Tickets On Sale Tuesday - Melbourne Food & Wine Festival 2012

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the always brilliant Melbourne Food & Wine Festival in March next year and to coincide with the release of presenters and tickets tomorrow (Tuesday 18th October), we were invited to an intimate gathering of friends. To see what happened and the big surprise given to us click on the video above.

Don't forget to check out the line up for the festival which is released tomorrow and look out for some amazing events from us here at Burch & Purchese Sweet Studio. We can't wait for March 2012 and pretty soon you'll see why!

Visit http://www.melbournefoodandwine.com.au/ tomorrow for more details.

'In The Mix' - New Recipe Book From Thermomix Featuring Darren Purchese

Monday 10th of October was the launch of the highly anticipated new book from Thermomix written by the extremely talented Dani Valent. The book features recipes from some of the best chefs here in Australia and worldwide and we have had a sneak peak and can say it is fantastic.

Here at Sweet Studio we use multiple Thermomix machines daily and could not live without them. To emphasise our continued support with Thermomix Darren Purchese happily contributed a dessert for the book along with an impressive roll call of chefs, food writers and bloggers.

Some of the chefs that have contributed are Melbourne's Ray Capaldi, George Calombaris, Matt Wilkinson and our own B&P manager extraordinaire Cath Claringbold.

International chefs include our Spanish friends Ramon Morato and Paco Roncero, UK chefs Sat Bains & James Petrie and loads more.

To get your hands on a copy it is retailing form $60 and available from www.thermomix.com.au or by calling 1800 004 838

We now stock Fresh As. retail packs

After so many of our customers have enquired about the availability of freeze dried fruits we are now pleased to announce that we stock a retail range from the excellent Fresh As. We have been using these unique ingredients in our dessert range for some time and find them an amazing addition to our signature textured creations. If you want to try your hand at 'pimping up your pud' then pop down to Chapel Street and we will be happy to help.
Fresh As. http://fresh-as.com/

New Signage

Now you can find us a little more easily! This week we got to work on a more prominent display for our sweet studio after a few comments from new customers that they had trouble locating us. The old facade has been painted over and a more defined logo painted on the exterior. We have also added a huge blade sign which will be lit at night. We are also in talks with the council about some seats for the outside of our store as Spring has now arrived and the days are becoming warmer and lighter. We hope you can stop by sometime, you can find us at 647 Chapel Street, South Yarra 3141.

Reverse 'Fried Egg' Using Polyscience Anti-Griddle

We are having a bit of fun in Sweet Studio this weekend playing with our new Anti-Griddle from Polyscience. We have made a new dessert based on the eggs and bacon idea and it is available this weekend in store. The Anti-Griddle is a cool piece of technology which has a surface which cools to around -30C. It allows us to instantly freeze or chill small quantities of food which is convenient for so many applications it is hard to list. On this occasion we made a Swiss meringue of egg white and sugar and whisked until stiff peaks, we then let the meringue down with a solution of coconut puree, vanilla, ascorbic sugar syrup and fresh lime juice. This mixture was stabilised with gelatine and reserved for use at room temperature. We made a mango curd as per a normal curd recipe but used reduced mango puree for an accentuated flavour. This curd/yolk was piped onto the griddle as in the image and then we poured the coconut lime mixture over the top. What happened was a sort of reverse 'frying' of the egg. The curd hardened and the coconut ran away slightly before setting due to the low temperature. We left it to sit for a minute before sliding it off with a palette knife. The perfect sunny side up! For the dessert special on today and tomorrow we made a vanilla infused custard and soaked toast shape pieces of brioche. This was then fried in clarified butter before being glazed with icing sugar. Once cooled the egg sits on top of the toast and is garnished with our own maple cured bacon and a raspberry & tomato ketchup! As we write this blog, we have had greta interest from this and lots of people have asked about the technique, hence  us compiling this information now. It shows that it is an exciting time to be in the kitchen with so many great technologies being introduced all of the time. This Anti-Griddle is so versatile, we have been using it for chocolate work, mini dessert canapés and now this. If you are in Australia and you want more information on this piece of equipment, you need to contact the official distributor Sous Vide Australia, our contact there is Dale Prentice and he will be happy to help you with your enquiries.

What's Been Happening At Sweet Studio

A specially designed birthday cake with an alcoholic surprise.

Lots of cool birthday cakes commissioned by clients for our team to create.

We stayed on the theme of gin and had a bit of fun with this special in our cake cabinet.

Our new 'Smoked Chocolate, Coffee, Aniseed & Lemon' creation is really popular at the moment and a staff favourite.

We are close to updating our raspberry & champagne dessert - details to follow soon. 

Chef Mazza creates a scary centre piece for a birthday cake.

Lots happening here at the Studio, we have been very busy with lots of cool cake commissions as well as updating a few of our desserts in our large and individual cake range. Chef Mazza created a scary haunted castle centre piece for a child's birthday the other week which seemed to go down a storm.
We have refined and are happy with our coffee, smoked chocolate, aniseed & lemon individual cake and are reworking our raspberry, lychee creation to include more fruit. The top two images are of a fantastic creation for a client who's brief was that the cake should contain alcohol and that it should be orange in appearance. Layers of lemon cream were sandwiched between yoghurt sponge and topped with a gin & tonic jelly. This was all encased in a silky smooth white chocolate & vanilla mousse and sprayed in orange flavoured chocolate. Cool little marshmallows sat on top and once bitten into revealed a soft set gin & tonic jelly. Other projects that are happening here in the studio are: the introduction of new desserts (to follow), working on a special jewellry themed event for a big client, increasing numbers of bespoke cakes commissioned by our wonderful clients/customers and work started on a massive project of which the details will be revealed here very soon. We have also sent out our first newsletter to our database and if you would like to be added then email info@burchandpurchese.com or click here to subscribe http://us2.forward-to-friend1.com/forward?u=12c2f06686378aa052e128bc7&id=530e3f267f&e=af392ad9bd
We will try to keep you updated as regularly as possible and thank you for reading.

LATEST SWEET STUDIO IMAGE COLLECTION JULY 2011

B&P Cranberry, Almond & Freeze Dried Plum Nougat

Our ever popular chocolate flower displays. 

Darren meeting Chef Tomas Keller on the set of Masterchef Australia

Persian Delight Chocolate Bar 60%

Coloured white chocolate spheres. 

A fairly new dessert: Smoked White Chocolate, Coffee & Aniseed

Sorry for the delay in between posts lately, we have been concentrating solely on improving the range, layout and production of Sweet Studio and it is taking up almost all of our time. The store is looking fantastic and business has significantly improved over the last month or so. There is still lots to do and we are working on a few new desserts to implement into our range. For now though here are a few images from the last month or so to whet your appetite, thanks to all who follow this blog and for all our fantastic customers. See you soon.

MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA SEASON 3 DESSERT THE EVOLUTION - Sweet Studio Cake Cabinet - Banana, Caramel, Rum

Large version of the evolved dessert featured on Masterchef.

Cross section of the current version of the dessert.

Individual portions of the dessert on offer at Sweet Studio

Where science meets sweetness!

Caramelised white chocolate before & after.

Close up of the garnish used on Masterchef - no longer used on the current version of the dish

Experimentation with different finishes continues.

Well most of you reading this will have watched this evenings episode featuring Darren in the chef vs amateur immunity challenge. We hope you enjoyed this as much as we did, we can assure you it is not as easy as it looks under the lights and in the spotlight! The dish above is the current version of the dish that was prepared on the show, as with all things, especially in Sweet Studio, our dishes are evolutionary. We start with an idea and then pretty soon some experimentation of flavour matching starts, then early versions of a dish start to materialise and then we have a finished dish. It does not stop there though as tweaks here and there can enhance a dish for the better and it is rare that we create something and stop there being content with the finished product as there is always room for improvement. So the dish on Masterchef tonight has evolved into the current version on sale at Sweet Studio right now.

Components:
Macadamia & B&P Spice Blend Speculos Pastry
Zingy Passionfruit Jelly
Caramel Bananas Cream
Caramelised White Chocolate Mousse With Vanilla
Caramelised White Chocolate Velvet Spray
Caramelised Milk Solids
Ascorbic Syrup & Dark Rum Jelly

So the changes that are immediately obvious to the version on Channel 10 are:

The omission of the coffee sable (for the speculos) - we did not want a polarising flavour to deter some customers.

The frozen items have been removed - for cake resale in a shop rather than dessert in a restaurant.

The banana straight banana has been removed and incorporated inside the mousse, the jelly now sits alone on top.

We hope that this current version is as popular as ever and hope that you can pop down to 647 Chapel Street, South Yarra to give it a try. We have LOTS more in store and you can view our current product list here:
http://www.burchandpurchese.com/media/1990/product_list_june_2011.pdf

and our June cake selection here: http://www.burchandpurchese.com/media/1987/cake_list_june_2011.pdf

BIG THANK YOU to all of you for the support shown to Darren on tonights show and we hope that it has inspired some of you to give a few tricky desserts a go.

For more information on Burch & Purchese call +61 3 9827 7060 or email info@burchandpurchese.com

Sweet Studio To Open This Monday Public Holiday

Hi all this is just a quick post to advise that Burch & Purchese Sweet Studio is open this Monday 13th June (Queen's Birthday). We will be open for our normal trading hours of 10am-6.30pm and we will have the cake cabinet fully stocked. So if you are in the area of 647 Chapel Street then please pop in and say hi. We hope you are enjoying this long weekend!

We Have A New Website! Visit www.burchandpurchese.com

www.burchandpurchese.com

Quick update, we are pleased to announce that we have a new website up and running. It features cake images from our current range plus pdf downloads of our product range and cake menu. It also has a link to  our You Tube page, Facebook & Twitter plus essential info on Sweet Studio. We will still be continuing with this blog for more in depth information on events etc but we will load the web page regularly with details on our upcoming cooking classes and other exciting stuff. Thanks to Robert Foster on his work, he can be contacted via his blog http://refactored.com.au/blog or through his Twitter page Robert Foster http://twitter.com/#!/robertjf72 Thanks to all for your continued support, the Sweet Studio is going from strength to strength and we are close to announcing some more exciting news in the near future, but for now we hope to see you at 647 Chapel Street sometime. Ian & Darren

EASTER NEWS

What a fantastic week we have had...we opened the doors of our Sweet Studio for the very first time on Tuesday morning at 10am and had lovely people drop by and visit us right away. We are loving our new home and have been overwhelmed by the support and encouragement of our friends, family and well everyone generally...A BIG THANK YOU TO YOU ALL.

We almost missed Easter this year but we are working hard to catch up and have closed today, Good Friday, to restock the Sweet Studio with Easter Eggs and our signature B&P cakes, ice creams and general goodness so we can reopen on Saturday. Our trading hours will be from 10am to 6.30pm and we are planning a few special surprises so if you are in the neighbourhood please stop by and say hello, we would love to see you.

After Saturday we will close the Sweet Studio for the remaining days in Easter and will reopen again on Wednesday the 27th. We want to use this time to develop some new ideas and create some surprises for you all.

For those of you who saw our giant egg in the front window and wonder what happened to it, we donated it the Royal Children's Hospital Good Friday Appeal in the hope that it will raise some much needed funds. The plan we believe is for them to auction it on Ebay in the days to come, follow its progress at www.facebook.com/royalchildrenshospitalfoundation.

From all of us at Burch & Purchese Sweet Studio we wish you a very happy and safe Easter

Ian, Darren, Cath, Cara, Marie, Renee, Laura & Eugenia x

Getting Ready For A Massive Week! Sweet Studio Opens Tuesday

Well the wait is nearly over and production has started in our brand new kitchen. The doors to Burch & Purchese Sweet Studio finally open on Tuesday 19th April. We are so excited to be opening the studio after a few false starts and we can't wait to fulfil all of your sweet dreams. In our stunning new retail space you can expect to find a huge range of desserts from our Autumn collection as well as ice creams, jams, chocolate bars and garnishes and components developed for you to 'pimp your pud'! Have a peek at our stunning chocolate flower wall and check out the massive 22 kg 100% chocolate Easter egg. Pop down and say hi if you are in the are as we would love to welcome you in store. We would just like to say thank you to all of you who have supported us on this blog and facebook & twitter.

BURCH & PURCHESE SWEET STUDIO

647 CHAPEL STREET 

SOUTH YARRA

MELBOURNE 

VICTORIA 

3141

+61 3 9827 7060

Opening times: 

Tuesday to Sunday 10am - 6.30pm

Thursday night by appointment for celebration cake consultation

Sweet Studio Delayed Until Next Tuesday - Water Damage!!

We have been working very hard to get our first store up and running and are sad to announce that due to the heavy rains in Melbourne on Monday night we sustained water damage. This has forced us to delay our opening to the public until Tuesday 19th April.

OUR SMALL LAUNCH PARTY TO THE PRESS WILL STILL BE GOING AHEAD AS PLANNED


We apologise to all of our friends and customers who were expecting a big unveiling this week but urgent repairs are needed back of house and in the retail area to ensure an amazing experience for all. This has been a blow but we want to be at our best when the swish sliding doors finally open. Other than that we are on course and hope to give you the ultimate dessert experience, we have been making jams, chocolates, taking orders for celebration cakes and we are working very hard to get a unique range of Easter eggs ready in time. We will keep you updated as things progress but for now we hope you are not too disappointed and we hope to see you in a week. Thanks to all of you who expressed concern and support today.
Darren & Ian

Follow Us! We Open Next Week On Chapel Street

After a fantastic month or so at our temporary home in the city, we are packing up again to move in to our permanent residence at 647 Chapel Street. Big thanks to Careers Australia for their support in helping to make our Melbourne Food & Wine Festival events and pop up stores such a success.

We have been busy making a limited range of our Studio range of desserts for pop up and they went down extremely well so we have to say so thanks to all of you who came down and said hi. We are now gearing up for our official opening next week and of course Easter.

Latest on the Sweet Studio is that we have had a number of minor setbacks in the opening, these things are to be expected but we wanted to say thank you for your patience. We are now opening next week with a date still to be confirmed but it is looking like the later part of the week.

Most of our equipment has arrived and the finishing touches are being done to ensure Burch & Purchese Sweet Studio is the only place to go for individual desserts, large desserts, cakes, ice creams, garnishes, chocolate and our signature chocolate celebration cakes.

Above are a couple of images of our work in the last couple of weeks, from our 'Follow Us' Easter eggs, individual raspberry & lychee desserts to a stunning centre piece for a 21st birthday cake and finally our popular 'Coconut, Passionfruit, Mint and Ginger cake.

We will let you know as soon as possible the opening date of our store but it WILL be next week at some point so we look forward to meeting old and new friends.

Thanks all for the support, we will keep you informed via this blog as soon as we can.

Burch & Purchese on The Circle

We were very happy last week to be invited onto the popular Channel 10 show The Circle. We conjured  up one of our sensational desserts using cream from Jonesy's dairy and Heilala Vanilla. An earlier segment on the show touched on the plight of farmer and local producers in Victoria who have had a dreadful time of late with drought, bushfire and flooding. Jonesy's were once of the many producers highlighted and as we are big fans of their cream and milk we were pleased to be asked to cook up something to tie in with the theme. We produced a silky smooth vanilla mouse with 'cow print' apple & rhubarb jellies and they went down a storm with the crew. We were also able to showcase our chocolate flower cake and one of our unique chocolate celebration cakes, these were a great hit judging by the orders we received following the episode. We wanted to say thanks to our new friends at Channel 10 and we are expecting a stampede from them as 'Sweet Studio' is just across the road from the studios. Click on the link below for the recipe to the dessert which is on the Channel 10 website, you can also view the episode if you missed it! Enjoy.

Recipe & Episode - http://ten.com.au/the-circle-white-chocolate-vanilla-mousse.htm

Jonesy's Dairy       - http://www.jonesysdairyfresh.com/

Heilala Vanilla      - http://www.heilalavanilla.co.nz/