Good afternoon everyone,
It's one of the the most divisive week of the bakery calendar: Mint Choc Chip ice cream sandwich week. Even amongst our body of staff we have many colleagues for whom it's the iteration they look forward to the most, yet we've had others for whom it was the one Hamblin product they could not stomach. The technique we use these days is from the Happy Endings Cookbook. We blanche fresh mint, then blitz with sparkling water before infusing cream overnight with this vivid paste. Little flecks of Pump Street chocolate complete the Italian meringue parfait. Some say it's marmite, we say it's delicious.
A nailed on crowd pleaser will make its debut this week. Hazelnut caramel thumbprint cookies. The same delicious dough we use for our hazelnut kisses at christmas, this will have a pool of salty, buttery hazelnut caramel baked into the centre. Hugo can confirm they are also pretty darn good crumbled atop a bowl of strawberries and cream.
Top cheese picks for this week are Brefu Bach (little bleat) - formerly fresh, milky and subtle, but now transformed into a farmy, sheepy, umami bomb - and the gorgeous Provencal goat's milk cheeses of Francois and Vanessa Masto, the cigar shaped Buchette de Manon, and the chestnut-leaf wrapped Mistralou.
Finally, having announced its arrival last week, we can confirm that the new vintage of Pink Bulles is an absolute stunner. The colour is a beguiling, hazy, shimmering pink, the nose is strawberries and petals, the fruit and acid are in harmony and the finish is long, stony and mineral. Really good juice.
That's all for now, we remain eternally grateful and raise our glasses to your health and happiness,
Kate and Hugo