Black Star Pastry (The World's Most Instagrammed Cake)
EDIT: You should know that if you're reading this post, Black Star Pastry in Melbourne closed. The only store that's still running is the Sydney branch.
So I stayed at a hotel a few minutes walk away from Black Star Pastry. My friend was also really interested, so the four of us went there multiple times.
It's pretty good! I do have some negatives that I'll cover though.
There's not a lot of seating inside the store, and you can tell they spent a lot of money turning the two corner seats into a prime Instagram area.
They use St Ali's Brazil beans for their coffee. It's okay. The darkness pairs well with the sweetness and it doesn't conflict with any of the fruity tastes in their cakes, so it's serviceable.
Okay, so their famous Strawberry Watermelon cake. I really like it. I don't even want to think about the logistics of choosing high quality watermelons and using only the big middle slices because that's what this is! A huge slice of pristine watermelon put inside the cake. It's not even constituted from different parts, it's a whole thick slice! (I really hope there's not too much food waste from making it...)
It's pretty amazing. I did enjoy the light rosewater syrup coating the strawberries (it gives it that extra layer of oomph that you don't notice at first, but there's definitely something EXTRA here). The sponge was nice, but the real fun is when you try to cut the cake with your fork and it's just EH? I can't cut through because of the huge slice of watermelon! It's fun to work through it.
This is by far their best cake. In fact, it might be one of the most interesting cakes I've ever had.
I did like their croissant, and it's got a very nice chew to it. It's not the same as LUNE, for sure, but it stands well on its own. It's expensive though, and I think getting their cake is way better bang for your buck. You don't need to come here specifically for their croissants.
So I did try the rest of their cakes as well and here's where my gripe comes: they're all sort of samey. We didn't try them all on the same day (we spread it out over two weeks) but they all felt like variations of sponge cakes with different fruits/nuts.
Out of all of them, I liked the lemon pistachio and the dragonfruit one the most. The lychee one is ehhh, it's okay. It's not bad, it's just dacquoise with fruit on top. I guess the combination of flavours didn't really do that well for me.
But there's one I didn't take a picture of that's really good and that's their 'Zen' sesame cheesecake. You can see it below, second from the left:
YES. This one. There's a lovely grit to the marscapone and cream cheese from the sesame and the milk chocolate (mixed with charcoal) feuilletine layer on the bottom is amazing. I really did enjoy this one, and every bite just gave this rush of sesame aroma mixed with the loveliness of the cheesecake. I asked them and apparently there's also almond mixed in as well, which is probably where the actual 'grit' and texture comes from.
My friend said it was like a top-quality sable style base. Usually sable crumbles fast and becomes a mess, but this one had just enough moisture to it to hold together. I'd say it's almost like a raw dough with seeds instead of flour (so yeah, the almond flour they mentioned comes into play).
Overall, I loved the 'zen' cheesecake and the strawberry watermelon cake. I don't chase trends (at least, I don't think I do) and I don't even have Instagram, but Black Star Pastry is a place I'd definitely recommend.