East Ocean Bakery - Eastwood (CLOSED)

Ah...Now this is what missed about Sydney during my month overseas. Ever since returning from my holiday, I can't stop marvelling at how beautiful and perfect the weather is in Sydney at the moment. After a month trapped under an endlessly low & heavy cloud, breathing in humid and polluted air, coming back home was literally a breath of fresh air. The sky is so blue! It took a long time to convince A that going for walks outdoors was not worth the effort in KL, that's why they've built so many air-conditioned shopping malls for everyone to walk around in. It is a lot easier for him to convince me to go out for a walk here, even though I tend to avoid exercise like the plague. So even with the gorgeous weather, it will take quite a lot to convince me to walk all the way to Eastwood. It will take even more to convince myself to go on my own. But I know that there are a few very good reasons:
1. Hukuya - great value sushi restaurant but is closed on Sundays :(
2. BBQ One - my best friend's mother's chinese BBQ store that has the best roast pork in Eastwood
3. Wife cake

Wife cake (lou phor peng) is a flaky pastry filled with wintermelon paste. One of the main ingredients is pork lard, no wonder I am completely obsessed with this asian dessert. Honey to the bee, that's pork lard to me. I am a little confused by the aversion to pork lard that many of my non-muslim Malaysian friends and family have developed. Anyway, if you want a good wife cake I don't think you can get much better than the ones at East Ocean Bakery in Eastwood.

Wife cake food porn (flaky butter pastry with wintermelon, pork lard, sesame and five spice filling)

Forget BreadTop, forget the rubbish they sell in the asian supermarkets, this is the real deal. The pastry is so perfect and is overflowing with wintermelong filling. East Ocean bakery always seems to have freshly baked trays filled with a variety of asian sweets. I get three wife cakes and cannot resist the large tray of freshly baked egg tarts sitting on the table. They are still warm, the egg filling perfectly set but a little wobbly inside, just right. Unfortunately they shove the warm egg tarts into small plastic bags and the pretty tarts do not survive the walk home in my shopper. A is still happy to scoop out the ruins of the egg tart for his afternoon tea.

While I am in Eastwood, I also stop by the huge Sakura supermarket to buy some of my favourite Prima meals, Noodle King instant noodles and linger in the sweets and biscuits aisle. I have a hankering for some strawberry flavoured chocolate and this cute little packet catches my eye:

It's even cuter inside, small squares of chocolate made up of thin strands of dark, white and strawberry chocolate. The smell of the strawberry chocolate is very inviting, I have a bit of a weak spot for it. These little morsels are good for satisfying those ever-persistnt chocolate cravings.