Dench Bakers, North Fitzroy

It was such a gorgeous day yesterday that Michael & I ventured out for a walk along the Merri Creek path & emerged on St Georges road for a quick lunch with Chloe at Dench Bakers in North Fitzroy. This is a great bakery that also operates as a café which we hadn’t yet tried out. I have been inside before to purchase the brioche for my Apple Charlotte & I have tried the amazing bomboloni (sensational sugar coated, custard filled doughnut) as pointed out by a couple of local bloggers, Jamie at The Breakfast Blog & Niki at Esurientes, so I was really looking forward to having lunch here.

The place was rocking & of course there were no free tables though there were a couple of stools set up on the side walk so we sat down, had a coffee & waited our turn. A table was free in a few minutes which was great so we happily moved in. The menu was smallish but diverse with various breakfast options both hot & cold, sandwiches, paninis & a great specials board. We both went for the specials, Michael had the zucchini flower & pumpkin risotto which was great while I couldn’t go past the ricotta hotcakes with baked autumn plums even though it was lunch at 1.30 in the afternoon. My dish was sensational, the hotcakes were delicious & the simply baked plums were juicy & sweet & didn’t make the hotcakes go soggy at all which is always a good thing, and look at how huge the serve was! Anyway I love this place & it comes highly recommended, and as Jamie says, as well as eating your brekky or lunch or whatever you will end up walking out the door with a bag of goodies too, the baked goods on offer look too good not to bring some home for later.

Dench Bakers, Atrisan Sourdoughs
109 Scotchmer Street
North Fitzroy VIC 3068
Ph: 03 9486 3554
denchbakers@optusnet.com.au

Apple Charlotte

For a lovely Valentines day dessert (using apples of course) I turned yet again to Nigella for this classic British recipe from Nigella Lawson’s Feast, it falls under the Wedding Feast chapter which is close enough to Valentines day for me. Now this is no ordinary Apple Charlotte & therefore I had to do a bit of shopping before I started this one. Firstly the recipe called for Calvados which I had never heard of before so looked it up using good old Google to learn that it is a fine apple brandy coming from the Normandy region in France, so off to Dan Murphy’s & now have a whole bottle of the stuff which is quite tasty by the way. Next I needed a brioche or challah loaf. Living in Brunswick I had no clue where to find a challah so instead went in search of a brioche. I tried 5 bakeries before I was successful, ended up buying it at Dench's Bakery Cafe, 109 Scotchmer Street, North Fitzroy which by the way looks like a lovely place & think I will be back there for a coffee soon. Normally I would just substitute with the ingredients I had but wanted to make this special for a change & of course to see how good the original recipe is. The end result was nice though as you can see from my picture I didn’t quite get the bread to hold together, don’t think it impacted on the flavour though. The buttery goodness of the brioche definitely stood out over using ordinary bread too. I served this with a bit of double cream though don’t think it really needed anything with it, in fact I enjoyed it plain & cold the next day even better than warm out of the oven when freshly baked. So all in all it was nice to try something different though I found it quite fiddly & probably wouldn’t bother to go to the effort again.

Apple Charlotte

75g golden sultanas (or normal ones)
3 tablespoons Calvados
about 8 Cox’s apples-I used Granny Smiths from my tree (approx 1.35kg)
175-250g unsalted butter, (depending on the staleness of bread)
75g caster sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1 brioche or challah loaf, sliced as thinly as possible & left to become dry but not hard
3 egg yolks (retain the white separately of one of them)
2-3 tablespoons Demerara Sugar

Preheat oven to 180c and at the same time slip in a baking sheet to heat up – or wait to do this while the apples are cooling if you prefer. Put the sultanas and calvados into a small saucepan and bring to the boil, then turn off the heat & leave the fruit to plump up in the liquid while you get on with the puree.

Peel & core the apples & cut each in half, then each half into 6. Put the apple into a pan with 30g of the butter, 60ml water, the caster sugar & the cinnamon stick. Cook over a fairly high heat with the lid on for about 10 minutes or until the apples are soft, then give a good beating with a wooden fork or spoon and transfer the rough puree to a bowl to cool.

Melt the remaining butter and paint the bottom & sides of a 21 or 23cm springform tin. Line the bottom & sides with dry sliced bread, painting it with butter first to mould into a neat jigsaw puzzle of pieces with no gaps, save some slices for the top. Paint the joins with the egg white to help it adhere well & stick together.

Beat the egg yolks and plump sultanas into the cooled apples & then fill the bread lined cake tin with them. Layer the top with buttered bread slices & then butter the top again, before sprinkling over the demerara sugar. Cook on the preheated baking sheet for about 30-40 minutes until the top & sides are crispy & brown.

Remove to a wire rack, and leave to reach the warmer end of room temperature before springing open. Or even safer, unclip in on your serving plate.

Nigella suggests to serve with custard or crème fraiche.

Wedding Anniversary picnic, Lorne

For our 1st wedding anniversary today Michael planned a nice romantic picnic, we picked a spot just off the Great Ocean Road in Lorne, overlooking the waves crashing onto the shore. To celebrate Michael finally put the bottle of 1995 Dom Perignon on ice, it was gorgeous, there is definitely something special about good French champagne, I mean just the thought of it is romantic so luckily it tastes bloody good too!



To go with the champas we had a fine selection of produce that we picked out from the local deli/fruit & veg shop, Yarra Valley fig & Almond paste, Maffra longhorn vintage cheddar, some lovely Cobram estate Olive oil & Malouf’s Classic Egyptian dukkah, dips, kalamata olives, olive bread & a crusty French stick from the bakery, roast chicken, crackers, tomatoes, rocket, grapes, strawberries, chocolate coated apricots, really it was a feast fit for a Queen & no expense was spared. This all made for a luscious romantic day out with my love in a gorgeous setting, Thank you Michael!

Lunch at Ceres

Well, just walked down & had lunch at Ceres the community & environment park in Brunswick. The cafe is open air with mosaic tables scattered under the trees & shade & the food is 80% organic. As well as the cafe I also had a look around the Saturday market & bought some olive bread from the new organic bakery there, cant wait to try it out, the breads all looked fantastic & lots of variety. There is also an organic fruit & veg section as well as other produce & second hand clothes, jewellry stalls etc, quite an interesting place & great to see its all environmentally conscious.

For lunch I had the sour dough toast with pesto, grilled haloumi, rocket & asparagus, sensational & cant wait to go back & try everything else on the menu, esp brekky which sounded yummy & by the looks of other peoples orders swinging by, will be! Just a word of warning, go early or prepare to wait a bit for a free table.