Yesterday The Funky Bunch Custard Crusaders traversed 200km in the pursuit of Vanilla Slice. We were in Mount Macedon and drove across to blustery Trentham and on to Malmsbury. We stopped in Castlemaine and travelled as far as Maldon, bypassing the award winning scones for their rumoured to be delicious 'Zen' organic slice, only to have our hopes dashed. Zen only makes their Mille Feuille style Vanilla Slice on Thursdays, and they sell so fast they need to be ordered in advance.
Pictured above is all we came up with. Although the Malmsbury Bakery was doing a roaring business, their photogenic Vanilla Slice was disappointingly merely adequate. A rock hard icing, dusted with icing sugar topped crisp pastry, sandwiching a cloyingly rich custard, that left a fatty coating on the lips. The consensus was that the good Bakers of Malmsbury had plenty of room for improvement.
Later this week - given the time - I aim to launch The Vanilla Slice Blog - a quest for perfection. The Custard Crusaders will review Vanilla Slices and Mille Feuilles on their travels, scoring the custard concoctions that they come across out of twenty, for custard, pastry, icing and the degree of difficulty in tackling the sweet slippery mass. Stay tuned for more.
10 comments:
Ooooh, I didn't know you were a vanillaslicavore! Hooray! Are you the thick and tasty custard (think France) or the cream-whipped-into-custard (think Kyneton) kinda gal?
Me, it has to be custard. The creamy stuff is for emergencies (but is definitely way better than the custard filth at many chain bakeries or that 'Michel's Patisserie' lot).
I am definitely for thick custard over cream, though given the choice between a gelatinous jelly like 'snot block' I would err on the side of the soft, creamy Creme Patissiere.
We welcome any suggestions of where to go and have earmarked the award winners of this year's Vanilla Slice Championships in Ouyen. Mr Stickyfingers' brother will be bribed to bring some of these extraordinary VS down from his home town of Tatura in exchange for a bag of South Melbourne Market Dim Sims.
Oh!
My!
Giddy!
Aunt!!
A fellow vanillasliceavore here!!!!
Get thee down to the Conti in Sorrento for one of theirs!!! (better by far than from the bakery next door which self-proclaims they have Sorrento's best v-slice.. but handy geography for a side-by-side tasting)
Wafer-thin pasty, sandwiching an almost cheese-cake like filling a-topped with real cream and icing sugar.
**insert sound of heavenly choir of seraphim**
Thanks PG, I've had the Sorrento Bakery one and it's on the list - an extremely difficult one to eat. Mr SF even has a photo of it on his phone. But now we have an excuse to do another.
According to The Collective there is a fantastic...and HUGE...one at San Sebastian in Hampton, where Mr SF grew up. Will aim to launch the blog with 3 reviews before we head to The Barossa this weekend.
What are the parameters for "difficult to eat"?
The Conti ones take a knife and fork and are FAR superior, IMHO, to the Bakery ones.
However, I've only had the bakery ones as take-away, where as we always sit and wanker-watch whilst eating at the Conti with said knife and fork, so the application of methodology is different.
I am SO onto this!!
I feel a visit to Purple Nannie in Hampton coming on!
We decided that the degree of difficulty is the splat factor. The easier the VS is to eat, with hands or a fork, the higher the score. That means that neither the pastry or icing is too hard, nor the custard too viscous. Requiring a knife and fork is definitely going to lose points for wankyness.
Much as I am partial to both Vanilla Ice and Vanilla Slice, it was actually your incisive wit that led me here from the comments section of Ed at Tomato's pages.
Hear hear. Let the tomato slinging begin. Naughty Mr Lethlean.
Thanks Lucy - I just noticed that I belted the comment on Ed's site out so fast that there were some frightful typo's in terms of spelling and grammar - oh well. I'm going to enjoy this Tomatilla! Thanks for stopping by.
I always envy pple that can bake! Awesome.
The bakery on the left side of the end of Maling Road, in Canterbury has an award winning slice and it is extremely good. I heard from the entrants in the Royal Melbourne Show that they use glucose in the icing to give it gloss and smoothness, it would stop it from being hard like the one you spoke about. Vida x
Post a Comment