Myself and a bunch of bloggers decided to descend on Flour + Stone one Saturday to help celebrate fellow blogger, Swah celebrate her birthday. From what I can tell Swah has a bit of a sweet tooth so it seems a fitting place to party.
Before we completely clear Flour + Stone of all their baked goodies for the day we sit down to enjoy a coffee...or in my case a homemade lemonade that was cool, refreshing with just the right amount of tartness.
As there are so many of us, and as Flour + Stone is quite petit, we grab our feast and head over to the park under the beautiful St Mary's Cathedral for a good old fashioned birthday picnic. I can't quite remember the individual prices for all of our goodies but all of this cost us about $150 which doesn't seem too bad for hand crafted sweeties that fed about ten hungry ladies (and one boy too).
Flour + Stone is renowned for two things...their Panacotta Lamingtons ($6.00 each), that pretty much have reach cult status in Sydney, and their filled doughnuts. The Lamingtons are dense, heavy and moist having been soaked in creamy panacotta and have a layer of sweet berry jam within. I prefer my lamingtons more "light + fluffy" like a sponge cake, but these are a BIG hit with my fellow picnic goers. There wasn't one crumb left.
The doughnuts are as big as a fist overflowing with vanilla custard and berry jam. I really like the donught outer - sweet and sugary - but I think I wanted the custard to be thicker...and sweeter (yes, I did just have THREE filings in my teeth, so now you know why. I like sugar with my sugar).
Being near Christmas we take full advantage and walk away with a few tasty fruit mince pies and gingerbread. Oh my - the gingerbread was incredible. Soft and spicy and incredibly moreish. I went back to the bakery after we'd finished with our picnic to buy a few biscuits to take home.
Our final two sweet items are a luscious salted caramel + chocolate tart that was devilishly rich and a peach tart (that I didn't try as fruit = healthy and that's not what this picnic was about). With an impending sugar coma not too far away I'm thankful to sink my teeth into the zucchini, chilli and gruyere roll - really really good, savoury and a much welcomed counterbalance to the sugar overload.
The pies were wonderful with super flaky pastry on top. The filling of vegetable ratatouille with feta was rich and delicious. The others also shared a creamy chicken pie that I didn't try - but it did look pretty tasty!
