by blackbird.

How delicious do they look?  Last Saturday I finally visited By Blackbird to sample their pastries after hearing so much about them, and I was not disappointed.  When you walk through the door an incredible aroma of freshly baked sweet pastry hits you straight away, so even if you're not hungry (which I was) you simply can't wait to eat something.  My mum and I went around 9:30 in the morning and it was relatively quiet when we arrived, but since it's a small shop it filled up pretty quickly.



We decided to share three pastries between the two of us: baked pear pastry, almond croissant and the chocolate croissant.

Almond Croissant

This was amazing.  The pastry was soft and slightly crunchy because of the hardened sugar on top, and the almonds, which were slightly burnt, tasted so good with the sugar.  The croissant was actually pretty filling since it has quite a few layers of pastry within it, and luckily we were sharing otherwise I probably wouldn't have been able to get through the next two.

Chocolate Croissant

The chocolate croissants were similarly delicious - thin and light layers of pastry wrapped around a line of chocolate.  It was, however, a little dry on the inside compared to the almond croissant, which was buttery and moist inside.

Baked Pear Pastry

The glazed pear pieces on this pastry were quite sweet, even though I ate this one last.  Luckily the pastry was able to balance out the sweetness.  It had a different texture to the pastry used in the croissants - this one was similar to puff pastry but more silky and less dry.

I was really impressed with this place, as was dear mother.  She had just returned from Paris and claimed that these pastries were as good as the ones she had tried during her French visit.  The service was super friendly and the eclectic decorations and small size of the shop gave it a very warm and comfortable vibe.