On a large corner block, a stone’s throw from the golden sands of Burleigh Heads Beach on Queensland’s Gold Coast, is an old weatherboard house surrounded by garden. At its heart is a wood-fired red brick oven where the daily breads, for which Paddock Bakery is famous, are baked. With a beautiful makeover and surrounding tables and chairs, Paddock Bakery is famed in South East Queensland, not only for its breads, but for a vast and delicious range of pastries and desserts. While it is popular year-round with a steady stream of locals, it is an internationally famous foodie destination and is busy during the festive and holiday season as people from around Australia who come for the Paddock’s unique meals and sweet treats.
The menu at Paddock Bakery
Owners Maya and Dion Scholz have developed a menu that plays with people’s sense of nostalgia and presents dishes that resonate with memories of childhood. There’s eggs and toast soldiers. There is a fresh bagel with smoked salmon and cream cheese through which fresh herbs from the garden are folded. One of the specialties is the Coco Pops milkshake made with Coco Pops blitzed in chilled milk and served in an old-fashioned fluted milk shake glass; its rim is rolled in Nutella and then Coco Pops and sealed with a thin disk of milk chocolate.
“Fresh and quality ingredients are at the core of what we do here”
– Maya Scholz, owner at Paddock Bakery
What makes Paddock Bakery different?
“We are this beautiful little hidden place with a shaded garden hidden by a picket fence,” says Maya. She is a stickler for perfection and insists on making everything from scratch. Her recipes are elegant with layers of flavour, mixing different textures and flavours. The Paddock Bakery strawberry tart, for example, starts with a crisp shortcrust shell made with fresh butter. It is filled with vanilla creme patisserie with flecks of white chocolate and topped with fresh strawberries and strawberry nappage. “Fresh and quality ingredients are at the core of what we do here,” says Maya. “You can’t make food like this without using the best and freshest food.” She points to her strawberry milkshake. It is made with fresh milk blitzed with fresh Queensland strawberries. This is topped with freshly whipped cream, sweetened and flavoured with a little vanilla and finished with crushed strawberries, cream candy, a strawberry twist and more fresh strawberries. The milkshake is simple, but refreshing, with a beautiful balance between acid and sweetness, chill and richness. The doughnut range is equally well thought out. The Creme Brulee doughnut is a light, yeasted doughnut filled with creme patisserie and rolled in sugar that is then torched to create a caramel toffee crust. There is the crack in the mouth as the burned sugar crust snaps, the softness of the spongy doughnut and the creaminess of the creme pat.
Making the perfect dessert
“The perfect dessert has a balance of flavours but it is also about texture. It should have a variety of textures from the crunch of baked dough to the cool smooth of whipped cream,” says Maya. “It also has to be indulgent.” For said texture to transcend through to the final product, it has to start from the foundations. When it comes to desserts, it’s the smoothest, creamiest and highest quality ingredients that really elevate the dish. Such refined ingredients can be found in Anchor’s range of creams. They present products like their cream cheese, which blends beautifully to complement both sweet and savoury dishes; and their whipping cream – a voluminous and delicious cream, made to keep a firm consistency and texture.
Bespoke creations
In Paddock Bakery’s case, their bespoke pastries and desserts stem from not only great ingredients, but great ideas too. To prove a point, she presents one of her best sellers, the Paddock Triple Threat. “This is a paddock cream cheese, white chocolate, macadamia cookie with a Nutella bomb baked into it and topped with salted caramel – that’s a dessert in a cookie.” Maya and her team might start with one ingredient, flavour or idea and build on it to create the final dessert. “It brings such joy to see a vision come to fruition.”
Visit Paddock Bakery’s website to stay up to date with their creations.
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Anchor Cream Cheese
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Anchor Cream Cheese is a deliciously mild cream cheese that’s ideal for a wide range of hot and cold applications.
