Simmone Logue, Cammeray

I first became acquainted with Simmone Logue’s cakes years ago through working close to a David Jones Food Hall, which meant that office birthdays and departures were commemorated with an amazing selection of cakes. Someone I worked with raved endlessly about her banana cake, but what I didn’t know is that Simmone Logue also offers catering services as well as a sample of her wares through two café stores.

The Cammeray store is situated in an open air shopping mall and was first visited for a girls’ lunch. We’d missed out on trying the breakfast menu due to the time of day, but the “Grilled ham & cheese” served with side salad offers the same satisfaction as a croque monsieur. The chicken “Soup of the day” is on the oily side but full of flavour, while the “Spinach & fetta filo” is light and flaky.

A chocolate cream cake for Mum

For years and years Mum kept saying that the cakes I made weren’t light enough. Turns out it’s because she prefers the spongier texture and subtler flavour of Asian bakery cakes, rather than those with a cakier crumb which I enjoy. So with it being Mum’s birthday – well, one of her birthdays, depending on whether she chooses to celebrate according to the Gregorian calendar or the Chinese Lunar one – and an appropriately timed post from Vondelicious, I decided to give baking one those Asian-style cakes a try.

Black Coffee pop-up shop at Outré Gallery

I’ll let you in on a food secret: I’ve never had instant coffee.

Now before you go turning up your noses at me and branding me a coffee snob, this is actually not through any conscious doing on my part. It’s just that I don’t crave coffee and I’m not one of those people who absolutely need coffee to function. If anything, I’m a tea drinker but even then it’s purely for comfort rather than caffeine or antioxidant properties.

My first cup of coffee ever, as a teenager, was a cappuccino from a common food court chain which doesn’t specialise in coffee. It was bitter and I proclaimed that it needed more milk and more sugar. In hindsight it may have been burnt, but who was I to know any better? My next cup of coffee wasn’t until many years later in my early twenties, and my coffee progression since then has been: caffe mocha, caffe latte, flat white.

Whilst I haven’t progressed to a piccolo latte or a macchiato as my coffee of choice, I do enjoy an occasional espresso... although more often than not it is doused over a scoop of vanilla ice-cream!

St Malo Bakery & Bean Drinking

You know you’re in love with a place when you keep going back again and again. You tell your friends about it. You even make a time to take them there so you’re certain they get to try all that you’ve been raving about. And where's the joy in good food if it isn’t shared around?