Breakfast and Dessert

Today is Family Day in Ontario so I nominally have the day off. Since I have to do some work anyway, it might as well be done as comfortably as possible. After a traditional Filipino breakfast of rice, fried egg and longaniza, I looked for cookies in my cupboard. I couldn't find any but I wanted a snack so logically, my thoughts turned to ice cream which I had in my freezer.

Toronto's grocery selection of Ben & Jerry's ice cream is not very extensive (i.e. only one or two of the chocolate-based ice creams) so I usually end up getting New York Super Fudge Chunk, which is one of my favorites anyway. It went well with my post-breakfast coffee and I am ready to face the day!

I don't know why we, as a society, don't associate dessert with breakfast. It's not as bizarre as one might think, since people eat over-sugared danishes and Count Chocula cereals (hmm...I guess my affinity for the latter makes it seem perfectly normal to me to have chocolate ice cream before noon).

LPK's Culinary Groove (Part 2)

Hazelnut Praline Tart: hazelnut praline cream cheese mousse in a hazelnut cookie crust, garnished with caramelized hazelnuts (description from LPK's Culinary Groove menu)

My second tart from LPK's Culinary Groove was eaten a day later and turned out to be less successful than the passion fruit tart.

The crust of this tart was too moist, perhaps a function of being a day-old. It didn't do anything for the tart.

Although I am a BIG fan of Nutella (and still bear a grudge against my parents for keeping me in the dark about its existence for 18 years), I think hazelnut should be incidental to chocolate. This tart is deceptive because it's brown colour and the natural association of chocolate and hazelnut led me to believe it would be more chocolatey than it was. The flavour was all hazelnut and sweetness without any of the bitterness of chocolate that I had anticipated.

This tart is best eaten slightly chilled. My favorite aspect was the foamy texture of the hazelnut mousse, which eventually melted into a gooey, non-descript filling once the tart warmed to room temperature.

The hazelnut topping wasn't caramelized, but there was a nice caramelized sugar topping which glistened and provided the only bright spot to an otherwise very brown palate. After the visually-appealing passion fruit tart with its interesting flavours, the hazelnut tart was anti-climactic. It was all right as an every day tart, but it didn't make me sit up and think...this is a pastry worth crossing the city for.

LPK's Culinary Groove (Part 1)

Passion Fruit Truffle Tart: semisweet ganache and passion fruit caramel sauce nestled in a chocolate shortbread crust with cape gooseberry garnish. (description from LPK's Culinary Groove menu)

My first entry! I originally conceived of this blog as a mini-tour guide to the patisseries of Toronto, in the spirit of The Patisseries of Paris by Jamie Cahill. I have dialled down my ambitions and instead, have chosen to give my impressions of various pastries and hot chocolates available at Toronto shops. It also means that I can go back to the same place and try out new items!

I don't have any formal training in desserts or chocolate, but I continue to educate myself in cities all over the world at every possible opportunity.

LPK's Culinary Groove's Passion Fruit Truffle Tart looks well-put together and elegant with a touch of whimsy from the fresh flower. I aspire to look like this pastry when I go to work in the morning. I'm glad the cape gooseberry was replaced by the flower, although I remain in the dark regarding what a cape gooseberry looks like.

The crust is a very moist shortbread so it sticks together with a slightly nutty in flavor, very thick on the sides but thinner on the bottom. While I am not usually a crust person, the drawback to the thinner crust in this instance is that there was nothing to absorb the ganache and, especially, the jam-like passion fruit caramel sauce.

The passion fruit caramel sauce formed approximately 1/3 of the tart with the remainder topped off by the ganache. The sauce was not as pungent when the tart was still cold, but as it warmed up to room temperature, the caramel and the sweet elements in the passion fruit started to overwhelm the chocolate. There was an undertone of tartness to the sauce, which I enjoyed and I suspect would have been echoed in the missing gooseberry. My suggestion to improve this tart would have been to use a darker chocolate with some acidity to balance the sweetness of the sauce, which I found to be too cloying in the end.

I liked the texture of this tart. The flavours of the sauce were carried by the stickiness of the ganache so that they seemed to infuse the chocolate.