Burch & Purchese: It's a sweet revolution.

I don't think I have ever seen so much of effort, techniques and thoughts laid out in a slice of cake until I visited Burch & Purchese Sweet Studio. Well of course the ones on TV doesn't count. I get to see AND taste! :D Darren Purchese appeared in Masterchef in an episode and through that we got to know about his sweet studio and naturally of course Maggie and I decided to have a look since it is located in Melbourne and not too far away. 

The pictures obviously do no justice to his actual cake since we only got slices of it. The assembly of the whole cake looks more impressive. His cakes are like works of art. It's as though they're fine art in the form of cakes; you buy them and you don't just look at and appreciate them, you get to consume them!

Unlike the usual desserts, their cakes have very  straightforward names. They're named after what they are made of, which I think is kind of hard to remember lol.

This cake here has a total of 8 freaking layers of elements. I certainly applaud the techniques and thoughts put into this, but the taste... I'm on the fence. Not a fan of that aniseed there. It's strong and overpowers everything else instead of complimenting them, IMO.

Smoked White Chocolate, Coffee, Aniseed, Lemon

Smoked white chocolate cream, crunchy almond meringue, coffee buttercream, coffee sponge, aniseed syrup, brownie sponge, lemon curd, dehydrated choc rock.

This one's pretty good. The flavours come together quite well.

Vanilla, Pistachio, Lemon, Green Tea

White chocolate & vanilla mousse, pistachio cream, crunchy green tea meringue, lemon cream, pistachio cake, green tea macaron, brilliant white chocolate spray

Unfortunately I don't remember what these are called exactly. If I'm not wrong, it could be Lemon, Blackcurrant and Raspberry Lego. I do remember they're basically fruit flavoured mousse on the inside, chocolate velvet spray on the outside to achieve that velvet-y texture. Tastes really delicate and quite tangy, a good one in between all the sweet cakes. And doesn't the shape look absolutely adorable you can't wait to tuck in?

This one... I'm not sure but I think this is the name of it. I'm typically not a fan of any desserts which has alcohol (e.g. rum and raisin ice cream) but I was ok with this one, the rum isn't very out there which I like.

Banana, Caramel, Rum

Caramelised white chocolate & vanilla mousse, macadamia spiced speculaas, caramelised banana cream, passionfruit jelly, ascorbic rum jelly, caramelised milk solids, passionfruit curd, chocolate velvet spray

Visit the Burch & Purchese Blog to gawp at some unreal looking cakes.

By the way, if you're thinking of dropping by the studio to grab a cake and maybe chill and have a cuppa, forget about it. Maggie and I first thought it's a dessert place where you can sit down and slowly nibble on your cake but it isn't. It's a small shop where you can only buy or customize cakes/sweets, and that's it.