Delicious Lemon Tart from Zimt Bakery

Have you noticed zeitgeisty the Melbourne blogosphere can be? Bloggers get excited about the latest cool place, a zillion posts and tweets come up, and eventually we move on and the excitement dies down. (Of course, the actual cafes and restaurants still keep keeping on, long after the cameras and iPhones have been put away). Recent examples that come to mind are Seven Seeds, Proud Mary and Cutler & Co.

I love how blogs are so current, and when trying to find a new place to eat, always check the internet before consulting a guide book or magazine. Which reminds me of a Simpsons quote...

Kent Brockman: Excuse me, did you see the six o'clock news?
Comic Book Guy: No, I get my news from the internet, like a normal person under seventy. Farewell, dinosaur.

But, it's not as if every single restaurant and cafe out there gets blogged. Personally, I usually don't blog my absolute favourite, most visited places. Not just because I don't want my legions of readers and fans cramping my style (haha!), but also because I visit my regular haunts too regularly to bother blogging them. I'm not sure if other bloggers are the same as me, but if so, this means there must be heaps of unblogged gems all over Melbourne. And how hard is it to keep up with all the Melbourne food blogs, anyway?

So, blogs, twitter and other media of the young-and-trendy may be the place to hear about the newest trends and latest coffee temples, but let's not discount the good old tree media.

My dad recently bought The Foodies' Guide to Melbourne 2010, and it had some great recommendations in there. This was in spite of some already outdated observations: "Melbourne is going through a renaissance in its approach to roasting and making coffee" (Duh!), and not-so-secret "food secrets", like Laurent. (Seriously guys?!)

However, one of the good finds was Zimt Patisserie Bakery Cafe. I haven't seen anyone blog about it yet (although please send me a link if there are any other posts about it!). It's an Austrian bakery, in the Eastern suburbs. YAY!

Zimt Patisserie
38 Hamilton Street
Mont Albert, Victoria 3127
Ph: (03) 9890 2382
Website

We visited on a quiet sunny weekend, a few weeks after the Christmas break. It is quite a small cafe, with some outdoor seating, and judging by our visit, is primarily frequented by middle-aged ladies. They have quite a wide range of baked goods on offer, from bread, to streusel slice, chocolate cakes, biscuits and more. They seem to do a lot of Christmas baking too, including stollen.

Ooh... cakes and pastries.

Chocolates, biscuits...

I started off with a latte. It was decent, not great, but pretty much what you would expect from a suburban cafe.

I had a walnut crescent, which was quite nice, but I suspect that these are best enjoyed straight out of the oven.
Hehe, I thought the pudgy shape was cute. Maybe they could do with a Kipferl flexi-form!

Sandra had a mixed-berry muffin, which by all accounts was very good, and full of juicy fruit.

On our way out, we bought a loaf of bread, and I impulsively bought a lemon tart and mini cheesecake to take home. Looking at the array, I was curious and asked the sales assistant about the tarts. She said they were lemon tarts, filled with raspberry preserve, and the filling was the same as what they use in the cheesecake. OMG.

Sarah: I'll take one of each please.

Back at home...
How cute is the mini-cheesecake? I tried cutting it in half to share, but the base was rock hard. I couldn't cut it with a fork; I needed a sharp knife to cut all the way through. So when I ate my half, I basically ate all the cream first, then picked up the base and ate it separately. The cream itself was fantastic - light and creamy, not too dense - and the biscuit base had a strong nutmeg taste, much like spekulatius.

Much more impressive was the lemon tart. The pastry (phew!) was crisp and light (not ri-donk-ulously hard like the cheesecake base), the soft cheesecake cream was a fabulous filling, and the raspberries and lemon curd gave a sharp contrast. Wow. My favourite lemon tart, ever!

So, a big thank-you to the Foodies' Guide for recommending this great cafe!