dessert

50sixone

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment
ice cream
House made ice cream

date of visit: Saturday 16 July 2016
disclaimer: I was a guest at the launch

50sixone (the name is, indeed, Hyde Park’s postcode) is the latest addition to King William Road. Although it’s billed as the street’s newest dessert bar, it will actually serve you plenty of savoury food too. It opens at 7am – and if red velvet pancakes first thing are not your thing, then you do have plenty of interesting choices.

The launch party was (bravely I think!) held on a Saturday morning. It was great weather, King William Road was busy and 50sixone was filling up with Adelaide food lovers and media.

While we enjoyed some bubbles (civilised at any time of day) we were able to take in the fit out and photograph an array of full size dishes that had been pre-prepared. After the official opening by Unley’s Lord Mayor, Robert Clyne, we were then treated to a selection of mini-treats from the kitchen.

salmon and fennel
the full size ‘salmon and fennel’ – $21

We had little smoked salmon canapés based on the menu’s ‘salmon and fennel’ followed by the smoked salmon slider from the ‘breakfast sliders’ trio. Our final savoury taster was the crispy corn fritter which was lovely. The fritter really was crispy and it was topped with a bacon jam.

breakfast sliders
‘breakfast sliders’ – smoked salmon slider on far left – $17

Then it was on to things sweet. Mini red velvet pancakes, peanut butter ice cream sandwich (which you’ll find on the menu as ‘between two cookies’ – your choice of ice cream) and then Andy and I wrapped up by sharing the ‘Oreo you glad to see me’ shake. Unless you’re a particularly thirsty sweet tooth, I’d suggest ensuring you find a friend to share a shake with – they’re not small!

oreo milkshake topped with zeppola and cream
Oreo you glad to see me? – $17

I really enjoyed everything I tried, particularly the smoked salmon slider. Obviously, for hardened dessert fans, this place will be heaven but it’s great to see that other tastes have been catered to too. The ice cream is housemade and looked absolutely amazing – and if you’re really keen you can pre-order Australia’s most expensive ice cream. It might be $55 a pop but it is all layered up with gold leaf!

There’s been a lot of hype around 50sixone’s launch and I understand that at the moment it can be ridiculously busy. I almost returned in the final week of school holidays (until my friend and I realised that we’d never get our five year olds to eat anything but ice cream!) which might have been a bit chaotic for me. However, I definitely plan to head back and check out both a savoury dish and some of that ice cream.

50sixone
144a King William Road
Hyde Park SA 5061
phone: 8271 2003

Chocolate Taperia

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

Untitled

date of visit:  Saturday 20 July 2013

So, going out for dessert is now a ‘thing’. There are dessert bars all over Adelaide, or so it seems and while I have one friend who is a devotee of one of them, so far I’ve not yet done the dessert thing.

Generally, I am lazy. Once I am sitting comfortably, with a glass of wine in hand, I see no reason to traipse around and (perish the thought!) queue to eat dessert.

However, one friend was unable to make dinner at The Himalayan Kitchen due to his hockey match, but he would be able to make it out to North Adelaide for dessert. I vaguely remembered there being a churros place on Melbourne Street, and the internet obliged with the details. And twitter supplied me with the recommendation that I book (thanks D!).

Thank goodness I did book because Chocolate Taperia was packed: I guess there’s something about a freezing cold night that makes everyone think that stuffing themselves with fried pastry dipped in chocolate is a good idea. Due to a last minute addition we squeezed around our table even though the staff looked a little muddled.

Chocolate Taperia suffers from its apparent popularity. Far too many tables and chairs have been packed into a small venue. This means that not only are you squeezing past people to get to your seat, it also means that the ambience is best described as ‘deafeningly noisy’. God help you if you are on a romantic night out because by the time you’ve bellowed at the waiter who can’t hear you, you’ll be so hoarse you won’t even be capable of whispering sweet nothings.

It took a while for our order to be taken (the menu is very short – even our table of 9 took but minutes to decide) and we really couldn’t shake the nervous feeling that really, things were pretty chaotic.

Those nerves were unfounded – our orders came out swiftly and accurately. And while I’m really not sure about having so little space that waiters are forced to pass food across the heads of diners, my churros hit the nail on the head.

They were light, they were crisp, they weren’t oily, they were dredged in sugar (seriously, they ARE doughnuts – one of my mates complained about the amount of sugar!), and the dark chocolate sauce which I ordered was not too sweet at all.

A serve of churros is $9, with sauce an additional $2.50. And a serve is large (5 or 6 churros). There was no way I needed to eat that much and I was lucky that I could palm off the odd half here and there to various people around the table (all of whom, apparently, didn’t need to eat any more but didn’t need too much egging on either).

But is a tasty dessert enough to salvage that frenetic ambiance? For me? No. I don’t want to feel stressed about my table or my order, I don’t want food waving over my head. And just because a venue is dimly lit, it doesn’t make it romantic.

I know that plenty of people will love what Chocolate Taperia provides – but for us, it just missed the mark.

Chocolate Taperia on Urbanspoon

Pavlova

- Alex Leave a comment

IMG_2904

No arguments today about whether the pav is Australian or Kiwi but I think I can posit that it’s a quintessentially Australian summer dish, found on tables from Christmas onwards.

Another dessert contribution at our Christmas meal, I liked the idea that it was something I could prep in advance and wouldn’t require huge amounts of oven heat. Mum almost always has egg whites in the freezer (they freeze brilliantly, last for ages and work perfectly once defrosted) so she donated 5 egg whites and instructed that “well, I always use Stephanie’s recipe”.

My idea was to do my usual 1 egg white, 55g of caster sugar mix (that’s thanks to Gordon Ramsay) but mum looked a bit doubtful and went on about Stephanie Alexander (again). Had it not been for Jules writing about meringues and the key to a chewy meringue being corn flour, I might have ignored both mum and Stephanie, but she did, so I duly noted the recipe from The Cook’s Companion.

Stephanie’s recipe uses 4 egg whites and 250g caster sugar, which I think is too much per egg white. So I scaled back and for my 5 egg whites I used 275g of caster sugar. I guess if you like things sweet, use more sugar!

Begin by heating the oven to 180°C (conventional) and draw a 20 cm diameter circle on a piece of baking paper. Get a very very clean bowl (grease of any type is your enemy here – make sure whatever you use is clean and dry) and whisk your egg whites, with a pinch of salt, to soft peaks before slowly adding the caster sugar. Whisk until your meringue mix is stiff and glossy. Naturally, for this part I was using my stand mixer, and I was ably assisted by my toddler (who, I suspect, thought we should have spent all afternoon adding mounds of sugar …).

This is where I’d normally stop and consider job done. However, Stephanie’s recipe calls for sprinkling over ~ 2 tsp corn flour, 1 tsp white wine vinegar and a few drops of vanilla extract. I didn’t bother scaling these small quantities up. You then fold these into the mix (gently, gently – you don’t want to knock out air!) and then mound the meringue onto your reversed baking paper, following your traced outline. Use a few dobs of meringue to hold the baking paper to the tray.

Place in the oven (which is at 180°C) and immediately reduce the heat to 150°C and cook for about 1¼ hours. Then turn the oven off and leave the meringue in until it’s all cool.

When you’re ready to serve, whisk ~ 300mL pure cream and arrange your choice of fruit on top. I used strawberries and halved cherries. I finished with some passionfruit pulp in syrup (I had to buy this last minute in a tin at the supermarket which is actually a really handy way of doing it): this adds some much needed acidity and also gives the pav and fruit a lovely glossy finish.

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This served 9 people easily, and there was a little bit left over too. And as pavlova has fruit on it, it’s kind of like health food …