the flavour of the custard. With speckled vanilla bean running throughout the mix, the creaminess coupled with the sweet vanilla was delicious. However, the mixture suffers from far too much cornflour or setting agent and the texture resembled more of a panna cotta than a lush custard. Surrounding the custard were some very sad and under baked layers of 'pastry'. Although a good thickness they were just too soggy and offered nothing to the ensemble. And as for the lemon...Perhaps lets not even go there. A word of advice Bank St & Co - Get the product right, then price it accordingly.
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Filling: Foamy sweetened cream, nothing else 5/10 Pastry: Invisible and undetectable 1/10 Presentation: Plump squares of cream with a pink hat 5/10 Value for money: $3.50. Better looking in the cabinet, impossible to eat 5/10 Overall score: 4/10 These vanilla slices looked half decent in the cabinet, but sadly mine got trounced in the takeaway bag. The icing had to be peeled off the bag's inner wall and transplanted back onto the slice. I have never eaten a vanilla slice where the pastry has actually gone M.I.A. I've had my fair share of soggy, stale, too thick, too thin, dry and flavourless pastry layers, but never have I had a slice that made me actually ask "Is there pastry in this thing?". If there was pastry here, it was a hairs width at best and practically undetectable to the taste buds. Furthermore, it allowed the cream to ooze out with every bite and half ended up on the floor. The icing was also too sweet on top of the already sweetened whipped cream.
Filling: Swiss cheese custard mix 3.5/10
Pastry: Under baked but a slight crisp 4/10 Presentation: Old school, traditional passionfruit topping 7/10 Value for money: $4.00- Pretty average all round 5/10 Overall score: 4.9/10
Stop one of a long drive to the South Australian border. Very traditional vanilla slices are being sold at this trendy little bakery in Winchelsea - the ADHD pink icing offering or the passionfruit icing variety. Obviously selecting the latter, I chomped this thing down quickly. Its consumption benefited from being set like a jelly rather than an oozing custard bite scenario. The custard was bland and pretty flavourless, as were the anemic pastry layers. The only real sweetness came from the icing, which was actually the highlight of the slice. A welcome pit stop but not a great vanilla slice.
Filling: Average creamy custard 5.5/10
Pastry: Well baked, thin layers, but soggy 5/10 Presentation: Very average, uninspiring tri-layer effort 5.5/10 Value for money: $4.90- Yesterday's offering at today's price 3.5/10 Overall score: 4.9/10
Mrs B brought me home dessert whilst out at Westfield - Result! Unfortunately, the slice in question was not made today, but most probably yesterday. This made the pastry pretty hopeless for cutting into smaller chunks. Freshness really let this vanilla slice down, as sadly the pastry was actually a good thickness, consistency and golden baked. A very average cream custard mix filled the pastry layers, and was not overly vanilla flavoured. A rather measly dusting of icing sugar left me wishing this thing at least had vanilla icing on top - but sadly not. I've said this before; cafes like this should have the decency to sell slightly stale goods at a knocked down price.
Filling: A mountain of heavy, thickened whipped cream 7/10
Pastry: Puffed layers (not fresh), bottom layer soggy 5/10 Presentation: Rustic and homemade 8/10 Value for money: $5 (estimate)- Giant portion but not innovative 6/10 Overall score: 6.5/10
Cafe Bear and Scoobs was a fortuitous find through Twitter, but turned out to be a very welcome stop whilst in Geelong. I loved the friendly welcome and the overall vibe inside, not to mention the fantastic Central Perk-style mugs of coffee. What did annoy me though was being served yesterday's portion of vanilla slice when a freshly baked batch just got delivered from the kitchen. To add insult to injury, the bottom layer of cardboard- I mean pastry, was practically impossible to cut with any sharp implement. The jam and mammoth serving of cream was tasty but way too rich and as a result the slice remained unfinished. I do much prefer the tight flaky layers of pastry as I feel these tend to retain more crisp to the bite over their 'allowed to puff' cousins. Therefore most of what was left was indeed the pastry layers. Nevermind about the vanilla slice incident, but I will be back for another mug of coffee in the future.
Filling: Old school bakery custard 5.5/10 Pastry: Well baked and thin, though not crisp (not fresh) 6/10 Presentation: Enticing ooze of pinky white icing, very yellow custard 8/10 Value for money: $2.40 - Very cheap and reasonable but lacking 7/10 Overall score: 6.6/10 After a recommendation from Oriana who took time to fill out a contact form through the site, I visited the Edwardes Street bakery. Everything about this establishment screams 'old school'. I love the old fashioned shop frontage with cakes in the window and I love the retro logo on all of their packaging. The vanilla slice was no different - just like from days gone by. I bet they haven't changed their recipe in decades and selling slices at only $2.40 the pricing was extremely reasonable too.
This is probably what most people assume all vanilla slices taste like; a sweet and almost set, non-descript, yellow custard filled sandwich of slightly stale pastry topped off with sweet, sticky, white icing. Whilst I appreciate that the pastry could have been better when freshly baked, the custard was very average and lacking creaminess, fluffiness, vanilla and egg. The real highlight was the sticky icing that left itself welded to my fingers post slice. Not all slices taste like this, or in fact need to taste like this. Thanks for the recommendation Oriana, keep them coming. |
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January 2022
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