I love cake. Yet it seemed that I’d not had a really good cake for a long time. And that’s not because I haven’t been looking. Patisseries that make good cakes consistently are hard to come by. Some patisseries make decent cakes, but they’re nothing amazing, usually always have a textural or flavour wassue, and not always worth the price. The cakes gracing the shelves at La Renaissance Cafe Patisserie in The Rocks, however? They are unfailingly really good.
Despite how much I love their cakes, an entry for the La Renaissance Patisserie and Cafe was missing from my archive. Which means? I haven’t been back in over three years! C and I came back for a mid-winter catch up recently. Not much has changed. The courtyard behind the cafe is still as quaint as ever, with the same tables and chairs. Some of the old favourites are gone from their selection of small cakes, and new equally as beautiful cakes are in their place.
One of these new cakes is Vivaldi ($9.50 takeaway, $10.50 eat in). It’s a chocolate and hazelnut mousse encasing a mandarin and hazelnut sponge. Outside, the mousse is encased in a semi-hard shell that’s topped with chopped pistachio, crispy rice balls, drizzles of chocolate sauce, and a freeze-dried and peeled mandarin segment.
It is very much an artwork in its own right – it’s so pretty! It tastes much like a Jaffa if it were tweaked slightly to reflect the subtler, sweeter flavours of a mandarin evident in the cake. The mousse was velvety, which contrasted nicely with the more textural sponge sitting within, while the rice balls and pistacchio gave a much needed crunch to the otherwise soft cake. It’s a very yummy cake all round, and the stand out? The freeze-dried mandarin segment –
The freeze-dried mandarin segment was super tasty and fascinating. It’s got the texture of honeycomb – the airy bubbles that melt away once it touches moisture – and the flavours of mandarin. Each bite is a novelty that starts off crunchy before it melting into super intense mandarin flavours. It adds a fun element to the cake, and I could easily amuse myself just eating these segments!
Although the cakes at La Renaissance are steep, you can always confident that you’ll be satisfied by their selection. That’s something I can say, without reservation, about a handful of patisseries.
La Renaissance Cafe Patisserie is located at 47 Argyle St, The Rocks NSW 2000.