As a vacationer, I am predictable: I am sugar-pushed. I ate guava Danish, hot churros in Mexico City, and shaved ice and slippery mochi in Tokyo. The first time I went to Sydney, I rode a bus to Bondi Beach with a bag of Australian supermarket chocolates on my lap. I toured the botanical gardens and walked around the Sydney Opera House. I deliberated the afternoon around experiencing Black Star Pastry in Newtown, so I ought to eat a slice of Christopher Thé’s well-known strawberry-and-watermelon cake.
“Famous” isn’t always an exaggeration. I’d heard about this cake for years, catching glimpses on my social media feeds and meal blogs. It seemed so quiet in well-lit snapshots, but as a snack, it remained a thriller. The top becomes a vivid cobble of reducing strawberries, pistachios, and dried rose petals. The cake turned into a slice of watermelon — raw, ripe watermelon — sandwiched between gentle almond dacquoise, the shade of moist sand, and whipped cream flavored with rose water. With its crystalline, icy texture and extra moisture, watermelon seemed like any risky addition to a based cake. How many want to paint?
Thé made the cake a one-off for a friend’s wedding ceremony over a decade ago. And even though he didn’t know it might grow to be an unofficial countrywide treasure, an ought-to-prevent on the Sydney tourism circuit, he did see a way to make a lovely cake: The soft dacquoise, a light sponge crafted from meringue mixed with floor almonds, may want to without difficulty take in any greater moisture, and emerge as even more delicious within the method. The watermelon cut was not too thick, gave shape, and had a distinct sort of sweetness, even as it gave in without difficulty to a fork. The rose water inside the cream wasn’t overpowering;iit was ng, best lightly floral, and the decoration on top turned colorful and celebratory. In 2011, Thé’s cake took off on WeChat, the Chinese social media app, and in 2012, it did the same on Instagram, where users shared images and dutifully hashtagged them.
I’ve been considering the piece I had for precisely three years, in suits and starts, thinking of a way to write approximately it. The problem changed, and it became way too quiet to attempt to make it at home — one of these dishes that would forever disappoint human beings if I adapted the recipe. After all, it couldn’t possibly turn out because it did in the image, the way Thé and his cooks do it. Over the 10 years, they’ve been making the cake, they have emerged as even more unique, building the layers up so the cake is neat, its strains are parallel, and the fruit is a great pink stripe.
But then, I couldn’t make this cake because I was hooked. The cake’s achievement didn’t hinge on its looks in any respect. It becomes, without a doubt,, the s, of the oft-mellow flavors of rose, watermelon, and cream coming collectively and the variety of textures starting to soften into each other. So, it was an awful lot, so maybe my version cobbled collectively at home in Los Angeles didn’t want to be a beautiful layered cake.
So, just as they do at Black Star Pastry, I organized the primary additives — reduced fruit, whipped cream, and baked cake. But then, in preference to building a cake, I reduced the pieces more or less and layered them in a glass dish, greater like a trifle. It wasn’t a reproduction, and there has been no danger of this turning into the sector’s maximum Instagrammed cake variation. Still, contained like this, the cake worked just right, bringing a taste of Sydney’s sweetness.
