Sunday, May 30, 2010

Pretty Much Perfect: Part Three

Then it was time for the babies to have a good rest
Because tomorrow they get their new coats - Valrhona ganache...

Pretty Much Perfect: Part Two

Then it was time to trip these babies down to size
And to let the stacking begin with genoise
Followed by ganache
Before long the babies were all grown up
And needed to be stacked again to check proportion

Pretty Much Perfect: Part One

One's day today involved rolling out of bed at around 8.30, prepping the kitchen and then commencing the final stretch of SFTPWC 2010: the ultimate bake. It was action time and One assembled the heavy artillery:

After whipping egg whites into submission and creaming egg yolks with butter and vanilla it was time for a bit of folding:
Off to the oven trays to make genoise

And into the oven with those discs of chocolaty goodness:


Pretty soon the genoise were moounting like Fergie's debt:

Only there is nothing in these to leave a foul taste in One's mouth...

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Flipside: You are dead to me

Here is One's email to Flipside:

I would like to tell you about my experience at your Wembley store tonight (Saturday). I rang in and ordered a Garden Party and a Kenny at 6.45 and was told that the burgers would be ready in 30 minutes. I arrived at 7.15 and paid for the burgers. I asked how much longer and was told 7 minute. I then saw the patties be put on and cooked about 5 minutes later. So about 15 minutes later I walked out with my burgers. I drove home (which is three blocks up Cambridge St) opened the burgers and both were tepid. There was no warmth at all. The buns tasted like they were either stale or had been toasted about 20 minutes too early for the patties.

You charge a premium price for what should be a premium product. Your product and your service fall well short of your promise.

Often your staff quote a time frame for an order that is 15 minutes out of sync with the actual time it takes for the order to be made. If you are not able to deliver on your promise of good quality burgers on time, then stop taking orders and stop wasting your customers time. Tonight I was told 30 minutes, when in fact it took 45 minutes to make the burgers (which were vegetarian and made on a separate grill that was not being used when I arrived and paid for them).

It is such a shame that Flipside has degenerated from a brilliant burger shop when you started in Fremantle to being a mediocre but expensive version of McDonalds in Wembley. The difference of course being that McDonalds will serve up a mediocre burger with fries and a drink within 5 minutes and for less than the price of your burger.

Finally, I would have thought that when a customer rings to let you know that their burgers are cold and that they are bringing them back that your staff might come up with a 'sorry' but no. Your staff simply said to me 'are these the cold burgers', I replied 'yes', the lady then said 'so was that $23 dollars here you go'.

All I can say is that I am thoroughly disappointed.

Monday, May 24, 2010

An Apology


For One's absence, there are no excuses.

But One did make this desert which is a chocolate meringue base with vanilla bean poached pears and apple, topped with a chocolate hazelnut sauce, toasted almonds and a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.

It was indeed YUM!

Project Wedding Cake: In Pursuit of Perfection 2010: Vol I

One stopped off at Simon Johnson on the way home from work today to pick up the ingredients for the Perfect Wedding Cake.

One does love retail therapy but this is a whole new therapy. It is quite possibly that the pure decadence of a spending spree that involves so much pure goodness plus the fact that the shopping is for a magnificent purpose that it brings such excitement.

Here One has 1kg Valrhona dark chocolate, 2.5kg Callebaut milk chocolate, 1.5L Bannister Downs pure cream and 500g Valhrona cocoa. These ingredients, minus the cocoa are just the beginning of the next phase in Project Wedding Cake: In Pursuit of Perfection 2010. Which over the next 10 days will transform these premium ingredients into the cake that will grace the pages of this blog.

Tonight's project is to make ganache, One is working to a modified Project Plan due to an unscheduled trip to Geraldton yesterday.