Our Little Caravan and Inchmeal Cafe

Name: French Toast with Hazelnut Coffee Cream
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 20 min
Yield: 4 serves
Ingredients: 2 eggs; 100 ml of cream; 100 ml of milk; 1 tbsp icing sugar; ½ tsp ground cinnamon and a drop of vanilla essence; 2 slices white bread; 25 g butter; 250 ml cream; 1 shot of good (strong coffee, cooled); 2 tbsp icing sugar; 1/4 cup chopped toasted hazelnuts or hazelnut meal; Fresh fruit and maple syrup to serve

September 23, 2016October 12, 2016 ~ danib@eatmystreet.net ~ 1 Comment

fullsizerender Looking for great coffee in Notting Hill? Then look no further than Inchmeal Cafe at Our Little Caravan. Newly opened, Inchmeal cafe is serving Dukes coffee, Tea Lady tea, fruit toast, pastries and sweet treats all in the gorgeous setting that is the Our Little Caravan Collective Store.

Owner and barista, Anne Ngo has previously worked as cafe manager at the stunning 1932 Cafe and Restaurant in Collins St, Melbourne. She has now achieved her dream of opening her very own cafe in the heart of Notting Hill.

fullsizerender Continue reading →

Best French Toast Recipe with hazelnut coffee cream

February 13, 2016May 18, 2018 ~ danib@eatmystreet.net ~ 2 Comments

Best French Toast Recipe with Hazelnut Coffee Cream

Nothing says love like being brought breakfast in bed.

Once you have kids, nothing says love like being brought a cup of hot, strong coffee in bed.

When I had my first baby and the full horror of a sleep deprivation I had never known nor imagined set in, my husband started making me a coffee first thing in the morning. No matter what had happened the night before, the coffee was like a fresh start for the new day. A full stop to the night’s horrors. A good reason not to complain about tiredness because our mouths were occupied with the sweet nectar of the coffee bean. That caffeine would eventually slide through the blood and provide an optimistic 45 minutes of energy and activity for the day.

Valentines Day is a good excuse as any to celebrate all the amazing things your loved one means to you. Di Bella Coffee were kind enough to send me a packet of their Ali Reserve Coffee Beans so I thought I would bring all the goodness together and make a breakfast dish using coffee.

The best French Toast recipe, with Hazelnut Coffee Cream; an ode to the glue that held our lives together for so many years.

Just secretly, this recipe is also dedicated to my gorgeous husband who brought me that coffee in bed for so many years (we now share the task) and who’s favourite flavour is hazelnut. 😉

French Toast with Hazelnut Coffee Cream

French Toast with Hazelnut Coffee Cream

Perfect French toast recipe for the perfect brunch.

Course Breakfast, Brunch

Cuisine Australian

Keyword french toast

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes

Total Time 20 minutes

Servings 4 serves

Ingredients

2 eggs
100 ml of cream
100 ml of milk
1 tbsp icing sugar
½ tsp ground cinnamon and a drop of vanilla essence
2 slices white bread
25 g butter
250 ml cream
1 shot of good strong coffee, cooled
2 tbsp icing sugar
1/4 cup chopped toasted hazelnuts or hazelnut meal
Fresh fruit and maple syrup to serve

Instructions

Method

Gently whisk the eggs in a bowl together with the cream, milk and icing sugar. Add the cinnamon and vanilla. Soak the bread slices in the mixture.
Melt the butter in a frying pan and fry the soaked bread for 2-4 minutes on each side, or until golden-brown and crisp. Remove the fried bread from the pan and drain on paper towel.
Beat the cream to soft peaks, then add in the icing sugar and whisk to form medium peaks. Add a tablespoon of the coffee to a seperate bowl and fold through the cream gently. Add more coffee until you are happy with the flavour but be careful not to let it curdle. Sprinkle with toasted hazelnuts or gently stir through the hazelnut meal.

Recipe Notes

Serve with a fresh fruit salad and drizzled with maple syrup.

Enjoy!

This is a very simple recipe, so it should not take you too long to whip up. If you are feeling very decadent forget the fruit salad and add some caramelised banana. You will love it!

Will you be celebrating St Valentines Day tomorrow? If you are not, make this recipe anyway and just eat it all on your own. Boom!

Whatever you do, go well. Dani xx

Dani B is a food blogger from Melbourne. Every Friday she posts a simple, tasty recipe that you can try at home. She also writes about great local cafes and restaurants and her favourite markets, cooking schools and places to visit. You can follow her on Facebook or Instagram.

You might also like to see my most popular recipes ever.

White Chocolate Mud Cake with a touch of coconut.

Best ever Chocolate Mud Cake recipe.

Or the most simple recipe your whole family will love….

Cafe Revival Berwick.

March 13, 2014October 17, 2015 ~ eatmystreet

I have to make two disclaimers before I review Cafe Revival in Berwick.

1. If the Sun is shining on my back and there is a cool breeze in the air and a beautiful view, I am pretty happy.

2. I am easily impressed by shiny red coffee machines that are reminiscent of Italian racing cars.

Now we have that out of the way I can say that I really enjoyed my coffee at Cafe Revival today.

I have already mentioned in a previous post that Berwick is really at its beautiful best at this time of year and so it was today. I popped into Cafe Revival for a quick coffee stop and scored the best seat in the house, right outside the cafe on the footpath. In the sun. Facing down a lovely tree lined street. With Berwick’s busy, sometimes noisy main street behind me and out of sight. There was a big red shiny coffee machine taking up most of the front window of the cafe that opens out onto the street for ease of ordering. So yes, I was happy even before I ordered.

My skinny flat white was delicious. You know that moment when you have your first sip of a coffee and sometimes, just sometimes, it is so perfect in flavour and temperature and construction that you do a little sigh? Well, that was me. Today’s coffee was excellent. They use Segadredo beans which is not a coffee that I am familiar with but I really enjoyed it today. The intensity was just right and (shock, horror) my flat white was not actually just a latte in a different cup. It was a flat white. Bravo!

I have heard mixed reviews of Cafe Revival Berwick and also my previous experiences here were nothing worth writing about. The food here does not always have people excited. I didn’t eat anything today with that in mind.

Another thing worthy of note, there were a lot of suits here. Suits ordering at the widow, suits getting take away, female suits, male suits, suits of every size and colour (nah, that is an exaggeration, they were all grey or black). I remember this from my previous visits too. So I think we can conclude that the Berwick suits like to drink here.

A note to those of you with children. I had the special privilege of drinking coffee without my two year old attachment today. If he was with me I would have gone elsewhere. This is a small, narrow cafe and the footpath is right near a road. Coffee-ing with children could be done here but is probably not worth the effort, in my opinion.

Plus it is harder to stare serenely at the beautiful tree’s that line Gloucester Avenue if you have a toddler with you. And the suits might give your children “that” stare. Thus some of the magic would be lost.

Overall a lovely place for a coffee, on the right day in the right seat with the right companions.

Maybe one day I might even get a chance to drive the shiny red racing….. I mean coffee machine.

The details:

My coffee was $3.70.

The address is 18 Gloucester Ave, Berwick.

Primary @ Pioneer Park

March 6, 2014October 17, 2015 ~ eatmystreet

Primary @ Pioneer Park

“Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.”

Sometimes this little, apparently Biblical outtake, is more true than not. Today was one of those days.
I woke up like a bear with a sore head, on the wrong side of the bear cave bed (I hope you enjoyed that mishmash #DJDan). Cereal with milk at the kitchen bench was just not going to cut it so I took matters into my own hands and headed out. Destination: Primary @Pioneer Park Cafe.
As a Berwick resident for one whole year and four whole seasons I can say with confidence that Autumn and Spring are really the buzzing months for lovely old Berwick. The gardens, the tree’s, the wind, the opportunity to partake in our lovely outdoor spaces. So Primary Cafe is the perfect destination.
We got a table outside and the sun was kind enough to shine on my back and the wind was gentle enough to tickle not hassle.
Pioneer Park Cafe is the kind of posh version of having a coffee in Berwick. The restaurant was full of (mainly women) with lovely hair and lipstick and clothes made from swishy fabrics. There were also a few school Mum’s but their children were well entertained and behaved thanks to the playground that abuts the cafe’s deck.
I ordered eggs because I really needed them.
They came on very lovely wholegrain bread and they were cooked beautifully. Pre cracked pepper was available on the table and a fairly decent salt. My flat white was quite nice: nothing to complain about nothing to rave about. There was another lovely pattern in my froth that leads me to the conclusion that pictures in froth bears an inverse relationship to excellence in coffee but only at the moderate end of the spectrum. Feedback and ongoing experiments are welcome on this topic.
I have visited Pioneers Cafe before and had a similar experience; descent food and drink and lovely surroundings. The bill is always slightly more expensive that at other places in Berwick.
But sometimes, just sometimes, it doesn’t really matter.

Details

Address: 1-11 Peel Street, Berwick VIC 3806
Phone:(03) 9768 9681

A Touch of Dutch Cafe

August 14, 2013October 9, 2015 ~ eatmystreet

Ok. So I have been very excited about this post.

I love a touch of Dutch Cafe in Berwick.

I know it does not sound overly loveable, but bear with me (and check out my images). Kitschy goodness in a tree lined village on the South Eastern Melbourne fringe.

So I have to admit up front that I do have Dutch heritage and seeing big glass jars full of mouth puckering, salty Dutch licorice does make me feel all nostalgic. But I am pretty sure I would enjoy a touch of Dutch even with out the dutch blood running through my veins.

A touch of Dutch Cafe is attached to a kind of general store next door. It is full of themed tea towels, cuckoo clocks and biscuit tins with the face of the outgoing Monarch plastered on them. They also sell jewellery and frozen food and sauerkraut and an astounding number of vegetables in a jar. I love having a wander through, although I am yet to buy anything. On my last visit it was also full of wandering Dutch men with their “ich” laden conversation, smooth burnished skin, dapper trousers and well cut casual jackets.

Back in the Cafe however I found the food to be lovely and interesting and the service to be friendly but professional (my favourite combination- chat to me, but not very much).

There was a whole shelf of dutch cakes that the waitress tells me are made on site. Then there were plenty more options for your average sweet tooth fix. The caramel slice looked quite fetching I have to say. Coffee was good and they seem to show some interest in ensuring it stays that way. My understanding is that the Dutch have been drinking good, strong, fresh coffee for a long time before it became popular here in Melbourne. So while the coffee did not knock my socks off, it has so far been reliably good. Boy have I been to a lot of Cafe’s where that is not true.

We had to eat the poffertjes. Mini dutch pancakes covered in butter and icing sugar.

They are delicious. And moreish. And flluffy and buttery and maybe addictive? I have ordered them every single time.

They are also kind of fun. I’m not sure how. Maybe I am easily amused?

I really recommend you visit. Order a coffee. Maybe have cake or some sauerkraut or even the caramel slice. Then please let me know how it tastes. I don’t think I’ll ever get past ordering the poffertjes.

Details: Village Arcade, 3 & 4/48-50 High St, Berwick VIC 3806
(03) 9707 2542

You can take a look at their site here.

http://cafe.atouchofdutch.com.au