From 22 – 25 September, The Galeries celebrated spring with entertainment, pop up stalls, special offers and spring themed menus. As was the case in 2015, N2 Extreme Gelato collaborated with Black Star Pastry.
This year, they created the Raspberry and Lychee Cake Smash ($10.00), a liquid nitrogen ice cream version of their Raspberry and Lychee Cake. I wasn’t too impressed with that cake, which felt like a lazy follow up to the Strawberry Watermelon Cake, but N was hopeful that it had potential as an ice cream. In any case, it would be interesting to see how close the team at N2 Extreme Gelato replicated the flavours.
As it turns out, the answer is very close because they just blended the cake with liquid nitrogen, before topping it with a dollop of raspberry gelato and three lychees. So, it’s the same textures and flavours of the original in a much colder and easier to eat format. This ice cream has two improvements on the cake, though. It lost the intense tartness of the raspberries, which contrasted jarringly in the cake, for a sweet raspberry gelato, which I’d have liked more of. It also turned the dense and firm chocolate base, which made it difficult to eat in the cake, into crumbs so that they now added texture to the ice cream.
The Spring Social was held between 22 – 25 September at The Galeries, 500 George St, Sydney NSW 2000