Following Sweetness

The past few weeks, as well as the usual insanity, have involved a small food expedition. Better still, an expedition in search of baked things (which means provisions for the trip aren't even required - but are still optional!).

I first discovered Sweetness via The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry* and, after pootling longingly through their website, decided they had to be sussed out. Far too many options...

Pictures: Sweetness (above), me (all the others)

The first part of the expedition was to the Northside Produce Markets. It was my first time at these, and they were a pleasant surprise, with a good mixture of growers and sellers... the beautiful, sunny morning didn't hurt, either. There was that lovely clear, crispness in the air**, combined with the virtuous feeling of being up and about early on a weekend... which leads to justification of baking for breakfast...

There was a chocolate gluten free brownie...

Any brownie that doesn't taste gluten free is onto a winning formula, and this was sweet and moist without being cloyingly rich.

And there was a white chocolate and raspberry muffin...

...which was also gluten free, and was also very more-ish. You can tell it was good, as it was half demolished by the time I managed to get near it with a camera... Although the brownie may have pipped it to the finish!

This weekend, a more serious foray was called for, and there was hiking out to the Sweetness shop, itself a charming little pistachio confection, somewhat incongruously situated in Epping. And everything in it looks both astonishingly photogenic and delicious. And there are little samples of almost everything, to help you decide just how much just has to come home with you.

The spoils of the afternoon were a lemon and coconut cake...

And also a pair of blueberry marshmallows...

There were twenty-two flavours of marshmallow. Narrowing down the choice (and limiting it to just one) required an inordinate amount of dithering, and several samples. And they have about as much in common with those pink-and-white marshmallows that come out of bags in the supermarket as Buzo's vincisgrassi*** does with fried lasagne.

The final part of the baking expedition was the discovery that there are vanilla chiffon cakes. With creme patissiere filling. I'm not sure that even superfluous use of italics can express how exciting that prospect is. One very such cake is lurking quietly on the horizon, biding its time before making an appearance.

* When I mentioned having found her online, Gena, who owns Sweetness, was interested in which blogger I'd found her through, and was very kindly disposed to food bloggers in general - yay!
** This gives away how long ago it was - that clear crispness has lately turned into a grey shiveriness which is much less appealing.
*** Which approaches astonishing.

P.S. Big apologies to anybody who got the draft version of this yesterday... mysterious Blogger fail. Harrumph!