I went to Jean-Pascal Patisserie for my older son's birthday celebration. I am attracted by the excellent quality of Opera cakes here. They sell the whole Opera cakes, so the price is better than other shops where Opera cakes are quoted per slice. It is also good that there are two sizes of Opera cakes, so you do not need to buy the whole big one.
However, my older son does not like Opera cakes in general, and he decided to take a chocolate cake for his birthday party today. Again, it is a French type of cake - a rich moist chocolate cake decorated with chocolate ganache and garnished with lovely chocolate flowers and leaves. The cake was perfect and we all loved it.
Like Opera, the chocolate one is not too sweet that is different from many Australian types of cakes and that is the key attracting me to French style cakes. In that sense, the macaroons in this shop made me surprised because these are far too sweet. OK, macaroons are sweet small cookies "by definition", but I do not expect it was sugary like that. So if all you like a macaroon is its thin crispy crust and a soft chewy interior, I will recommend for the macaroons here. The cookies with wonderful thin crusts will all immediately break when you bite into them. So using these criteria, these are the best macaroons I have tried. But I also expect macaroons with mildly sweet almond taste with a wide range of flavors, and the shop offers a limited sort of only 4 macaroon essences: pistachios, strawberry, orange and cocoa. So I am not going to give it another try. However, I will definitely come back for Opera and chocolate cakes in the shop. read more