Best Cake in HK － Tony Wong Patisserie in Wan Chai Hong Kong

Meticulous presentation - also notice the lower amount of glare and condensation on the glass of the display fridge. Wondering if it's the lighting, the glass or the fridge.

Hope the photos do justice to the real thing. They remind us of some of the better cake shops in Japan.

Dad mentioned that Tony Wong Patisserie had some good reviews when its only shop was in Kowloon City, but the area was never high on his culinary list ever since they follow the advice of Chua Lam (蔡瀾) and went to this Thai restaurant located in Kowloon City which was diabolical. It was the era before the advent of GPS phones and you could only find your way by navigating a booklet of maps, known as "A to Z" in the UK and 地圖王 in HK. With absolutely zero sense-of-direction inside a dimly-lit car, you can just about imagine, so we're not gonna bore you with the details. Suffice to say after driving round and round blocks after blocks of nondescript buildings, he finally stopped the car inside a tight semi-lit car multi-level carpark nearby. When the Tom Yum Kung arrived, it was lurk warm and the prawns didn't taste very fresh either. The rest of the meal brought no positive surprises. Two lessons came out from this journey to the dark side:

• take a handful (not just a pinch) of salt on any culinary advices offered by Chua Lam, 蔡瀾. [Would love to hear anyone's take on this!]
• don't drive to Kowloon City

So when dad heard that Tony Wong Patisserie (TWP) has opened a branch in Wan Chai, he couldn't wait to go. Finally he and mum went there with Uncle & Auntie S. After having queueing for 1 hour for ramen at Tamashii 魂, (yes again!!), they walked over to TWP. The shop was brightly lit with very clean and simple decor. There were a couple of stools and two cantilever benches either side of the shop,  not a romantic hangout by any stretch of imaginations. The shop's highlight are the rows after rows of mini patisserie, tarts and cakes inside two display-fridges. And rightly so. They picked 4 different ones and shared every single one. Lets just say mum and dad will go back there soon!!

Green Tea Opera - a lot of different flavors in one bite, you can even tell the green tea taste from the chocolate. A bit firm for the chocolate layer but I guess it adds texture to the cake. This looks like the Tanabata special edition cake from Sadaharu Aoki without the sugar Milky Way and the Macaroon featured here in this blog.

Tiramisu - you might say it doesn't look very special, then again you can't taste it. Good balance of amaretto and the juicy spongy cake. There are even crunchy bits in the pot.  Picture just doesn't do justice.

Chocolate Truffle Cake - they occupy the most prominent part of the fridge and rightly so.

Napoleon Cake - it's good but then it wasn't as memorable as the other ones. And there was no good pictures of it before it turned into a mess!!

Chocolate Truffle Cake -  the mini cake offered by La Maison du Chocolat in Hong Kong, which one is better? It's well worth going to both shops and compare yourself.

Address: 399 Lockhart road, Hong Kong
Note: These photos were taken with no special props or lighting and the cakes were all bought of the shelves, ie not hand picked. Really show the care they put into each and every single output. If Chua Lam (蔡瀾) and a bunch of TV crews were making a show, you should expect nothing less. That's why most culinary advices from celebs are inherently pointless.

Cake - Juchheim Baumkuchen バウムクーヘン in Hong Kong

We mentioned in one of our earlier entries, dessert in Kyushu, about Juchheim Baumkuchen. So when we saw the news about a branch opening in Hong Kong (in Concierge Magazine, the monthly Japanese free publication), mum was excited and couldn't wait to try. The shop opened its door inside Sogo department store, on 22 Mar and mum finally bought one to try yesterday. The painstaking effort from the Japanese chef didn't disappoint. The freshly cut layered-roll-cake still retained a whiff of fresh eggs and the thin layer of sugar coating brought a sweet touch while didn't overwhelm. Normally mum buys food with the furthest date to expiry on the packing, but these have short shelf-life of 1 day!!

Note - Baumkuchen is a German word which is a combo of "tree" (Baum) and "cake" (kuchen). It's not pronounced as Baum-ku-chen, but more like Baum-kuc-hen. While traveling in Germany, it wasn't widely available instead it was sold inside a tourist shop catering for Japanese below Schloss Neuschwanstein. But shops selling one version or another of this seem to be springing up everywhere in Japan.

Homemade No Dairy Citrus Mango Tart

A no dairy diet doesn't quite go with most traditional dessert, in fact you will be hard pushed to pick any item from the dessert menu of most western restaurants. Mum tried baking a citrus tart from a Japanese recipe yesterday and came up trumps. Even though there wasn't even a drop of cream in the recipe, the citrus cream in the tart came out tasting like the real thing.

List of ingredients:

Orange Cream	Tart	Topping Fruits
Orange Juice - 250ml	Plain Flour - 200g	Orange Slices
Vanilla Pod	Brown Sugar - 25g	Ripe Mango
Egg Yolk - 3	Icing Sugar - 25g
Sugar - 60g	Salt - 1/4tsp
Plain Flour - 15g	Olive Oil - 60ml
Cornstarch - 10g	Whole Egg - 1
Olive Oil - 50ml

Madeleines - Part 2

Another attempt at baking Madeleines, this time with slight variation in ingredients and tried to bake mini ones using traditional non-stick Madeleine pan. The problem was still in taking the cake out. Small pieces sticking to the pan became noticeable bruises on mini ones. But alas, the flexible silicone mold doesn't seem to come in mini sizes.

Madeleines

Mum tried making it a few times with different recipes and different Madeleine pans. It was often too dry or the cakes were impossible to dislodge from the mould. Today, she found the perfect combo using the soft silicone mould and a recipe from an old cookbook - Paris Boulangerie Patisserie edited by Linda Dannenberg - this particular recipe was from Patisserie Lerch.

Magnolia Bakery and Cup Cakes

"Ah, this is the cake shop featured in Sex and the City", Mum said enthusiastically like a kid when they walked past the Magnolia Bakery shop in 6th Avenue near 49th Street. But then it was late at night, the shop was closed and all they could see were paper boxes stuffed in between the entrance doors.

So dad bought two cup cakes from the shop which reputedly started the "cupcake craze" back to the hotel the following night, just before the shop closed its doors for the night. One white chocolate and a chocolate mousse. Both of them were a bit wary before eating the cupcake, because the cream looked rather heavy on top. The cream was lighter than it looked and the cupcakes were tasty. But then not sure if it's good enough to start a "craze".

This probably the most filmed cupcake shop in the world, featured in TV shows like Saturday Night Live and Spin City and movies like Sex and the City, Prime and Devils Wear Prada.

Every time they see cupcakes being sold, they always remember this conversation which happened in an elevator in Horizon Plaza in Hong Kong.

Mum - Hey darling, is that that the shop where you like the cupcakes?

Little Girl - No, no!! Those are horrible. They are fake.

Tanabata Matsuri 七夕

Tanabata special edition cake from Sadaharu Aoki

So if you read the previous entry about the link between the Narco dog and the Don Quijote shop, you probably thinking we are stretching things a bit. And now you see another entry with yet another mix bag of photos, and you are right!! We're going to show you how a dog dressed in Yukata（浴衣）can be linked to a piece of cake, albeit in beautiful wrapping, and a street carnival celebration in Tokyo.

Tanabatta 七夕, is a Japanese festival celebrating one of the greatest fairy tale love story across East Asia. Check out the linked wikipedia entry for more details. Though also well known in Chinese folk tales, it's not celebrated in China to any extent. (In fact, not sure what else is celebrated in China other than money$$$.) In Japan, people wear traditional garment, yukata to attend events like fireworks and street festivals. And as you can see, some of the beloved doggies (aka わんちゃん, wan chan, humanize them as kids) also wear yukata out.

But then what about the piece of cake, which looked more like a French dessert than Japanese. This is a Tanabata special edition cake from Sadaharu Aoki, an upscale French patisserie in Tokyo. See this link to see more about this special. The exquisitely presented cake has this transparent sugar decoration on top which is meant to be the Milky Way which separates Orihime (織り姫）and Kengyuu（牽牛）but in this case it's what separates our mouths from the delicious macaron at the end. There is one more link between Yukata and this cake. If you wear Yukata to go and buy desserts for takeaway from one of its shops spending over 2,000 yen during the speical period from 1 Jul to 7 Jul, you will get a free baked dessert.