Thursday, September 30, 2010

Desserts from Vegan Choice Grocery/Green Gourmet: My idea of Heaven.

After my initial disappointment about not getting vanilla slice at Naked Expresso, Mandee pointed out that Vegan Choice should be opening soon (11am) and lead the way with all the brunch group following. Vegan Choice is next to vegan restaurant Green Gourmet and is a small store which sells a range of mock meats, Toby read a few which listed some of the Chinese ingredients which are not really vegan since they containing dairy. So vegans beware!

There are however a wide range of vegan desserts. I was super super excited, which is why I insisted that we had to go twice. I was in heaven! Yes we have places in Melbourne to get vegan desserts but not a wide range of vegan desserts in one place.

They have a range of vegan cupcakes:
Tofu based ice cream flavours (which I think were all g/f), including some interesting asian style flavours like taro, green tea, sesame:
Also, vegan Chinese moon cake, g/f brownies (the same ones you can get at Radical Grocery), cookies and g/f raw cakes:

On the first visit Toby had black sesame and goji-coconut ice cream. I wasn't a big fan of the sesame but we both enjoyed the goji -coconut with the subtle goji flavour, but Toby said the sesame flavour was just like how he remembered it in Hong Kong in his pre-vegan days.

Bec kindly offered me some of of her raw lemon blueberry cheesecake which was sweet and tart, I really enjoyed it:


I also got some coconut ice cream which was just as amazing as sydneysider Ingrid insisted it was. It was different to other coconut based ice cream/sorbet, creamy with quite a subtle coconut flavour. So subtle that I had to question if it was vanilla ice cream.

I also followed Cindy's lead and had a chocolate cherry cupcake. It did have a touch of almond essence which I'm not a fan of, but aside from that was pretty awesome. It was a chocolate cupcake, with the top cut out and filled with cherries, icing and then the lid replaced with more icing on top. Reminded me a lot of the pics in vctotw (it's the second one from the left in the pic above).

On the second visit I got two more cupcakes, the only remaining flavours- banana and blueberry/lemon. The blueberry one was delicious and I think lemon icing suited it perfectly. The banana one was super hard and I suspect it was either partially frozen or just a little old.
I also got a piece of strawberry 'cream' raw cake:
I had this wonderful idea of eating this cake on the plane, but after a cancelled flight and way too much time waiting and holding it, it didn't actually make it, it kind of melted. I did have a little bit of the icing which was nice but didn't eat the rest because I was worried that it had gone bad.

Toby got more ice cream on the second trip too, this time he tried green tea and papaya. He said that the green tea one tasted authentic and the papaya was nice and sweet. Toby said the sesame was his favourite though because it was rich.

You can read some older reviews of ice cream/green gourmet at Vegan Melbourne, also Not Quite Nigella, Cupcake Kitteh and more recently from Lisa.


Vegan Choice Grocery
113 King St
Newtown

5 comments:

  1. It's a shame you didn't get to eat your raw cheesecake, because it is seriously delicious! Rich and full on, but so so good.

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  2. I adore black sesame ice cream - what I wouldn't give for a dairy-free version here in Canberra! And I'm with Theresa... how devastating about missing out on that cake! It looked wonderful.

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  3. green gourmet - great name for a restaurant :-)

    those desserts look fantastic - shame about the cheesecake but - like a lot of things these days - you can blame the airline!!!

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  4. Theresa, I did get to try some of my friends cheesecake though and that was yummo.

    Hannah, canberra really needs a few more options :-)

    Johanna, I know, actually when I was googling to look for other reviews your blog kept coming up :-)

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  5. Wow, this looks like my kind of paradise!

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