My own personal Vanilla Slice Triumph

Trip report part three

Trip report part two

Trip report part one

Friday September 7

Finally, I've arrived! I thought I'd never get those other parts finished, which I couldn't wait to do, because until I had I couldn't write this post, about my favourite experience of the road trip.

It all began when Some Bloke and I decided to make Mildura the primary destination of our journey. Typing 'Mildura' into Google returns as the first link the Visit Mildura website which lists, amongst other things, major events occurring in the region.

Now, never being one to shy away from a high quality pastry product (especially not if it's been prepared under competition conditions), you can imagine my extreme excitement when upon first navigating to the Visit Mildura website a couple of weeks ago, a major event listed on the front page was the Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph in Ouyen.

My excitement quickly turned to heartbreak however, as I read on to find that the Triumph was taking place on August 31, merely days before our arrival, but days in which the best pastry chefs in Australia would have packed up their mix-masters and gone home, with nary a mille-feuille to be found, or at least not one you'd want to eat by the time we got there.

Thankfully, the Triumph has its own website. Applying all of my cartographic and investigative prowess, I was able to cross reference past winners with our likely route after leaving Mildura, and conclude that Sharp's Bakery in Birchip may prove to be our salvation.

Now, at this stage Sharp's would not have been my first choice, given that having placed third in 2004 and 2005 they failed to ascend the podium either last year or this, but in the searching required to find out where Sharp's actually was, I was alerted to it's participation not only in sweet pastry competitions, but competitions of the savoury variety also. Again, it seemed Sharp's was more likely to place rather than win these competitions, but a picture of general pastry excellence as opposed to a particular pastry speciality was emerging, and simultaneously a light went on in my head and an increase in production went on in my saliva glands.

Birchip is a town with a population of 822 (according to the 2006 census), about 230km by road from Mildura, and about 310 km by road from Melbourne.

Upon arriving in town and locating Sharp's bakery (not too difficult in a town of 822), we stopped, and took some photos. Here's one:

And that's the Red Eye Express on the left.

Now, whilst obviously very valuable for the purposes of the blog, the act of photographing the outside of Sharp's bakery did cause the ladies inside to ask us when we entered if they should have called the terrorist hotline. (Though I suspect Some Bloke often has that effect even when he doesn't take photos). However, we quickly provided the background to our journey to Birchip, getting everyone back on side, and allowing us to take a couple more snaps, before getting down to the business at hand. Eating pastry products.

Here is the inside of the bakery:

So, to start, a meat and vegetable pasty. I won't venture to provide a comprehensive list of the ingredients, but could confidently identify the meat, onion, potato and swede required for the filling of a proper Cornish pasty. The pastry was quite flaky, which in truth is a move away from the traditional version made for miners to carry in their pockets, but not necessarily a bad move in these days of plates and such forth. Most of the pasties I've eaten in my life to date have been made by either me, Mum, the Cornish Pasty Co, or whoever has had the contract for the catering at Kardinia Park when I've been to Geelong home games, and, I'm sorry to say this Mum, but Sharp's bakery is the best pasty experience I've ever had.

I mean seriously, how good does this look?

To be fair, the tremendousness of the experience wasn't only because of the quality of the pasty; beautifully proportioned filling perfectly cooked so the vegetables have not completely lost all firmness, light flaky pastry and a temperature warm enough to appreciate the filling without being too hot to get stuck into, but also because of the other aspects of the experience. We had bloody high expectations of this place, and weren't disappointed. The staff were lovely, they brought us the tomato sauce in a little jug, and during the time we were there what seemed like half the town passed through to sample the wares and chat to the proprietors and each other. We met a local resident who'd been living in Birchip for all of his 87 years, and were also engaged in friendly conversation by a group of school students as we wandered down the street.

Some Bloke has always had significantly more fang capacity than me, and trying to be polite I chose, having finished my pasty at about the same time he finished his, to wait for my next course while he ate not one, but two, pies. First a Stockman's (with meat and veg), and then a Surf and Turf (with meat, prawns and Mornay sauce). I can't complain too much though, as he gave me a good taste of both, and they were both bloody good.

However, he was finished eventually, and we could get to the true essence of our trip to Sharp's; the Snot Block.

At this stage, can I just say 'Oh my God'!

Words simply cannot describe how much I enjoyed the Vanilla Slice I had from Sharp's (especially as I already used thaumaturgy to describe the steak sandwich I had in part three), but, what the hell, let's try anyway.

On the bottom we had the pastry, delicate and flaky whilst still being substantial enough to support the slice, and on top we had the fondant, pure and white as the driven snow, beautifully even and crisp, with just the appropriate amount of sugar to leave a delightfully sweet yet subtle after-taste. And in the middle the custard. The Vanilla Slice Triumph seeks to find Vanilla Slices which 'when tasted, should reveal a custard with a creamy smooth texture and a balance of vanilla taste.' Now, all I can say is if Sharp's didn't even rate a place the medallists must have been producing some other-worldy Vanilla Slices or slipping a few Edith Cowan's into their entries, because for mine the custard in Sharp's comfortably exceeded the requirements given above. This was a fucking good Vanilla Slice.

And all this joy for only $2.60. There really are some simple pleasures left in the world, and this is one of them. Again, we both felt our very high expectations had been exceeded, though Some Bloke did acknowledge his expectations had been kept in check somewhat by the odd bad Vanilla Slice experience in the past. (Comparisons between custard and rubber generally aren't good).

But seriously, I'd built this experience up so much in my mind, I could have so easily been disappointed, and I wasn't. I absolutely loved it, and man has writing this made me want one right now.

I did get a couple more for the road that day, and here's two photos of them in their bag a couple of hours later, suffering the slightest transport damage. I can happily report this damage had absolutely no impact upon the taste!




Administrative Folderol

Just to maintain consistency in the series of blog posts about our road trip, I thought I'd also point out that on the Friday night we stayed in Castlemaine, a lovely little former gold mining town with a population of around 7k. It's mentioned in the tremendous folk song 'Ewan and the Gold', originally written by Brian McNeill, but also performed by Dick Gaughan and Mick Thomas. It's a fascinating song about a fellow named Ewan Gillies from St Kilda, an island way off the north west coast of Scotland, and after which the Melbourne suburb was named. And as Mick himself would say, I'll leave you with this:

You caught the line they threw you,
You helped to make her fast,
You heard the sailors talking in the rigging,
And when the captain said he'd take,
Another hand before the mast,
You knew you were halfway to the diggings.
So you rode the ocean swell,
To Bendigo and living hell,
In the camps and creeks of Castlemaine,
For like a million other souls,
You were haunted by the gold,
And you'd never know a peaceful day again.