A meringue baton is meringue piped into a short stick and baked dry, so it snaps instead of bending. Scattered over a cake it does two jobs at once. It catches the light, and it drops something crisp onto something soft. Bite one and it shatters and then dissolves against the roof of your mouth. Our Lemon Blueberry Cake is finished that way, and that finish is why this one photographs better than a plain glazed loaf.
Tart, sweet, and the layer in between
The cake is built on the zest of fresh lemons and juicy blueberries. The two pull in opposite directions. Blueberry goes first, sweet and slightly jammy. Then the lemon arrives behind it and keeps arriving, sour along the sides of the tongue. Over the top goes a tres leches ganache: the three-milks idea used as a rich creamy layer, not as a soak. Then the batons. The whole thing reads bright. Nothing about it is heavy, and that counts at the end of a long meal, when a dense chocolate cake is the last thing anybody wants. Curious about the tres leches part? Our Tres Leches layer cake is built entirely on it, and there is a long tradition behind it.
Why we call it a travel cake
The bundt and loaf range is our travel cake range. The name is practical, not poetic. No delicate frosting to bruise on the way. No refrigeration. No assembly at the other end. You collect it, you carry it, you put it on a table. Set up a room for fifteen to fifty people with no kitchen staff on hand and you feel the difference. A dessert course, not a dessert problem. The rest of the tea cakes and loaves behave the same way.
Two sizes, and the arithmetic of a table
The Lemon Blueberry comes two ways. A 20cm loaf at $35 serves eight. A 25cm bundt at $55 serves sixteen. Larger numbers than most people assume, so count heads before you order and not after. Three bundts cover forty-eight people for about what a single 25cm layer cake serving thirty to thirty-five costs, and they put three flavours on the table instead of one. The same two shapes run across the whole range. That includes the Cuca Banana, under a Southern Brazilian streusel that is buttery and faintly salty over the ripe fruit below.
Building the rest of the table around it
A dessert table wants contrast, and the easiest contrast is colour. Against the pale lemon and blue, the Marble Chocolate gives you dark. The Anthill Coconut gives you a speckled pale. The Apple Crumble gives you a rough golden top. Three of the travel cakes also carry a No Added Dairy preference you select at checkout: Brazilian Carrot, Apple Crumble and Pineapple Coconut. On the Pineapple Coconut that preference is a different build of the cake, because the standard one is topped with a rich tres leches. This is the only place on the food menu where no added dairy is a selectable option and not a request. Our kitchen is small and without exclusive production areas for all of our different recipes, so traces may occur, and nothing is guaranteed safe for severe coeliac disease. For height and smaller portions between the cakes, mini cakes come singly or as a tray of six or twelve, one serving apiece, and a petit four tray holds fifteen pieces, all made with no added gluten.
A trial run is one loaf
Do not commit a fifty-person table to a flavour you have never eaten. Buy the loaf first. Bring whoever is hosting with you, take a coffee at our counter, and cut the thing in half between you on a weekday afternoon. Cheapest rehearsal there is. It settles the argument about whether the room wants citrus or chocolate. Two people notice different things. One person only confirms what they already thought. Our dessert catering page covers the larger formats.
Getting one out the door
The Lemon Blueberry is made to order and needs two days' notice. The checkout date picker only offers dates the kitchen can meet for what is in your cart. Petit four trays need seven days, so order those first if they are on your list. Travel cakes keep at room temperature away from sun and heat, so a room you are setting up the day before suits them. Collection is in person from our patisserie inside The Welder on Welles Street in the central city, because we do not deliver, and collecting the day before is normal. Open 10am to 9pm Tuesday to Saturday.
