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Saturday, November 5, 2011

Bel Cafe

Georgia Hotel finally opened up their cafe. Prior to their renovations, they had an amazing cafe with extraordinary desserts. It was called Senses. After they closed, I haven't found many comparable to that. I would describe their desserts like eating a cloud...that luxurious!!!

So when walking home, I saw Bel Cafe opened and walked in to see their desserts. I was disappointed with the selection since there were only 5 items....cheesecake, various pound cakes, lemon tart, dark chocolate hazelnut raspberry vanilla mousse and white chocolate something coconut. And macarons.

I bought a pistachio macaron. It was ok. I think I've had better. It didn't have enough pistachio taste compared to what I had from other bakeries.

I've started to develop a taste for macarons. Though a bit sweet, I love the airy texture. My favourite is pistachio. Actually it's the only one I've tasted since I find it too expensive to try all the flavours and end up always picking pistachio.




I didn't get the pound cake because I recently made my own and know that pound cake is quite easy to make so wasn't interested I trying. I didn't buy cheesecake because I've lost interest in cheesecake nowadays. I wanted to buy the lemon tart but the other 2 choices interested me more. Plus I didn't want to spend over $25 just for dessert.



Here is the dark chocolate raspberry vanilla mousse. It had a long name that I'm not sure what it is. It just seemed to include all the taste as part of the name.


Here is the inside. It was an amazing crunchy wafer like crust on bottom. Then a dark chocolate hazelnut cake. In the middle is vanilla custard or pudding like texture. All around the thing is chocolate mousse. It's covered with chocolate ganache and topped with a dark chocolate ring.


It had a wonderful mixture of texture of crunchiness with the smooth mousse and cake. The taste was good too. You would think that it might have been too many flavours but it worked well. I enjoyed it, though, it wasn't like eating a cloud.

What I didn't like was the chocolate ring. It was too hard so when you push down with your fork to eat, you had to push hard because of the ring. The results is that the rest of your dessert gets squashed. I don't like that. I like eating my dessert as one piece so I can try all the flavours in my mouth at once.

The other thing I bought was a white chocolate something coconut. I don't remember what the something is, as it's a foreign word or uncommon word. Made me realize that names of your food is important. If people cannot remember it, how can they recommend it to others??

The cashier told me that she really enjoyed this so I was looking forward to it.



Here's the view of the middle.



The bottom layer was a shortbread cookie crust. Then a layer that seemed like a coconut pound cake and lemon or lime curd in the middle. It is surrounded with a white mousse. I'm guessing the white mousse has chocolate in it but I couldn't taste it.

I wasn't really impressed with this. I found the lemon too tart to be combined with the cake and mousse. I found the cookie crust too hard and didn't match the rest of the dessert's texture. I wouldn't buy this one again.

Final Thoughts:

I'm mixed about this place, as it wasn't the best but it was also pretty good. I wish there were more dessert choices to choose from, as 5 is too little. The dark chocolate dessert was good but the white chocolate thing wasn't very well combined in both taste and texture.

I'll try this place one more time before I can make a final decision. When I do, you'll know more about it.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2 comments:

  1. Yes that hotel actually looks like it will be quite nice. It's a pity the patisserie Senses is now long gone for greener pastures. You may be in for a shock, but there is actually a very good Souffle offered at the ABC restaurant in Aberdeen Mall (of all places!)

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  2. I would have NEVER thought of having a souffle at a restaurant in Aberdeen Mall. Will try it out. Thanks for the suggestion.

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