anpan man in sydney: Apple Tree Pastry

*admendment (added 17 Nov 04):
To my horror and disappointment, the Apple Tree Pastry has closed its door on 3rdNov!
noooooooooooooo..............................I had yet to try out the ichigo musume! *sob**

Pinkcocoa is back (once again)! Never have I been so happy and relieved to finally have my new phoneline connected. Silly Telstra, they mixed up our number with another address. Alright, enough of nudging.

We had some yummilicious pan (bread in Japanese) the other day for tea-time snack.


♥ japanese sweet biscuit bun aud$2
Doesnt this pan looks like "pineapple bun" (polo bao in Cantonese) from the Chinese bakery? In fact, I think this is actually polo bao. It tasted the same too except that the sweet dough topping is much crunchier.

This pan is huge, by the way. At least, it is huge to my standard. I was comparing it with the normal size polo bao from Chinatown. There is also a smaller version of this particular bun for aud$1.


♥ japanese sweet biscuit bun - choc flavour aud$2.10
A chocoholic could never ever resist a chocolate bun! I had no idea this was chocolate-flavoured sweet biscuit bun. I just thought that this was probably a darker version of the original flavoured. You know, like it was purposely baked to have an attractive caramel crust.

But the addition 10c got me interested. If the two were the same, why is this priced higher? Turned out that this was a chocolate bun. I was lucky enough to have the last one for the day. I was really worried when this chinese lady came with her son and cut our queue. She was actually going to grab this chocolate one. Luckily she didnt. Phew~


♥ plain bun inside the sweet biscuit crust
The sweet biscuit buns are plain, with no filling or whatsoever inside. I was hoping they would have dry milk custard (nai su) inside. Yup, I was and still am missing the yummy Taiwanese nai su mian bao (dry milk custard bun). If only I can find a decent and reasonably priced Taiwanese bakery here.....

Anyway, back to where we were. I found the bun a little on the dry side. The chocolate crust was yummy. I could have more of that. I wouldnt mind if they sold only the chocolate crust. The bun was alright. I guess I was a little disappointed because I was expecting a very soft and tender texture: typical and distinctive character of Japanese bread.


♥ yomogi daifuku aud$2
The Japanese bakery were having a daifuku (Japanese sweet glutinous cake) carnival week so there were quite a few different types of daifuku. I decided to grab a yomogi one. Yomogi is Japanese mugwort, a herb with medicinal value. This daifuku receives its unique greenish colour from the leaves of yomogi.

I actually bought this daifuku and forgot about it until two days later. I had to examine this sweet cake really carefully to make sure it wasnt mouldy at all. It's a little hard to do so with the greenish and whitish colours.


♥ anko inside daifuku
Inside the daifuku is a generous amount of anko (red bean paste). I like this anko very much. It wasnt as sweet as the Chinese one that I had. And I also like how there is still chunky bits of red beans inside the paste.

oiishii desu ne~

Sorry, I cant quite remember how the yomogi skin tasted like. I think the red bean paste was a little over-powering. It's either this or the skin had dried up a little since it was left on the kitchen bench for over 2 days.

I am going to visit the bakery again soon. I cant wait to try out their curry pan and yakisoba pan (fried noodles on bread roll)!

♥ Apple Tree Pastry
shop 219a mandarin centre
65 albert ave, chatswood nsw 2067
ph: (02) 9412 2171
fax: (02) 9411 1241