Even though Fraser’s does provide a full breakfast, lunch, dinner and
dessert menu of gourmet foods, this place has gained more attention for their
range of special cheesecakes, and tarts, as well as other savouries, and a few
options of biscuits to go with your coffee, which is immediately seen place in
their glass cabinet as you walk into the café.
With the [bad] habit of letting my camera eat first, starting from 2012, my camera and I have tried almost all the desserts from Frasers, from cheesecakes to all the items on their All Day Dessert menu. As these photos were taken and collected starting from two years ago, I’m uncertain whether all the cakes are still available, but from memory of my last visit, I do recall seeing most of the cakes there.
 |
| The cabinet: Range of cakes, tarts, and savouries |
 |
| [Left]: Chocolate Mousse Cake [Right]: Passion Fruit Mango Malibu Cheesecake |
 |
| Chocolate Mousse Cake |
The Chocolate Mousse cake is
pretty simple. ¾ layer of chocolate mousse and ¼ layer chocolate cake on the
bottom. Usually Frasers offers the choice of having cream or yoghurt served on
the side to complement their desserts. I always tend to get this cake every
time I am there, the rich, smooth, dense chocolate mousse eventually becomes
very addictive. Even though it looks very dense, the mousse itself doesn’t feel
extremely heavy like having a mouthful of cream when eaten, and melts in your
mouth smoothly. At the same time, it wasn’t too sweet either so your taste buds
wouldn’t be too overwhelmed with a mouthful of sweet taste. The chocolate
sponge cake on the bottom was very rich in chocolate taste and just had the
right amount of that bitter cocoa taste which complements the much slightly sweeter
chocolate mousse on top.
 |
| Passion Fruit Mango Malibu Cheesecake |
I personally think that the Passion Fruit Mango Malibu Cheesecake was
like a Piña Colada version
of a cheesecake, minus the alcohol content, well at least I wasn’t able to
taste any. As you can see, the base of the cheesecake was quite thin, probably
just less than 1cm which is an ideal choice of size in terms of proportion. The
delicious base of the cheesecake was what I presume to be a simple combination
of biscuit and butter. There was a light creamy taste without leaving any oily
residue in your mouth after. The cheesecake filling itself tasted like coconut
with mango and passion fruit bits inside, as you can see in the photo. What surprised
me about the it was how soft and smooth the texture of the cheesecake filling
was, as I had expected it to be much stiffer, heavier, and drier, but Frasers cakes certainly were not.
 |
| Lemon Meringue Tart |
I actually never ate this one but thankfully the lovely person that accompanied me allowed me to slice the fork through it and get a small taste. The shell of the tart was slightly harder and crispier than the ones for the cheesecakes, after all this base would have at least needed to be baked in the oven, but still quite soft to the point where you can still easily slice your fork through. Between the base and the tall fluffy meringue sits a light tangy-sweet lemon filling. The filling wasn’t too thick either in terms of size but was in consistency, which is probably how the filling of a tart is supposed to be anyway. Overall, this tart leans more towards the sour side for taste rather than sweet, so it’s a really ideal alternative for those people who don’t favour too much sweet foods.
 |
| Bailey's Cheesecake |
Out of all the cheesecakes I have tried at Frasers, this one by far is my most favourite. What’s not to like? It has everything to satisfy a sweet tooth: cream, chocolate, and Irish Cream. As you can see in the photo, the base of the cheesecake covers the entire filing as opposed to the previous ones where the base lies on the bottom. Still with a creamy butter taste, the biscuits used for this cheesecake seemed to be more to be crunchy chocolate chip cookies and was just a bit harder than the other bases. Moving onto the filling, extremely smooth! If it wasn’t for the cream cheese used, which can be tasted but not too overpowering, it should be considered whether this should be classified in the cheesecake category or not. Anyway, I could actually taste a small amount of alcohol in the pretty chocolate “blob” inside the filling. I don’t consider this a bad thing at all, and rather think it’s worth complimenting about as it proves how genuine the ingredients are to making these treats.
 |
| Cookies n' Cream Cheesecake |
 |
| Fraser’s Famous Banoffe Pie |
By now you can probably get the idea of what the base of all these cakes and tarts are like so to avoid repetition, I’ll skip the part about the base. On top of the base is a thick and sticky caramel layer. Extremely sweet with a light hint of that caramel-burnt sugar-toffee-bitter taste. They size of the banana pieces weren’t too small either and they remained very, very fresh for duration of being in the cabinet. The white layer on top is still a mystery to me… At first I thought it was a cheesecake filling but as I dug my fork through it, it seemed more like a cream mousse. Since I’m not a food critic or anything, it’s very difficult to describe tastes and textures. The white part didn’t really have much of a distinct obvious taste. It was very mildly sweet and just tasted like fresh cream but the texture was slightly denser like a mousse, thus I’m just going to call it a ‘cream mousse’.
 |
| Lemon Citron Tart |
Again, just like the Lemon Meringue Tart, I didn’t eat this one either as I’m not a huge fan of citrus based desserts. The only way to describe this one in my own words is that the texture of the lemon filling was like the egg part of Hong Kong Style Egg Tarts. Just like the meringue tart, it was smooth and sour over sweet, and I was able to taste a hint of egg.
 |
| Crème Brulee |
This was a dessert off Frasers Dessert menu that is available as ‘All-Day’. The crème brulee itself was very delicious. For starters, the hard caramel top was to a decent thickness but at the same time very easy to crack through with a spoon. Inside was a smooth custard cream and you can see and taste the real vanilla being used. It was served with a piece of orange zest shortbread, and sadly I cannot recall the name of the blueberry liquid next to it (I will add the name once I find out next time).
 |
| Frozen Chocolate Mousse |
This was also another treat from the All-Day Dessert Menu. This mousse was served hard and frozen. The four layers were (from the top): Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, Almond, and a chocolate cookie base layer over berry coulis. I thought the roll on top was a sesame tuile, however, from the glimpse I took of the menu the last time I was there, I recall they called it something else (Again, I will add the name once I find out next time ). Nonetheless it was very crispy and crunchy!
In regards to price, the cheesecakes and tarts range from around $5 to $7 and all the desserts from the dessert menu are about $12.50.
So overall, Fraser’s Café is a really ideal place when you are in the
mood for slightly more gourmet cheesecakes or just cake in general. The environment
is very warm and cozy that makes it a really nice place for a catch up over
coffee or tea and a side of delicious cake or sweet dessert to go with it.
Fraser’s Café is not a place to be missed and really worth making time
for to try out at least once or twice. They are located on:
434 Mt Eden Road
Mt Eden
Auckland City
(09) 630-6825
Opening Hours: Mon to Sun 7am-11pm
Mt Eden
Auckland City
(09) 630-6825
Opening Hours: Mon to Sun 7am-11pm
I hope you’ve enjoyed this first blog entry!
Until next time!
Until next time!
The 'Sweet Tooth' Fairy
