There will be a detailed description on the croissant in the comparison post, but I need to say again, it’s really good. A fun fact is that, the person in front of me ordered five croissants and nothing else. I was thinking, hmmm, that must be your breakfast for the next whole week and you must have really liked their croissants. Turns out their croissants are amazing.

The rest of the order are less of a surprise to me. For the tart, I was expecting a bit of more flavor of passion fruit in the caramel part, but it’s more of sweetness than that. The chocolate ganache part has the correct moderate sweetness and looks pretty though. For the pawpaw cream puff, I’m not sure if the pawpaw is the one I thought it was, but the flavor is not very strong as well. I was regretting a bit that I didn’t get the pistachio flavored cream puff, but then I thought, hmmm, pistachio also don’t give a very strong flavor and it’s also green, so probably won’t be a great difference. The outside of the puff was an average level - overall it tastes good but nothing special.

For the cake part…seriously I’ve been buying their cake a lot, because the combination really attracts me. I was trying to summarize a reason why I was disappointed a lot, I guess it’s because I don’t like the cake’s body part? It’s a very solid type of taste, while I usually prefer more light, fluffy ones. Me myself bake Chiffon more as the body part. My very personal view is that, it would blend better with either the cream or the mousse part you wanna add on the top.

I’ve ended up baking two cakes, one is a basic Basque cake with chocolate ganache top and the other one is what I called an afternoon tea and fruit chocolate cake. The basque cake is relatively easy that consists of a basque part that I baked and cooled in the fridge the night before and a chocolate top part. The chocolate cake was consists of its chocolate chiffon body part, a chocolate milk jelly part inside, mixed berry jam that I made on Thursday in advance, and the hazelnut cookies black tea cream that was basically the heavy whipped cream boiled with the hazelnut cookies black tea I got from The Spice and Tea Exchange.

I think the basque cake was an average level. There’s nothing you can go wrong with the basque cake recipe I used (shared in the recipe section). But the combination with chocolate was, well, not outstanding. I’d still say, the combination with strawberry cream is my favorite so far. For the chocolate cake, needless to say, the mixed berry jam is the MVP. It’s sour & sweet taste reduce the greasy of cream. The hazelnut flavor was not as strong or outstanding as the coconut one I used previously, also from the same store. The middle jello part was also not as bouncy as I imagined, probably need a few more experiments with the recipe’s ratio. Nevertheless I think I’ve been generally doing a great work in combining all the flavors. I could definitely improve on the looking of the cream next time if I have better tools.

I don’t quite have the time out for pastry today and it’s been raining a lot too, so I ordered some pastries from Ovenbird. I’ve been craving their sourdough for a reeeeeeeeeeeeeally long while. The comments on Pain au chocolat will be leave to the pastry comparison post as well as the pictures. Here I put the picture for the danish and sourdough. The danish was good, the smooth taste of cheesecake part combined with the sour sweet of respberry sause, perfect. The only problem I feel: I’d like to have more filling… The sourdough on the other hand, was a really big portion. I forgot to take a photo of its size…terrible mistake…but it’s a large fulfilling portion. I personally like sourdough pretty much, and my favorite way of eating it is to bake it crispy in the airfrier, then add my homemade jam with some unsweetened greek yoghurt (mind here because the jam is already sweet). God, it’s perfect. Please, everyone, try this out!!!

The list of items followed are in the sequence of time as I bought them. I’ll give the rate of stars separately.

Ovenbird Bakery

At the first sight of the cut section, I was not quite impressed. It have large and vacant inside bubbles as you can see from the picture. The first bite was a pleasant experience though -- they did some special work on forming a crispy and shiny layer on the top of the croissant. The chocolate part was solid. Not sure if it's because I ate it directly as I received it or what, it looks a bit cold. I like the general taste but I can't say it's a very outstanding chocolate croissant judging from all aspects.

Maillard Patisserie

I wasn't able to cut the croissant into two half to show the inside because it's simply too crunchy to be cut, while not destroying the shape of it. The inside structure was perfect, you can see the beautiful layer, meaning they've done a incredibly great job in making the puff pastry initially. The chocolate inside is melting a little bit, it was around 20 degrees outside so I reckon it's meant to be in this status (not because it's too hot outside). And the chocolate part melt with the crispy outside into your mouth -- a very delightful taste. The only reason that I minus 0.2 score is that you can feel the bottom of the croissant to be a bit oily, which I think is normal for a pastry that has such a nice crunchy structure, but meanwhile I was wondering if there's any way to avoid this.

Ovenbird 4/5 Maillard 4.8/5

Origins

Desserts(?)

Poems & Best Wishes

As for maritozzo, it is a traditional dessert originated from the Rome and Lazio region. It’s said that the original maritozzi buns are without cream and probably served with honey. Maritozzi alla panna means with cream. But I guess people just shorten it to maritozzi. One website said there’s a tradition for Roman young men to put rings or golden stuffs in the maritozzi and gift it to their fiances¹. I personally feel like people are putting rings into everything nowadays, ice creams, cakes, blablabla… I guess if you feel like your boyfriend is about to propose, be very careful about the things you eat, or communicate beforehand for another way of proposing lol.

Comming back to the dessert I bought. For the doppio version, the bread part follows the style (possibly also recipe) of their orange bread. The bread’s texture is rough and loose, and is not sweet (but the orange flavor is also very light). The cream is vanilla flavored, and you can see vanilla seeds inside, moderate sweetness. There is a strip of fig and plum jam at the bottom of the bread seam, which adds sweetness and blends the flavor to prevent the cream part from being too greasy overall. The figs on top are soft and have no specific flavor. I am not sure if they have been pickled. Maybe a fresh and slightly crispy texture will provide a different experience. However, due to the roughness of the bread, I felt that the overall integration was not very good, and even a little choked when eating.

For the Cafe Dear Leon version, the bun’s texture is much different. It’s soft and much more well blended with the taste of the cream. I think they followed the traditional recipe of Maritozzi and brushed the sugar syrup on the outside of the buns when baking. It gives the buns a very shiny, tempting look on the outside, but a bit sticky when you are trying to hold the bun. There ain’t much to say about the cream and strawberry jam - they are good but not surprising.

Btw, does anyone know how to eat Maritozzi gracefully? Normally when I bite on to the bun part, the cream will be squeezed out and I have to eat in the order of bun-cream-bun-cream so as not to spill the cream everywhere. Plz do let me know if there’s a better way.

The real thing to blame for my sugar crashed morning is the banana pudding for sure. I was planning to buy their corn cheese garlic bun at first…but they are sold out!!!!! I mean, really?! I was in the line around 8:50AM and they are sold out. Disappointed, I ordered the banana pudding instead. They actually removed the pudding from the menu this month but somehow selling again just for this weekend. It is not a traditional type of pudding to think of (but some may know nilla wafer banana pudding?), consisting of vanilla diplomat cream, Nilla wafer and banana. The cream part is a bit too sweet…I have to say. Not to mention banana is one of the highest sugar containing fruits. If there’s something in this pudding that is not sweet, I’m sure they will blend well together, but no. The only surprise is the crispiness of nilla wafer provides a different texture of taste.

I didn’t taste much alcohol, but it does have the smell of coffee. The finger biscuits are just right in moisture, unlike those sold in some stores that are too wet and have coffee dripping out (kinda messy). The mascarpone cream part was traditional or normal, just the exact taste I was expecting. The overall flavor was great, and the layer of cocoa powder on top was definitely the finishing touch.

I also got their fig & honey pie. Although the overall sweetness is a bit high, it is undeniable that the taste is eye-catching. Maybe because it is a honey pie, the inside of the tart is relatively sticky. It feels like eating caramel Fig mainly plays a decorative role lol, and does not affect the overall flavor much.

I feel like we don’t have much fig dessert in China except from dried fig or fig jam, which are easier for storage. Therefore it’s definitely a new experience and interesting to see so many pastry shops using fig in their dessert in this season.

The Birthday Croissant has the “Full Moon Croissant” shape, and also differs in texture from the horn-shaped croissants. It has a thin layer of white chocolate on the surface and is decorated with colorful sprinkles. The interior is filled with vanilla-flavored cream and mixed-berry jam. The berry jam provides a sweet and sour flavor, which nicely neutralizes the greasiness of the cream and surface frosting. In general it’s a nice, refreshing pastry and just the enough sugar to start the day energetically.

I really wanted to try their Full Moon Tiramisu Croissant, which looks absolutely tempting. But unfortunately they removed it from the menu before I got a chance to go. Hope they will sell it again one day. (Hear my wish plzzzzzzz!)

I did a bit of searching on who invented this name for full moon croissant but got no clue. There were a similar type of croissant popular in China called growth rings record croissant (年轮唱片可颂). No matter who came up with these names, I’d say they are genius.

The pastry is very nice. There is no special highlight in the taste, but it is very well blended and the sweetness is moderate. The “basket” part is similar to regular croissant but rather in a egg tart’s shape. Underneath the peach is a creamy part that tasted like custard cream. Personally, I think the most outstanding feature of this product is how they deal with the peaches. The color is so pretty, and looks very appetizing. Looks great in photos too.

The Chausson aux blablabla is traditional french pastry that could be translate to blablabla turnover. So Chausson aux Peche is a peach turnover and Chausson aux Pommes (more commonly seen I guess?) is an apple turnover. Usually it comes with a rather crispy outside and some fruit + jam mixed fillings. For their Chausson aux Peche, I like the outside part pretty much – and look how beautiful it is in the picture, decorated by pistachio matcha crumbs – but the inside peach fillings are a bit of disappointment. I haven’t make peach jam before but I think the flavor is not very peachy somehow. But maybe it’s just because peach simply doesn’t provide a strong flavor. I mean, cherry never gives a strong flavor saying it’s cherry when it’s made to be jam…so probably peach is the same.

I had the Soboro bun for breakfast the next day and I like it pretty much. It was way larger than I thought though. I was expecting a palm size bun probably the size as a pineapple bun, but it’s almost my full hand size big. And to be honest, I was actually updating this blog a month later, because – I realize I mismatched something they gave me.

So if you take a look at the picture above from their instagram, you’ll realize there’s a creamy little ball beside the pastry. It is said in their introduction that it’s the vanilla mascarpone cream. When they give me the pastries, they put it in a little box and I misunderstood that it goes with the soboro bun. So what I did was basically spreading the cream onto the soboro bun while I was eating. The soboro bun has no fillings and the combination was great. I largely enjoyed doing so – until I found out it’s not meant to be like that. And I found out the truth because the next time I was taking someone with me to the pastry shop, he ordered soboro bun but didn’t get anything. After checking the instagram, everthing’s clear 😂.

But anyway, I guess there’s a supposed way to eat the cream but there’s as always no single correct way to do it. As long as it’s good, it’s the correct way. Bon appetit friends!

So here I am, I took the bus all the way down to this cute, pretty, little pastry shop called Dulceology Bakery. Tbh, I first notice this bakery because someone left a review in some other pastry shop blaming them for not doing a great work and claimed she’s turning to Dulceology Bakery for the next order. The bakery looks gorgeous on the outside, very cute and has macaron styled color. I ordered two types of donuts, the first was a square shaped donuts with creme brulee shell. The other one is a simple fried donut with chocolate fillings. They are unsurprisingly too sweet for me to be honest, but since I am craving sugar I guess they did their job perfectly?

Speaking of donuts, it always brings me back to my college time in Shanghai. I have a friend from the same societies and we used to go out together for fun. He’s very obssessed with sweet food, donuts in specific and there’s a dunkin donuts’ shop in the shopping mall near our school that he usually buy donuts from.