The shop is indeed beautiful.  I wasn’t brave enough to ask if I could take a photo inside the shop, so all you get is this sideways shot of the outside!  The inside of the shop is loaded with sweet treats of all kinds, including macarons, marshmallows, fudge, toffee, truffles, or, easier yet, let’s just say that if it’s sweet, it’s in this shop!

I was a little overwhelmed.  I couldn’t choose what to get.  I had a brief look behind the counter, where a handful of people were handmaking the treats – that’s right, everything in this shop is handmade, right in the shop itself.  It’d be neat to spend a day behind the counter to see what it’s like to handmake all these treats.

There were tiny samples of a lot of the treats and my son and I took advantage of most of them.  The fudge was amazing!  Now that I think about it, I’m sorry I didn’t purchase any of the fudge!  But I could see that I could easily lose track of my spending in this shop, so I had to pass on a lot of things.

They also had a bag that they themselves had filled with their favorite and best treats.  Inside the bag was a generous block of hazelnut and cranberry nougat (in the style of Montelimar), a big block of rocky road that was chock full of their own handmade marshmallows and pate de fruit, a beautiful large shard of English toffee, and 4 soft, squishy, cloud-like marshmallows.  This bag of treats, $18.50, was what I chose first.

I never liked nougat, and even though I hoped that I would like the nougat from Sweetness, I didn’t!  This has nothing to do with the quality of this particular block of nougat, I just simply don’t like nougat, and now I know that I don’t, once and for all!

The rocky road and the toffee were my absolute favorites of everything that I purchased.  The rocky road was full of Sweetness’ own handmade signature marshmallows – in the block that I got, I believe I had a mix of raspberry and mango flavors.  Definitely the best rocky road I have ever eaten.  The toffee was not rock hard, as I expected, but had a lovely crunch instead.  And again, it was the best English toffee I have ever eaten.

Separately, the nougat is $8 for 150g; the rocky road is $4 for 100g; the toffee is $5 for 100g; the marshmallows are $2.50 for 2 squares, or $8 for 9 squares.

Sweetness’ marshmallows.  Oh, where do I begin.  If you think you’ve already eaten the best, most fluffiest, most squishiest marshmallows, you would be wrong.  You haven’t eaten anything like a marshmallow from Sweetness.  I could not believe how soft and squishy these were, like eating a cloud.  They also use real vanilla beans in their vanilla marshmallows, and they looked beautiful with the speckle of those beans throughout the marshmallow.  They even tasted like what they were supposed to taste like, and the passionfruit one was the strongest smelling one in the package that I got!

What I also loved about Sweetness was that they had a lot of their treats under glass domes.  They looked so pretty.  Under one of these domes were a variety of macarons.  I couldn’t tell what flavors they were just by looking, but I chose a chocolate one and a banana one.

Okay, so I have to be honest, after all, I’m writing a review, right?  I didn’t like the macarons.  They were stunningly gorgeous, sitting their under that glass dome in the shop, it took my breath away, it really did.  But I just wasn’t pleased with the taste.  The best macarons I have tasted so far were my very own chocolate and peanut butter ones, just FYI.  The chocolate didn’t really taste chocolatey, and there wasn’t enough filling, in my opinion, but I liked how there was a sprinkling of cocao nibs on top (I didn’t get a photo of these, unfortunately).  The banana one had a subtle banana taste, and was filled with chocolate, but just not enough.  What surprised me the most about these macarons?  Look at the photo below:

My first bite showed me a huge pocket of air inside the top macaron shell!  I didn’t think macarons were supposed to have a pocket of air inside, although I’m not a macaron expert, but it didn’t make me feel so bad when I discovered some pockets of air inside my own macarons that I have baked.  But look at all that gooey inside the Sweetness macaron!  The shell on these babies were perfect.  The shells on my macarons that I have baked never came anywhere close to the shells on these from Sweetness.  These were my first official macarons from an official patisserie, and even though I wasn’t happy with the way they tasted, I enjoyed every second of eating them.  If that makes any sense!

The macarons were $3 each, or $33.00 for one dozen.

My last choice from Sweetness was the dark chocolate shortbread (seen in the third photo up from here).  You’d think I would have chosen some truffles, or fudge, instead of a simple shortbread, but I’ve never tried chocolate shortbread before.  And they did look very nice.  These were under a glass dome as well.  They have a coating of dark chocolate on the bottom, as well as a zig-zag of dark chocolate across the top.  This shortbread cookie just simply melted in my mouth, what an amazing experience.  They were sooo scrumptious.  $2.00 each or $20.00 for one dozen.

After we left Sweetness, we went to Pablo and Rusty’s Espresso Bar, who gave me a great cappuccino.  I loved this little place and will definitely return if I find myself near one of their espresso bars again.

My visit to Sweetness was definitely worth it; it even made up for my nearly panicking on Epping station’s skyscraping elevator!  I would highly recommend Sweetness The Patisserie if you’re looking for treats for a party, or even just to treat yourself.  A lot of their products are gluten-free, as well.  So go ahead – indulge!

I placed my order in October for a Chocolate Chip Off The Ol’ Block, and a Banana Butterscotch Bad Boy.  I was so excited to try them, but unfortunately there was a problem with the shipment and I did not receive it in the specified time frame of 2-3 days.  I emailed customer service, and also phoned the post office.  Apparently the shipment had not been scanned from the sender’s post office, so tracking was telling me that it wasn’t even in transit yet.

Bangerang Bake Shop was so kind and reshipped my order about a week later, but surprise, my first order arrived before the second did!  I was a little wary about their freshness, as it had been a week since these cupcakes were shipped.  I put them in the refrigerator and hoped for the best.  A couple of days later, my second order arrived in the specified time frame.  Now I had four Bangerang cupcakes-in-a-jar!

I knew I’d like the chocolate chip one the best, so I saved it for last and tried the banana butterscotch cupcake first.  Bangerang even included two plastic forks!

The first thing I can tell you about this cupcake is that there is no mistaking that this is banana!  It’s obviously made with tons of real bananas, and the butterscotch is so rich and creamy.  Delicious!  The cake itself was definitely delicious, but it wasn’t as soft and moist as I had expected.  It was more of a muffin texture, but a very yummy muffin!

Next up, the chocolate chip one.  This was one of the Cupcakes For A Cause, where the proceeds would go to the CancerCare For Kids program, so it included a sugar smiley face.  This program has ended, so the smiley faces are no longer included in this cupcake.

As I expected, this was definitely one of the best cupcakes I’ve ever eaten.  It’s the only chocolate chip cupcake I’ve had that actually tasted like a chocolate chip cookie.  The cake was softer and moister than the banana one.  The vanilla bean buttercream is to-die-for.  The addition of the mini chocolate chips brings everything together and you get one of the most amazing tastes that have ever entered your mouth!  This is an amazing cupcake, I was so glad I had two of these babies!

I kept my cupcakes in the refrigerator and reheated them in the microwave before I ate them.  I really recommend doing this yourself as well, as it makes the cupcake taste like it’s almost straight from the oven.

If you are looking for a big yummy cupcake for yourself or someone else as a treat, Bangerang Bake Shop‘s cupcake-in-a-jar would definitely be the way to go!  :)

Note that I have not been paid from or asked by Bangerang Bake Shop to write up this review, I just wanted to share my experience with others!

They were packaged nicely from Cherry Moon Farms.  In each box were 16 strawberries, so 32 strawberries in all, and in each box was one jar of fudge dipping sauce.

And when I said they were huge, I did mean that they were huge!

The fudge dipping sauce is an award-winning gourmet chocolate sauce from Fudge Fatale.  It is a very nice sauce that is not too sweet and goes perfect with the strawberries.  The sauce is spreadable at room temperature and needs a quick zap in the microwave to achieve a dipping consistency.  It would also be nice over ice cream, I imagine!

There are recipes on the Fudge Fatale webiste that are worth checking out as well.  I have two jars of this sauce and will definitely have some leftover, so I hope to try out a couple of those recipes.

This was a very sweet and totally unexpected Mother’s Day gift!  What sweet treats have you received or given for Mother’s Day this year?