Zumbo Treats from Zumbo's Just Desserts

Zumbo's Just Desserts was a TV reality show about every day people making patisserie, being judged by Rachel Khoo and the master himself, Adriano Zumbo. It wasn't scintillating viewing - until towards the end, when there were fewer contestants and more crazy Zumbo tests, I found it quite slow and either skipped it or just watched bits and pieces while I channel surfed.

However, as you can imagine in a show featuring Adriano Zumbo, there were some amazing Zumbo creations that were set as Zumbo challenges in the elimination contests.  Miniature versions of these challenge creations were sold in Zumbo stores from Friday to Sunday following the show on which they were featured.   It was too expensive to buy all of them - these special creations cost from $11 to $15 a pop - but I couldn't resist trying a few when I was in the vicinity of a Zumbo store.  I wasn't greedy - I shared every single one of them with a friend.  That is why all of my photos were taken out and about - no styling here, and for one of them, I cut it in half with the cover off a magazine as that was the best I had.

At the top of this post is my personal favourite, the Golden Ducky, on cuteness factor alone.  This one comprised steamed gingerbread sponge, passionfruit peanut caramel, honeycomb mousse, peanut crumble sable, peanut butter cleam, passionfruit gel and honeycomb - oh, and a chocolate golden ducky!  It wasn't as impressive as the full-sized one on the show which bubbled with coconut bubbles created with dry ice, but it was still pretty impressive.

For week one of the show, I tried two of the three desserts. 

This one was called "Just a Stones Throw Away".  It was comprised of yuzu mousse, caramel hazelnut bavaroise, hazelnut dacquoise, yuzu caramel cremeux, salted mandarin caramel crème and mandarin gel.  These were the layers:

My second week one dessert was the Frankenzumbo:

This one comprised lemon tart, baked into a brownie, topped with a raspberry jam filled donut, all baked inside a pavlova, topped with vanilla chantilly and fresh strawberries, passionfruit and a macaron shell:

This one was pretty hard to cut in half, even with a plastic knife on a park bench, so it looks a little messy, but you get the idea.

And of course, I had to get the finale dessert, the Sugar & Spice: 

The fault in the glaze was not there in the shop - wherever it touched the box, the glaze came off.  This was comprised of brown sugar sponge, black tea muscovado brulee, 5 sugar mousse, coconut sugar & tonka rice pudding, maple caramel, soft honey nougat, spiced pear mousse, burnt butter panela, honey pear compote and a white glaze with a cinnamon friable pastry:

It was as light as a feather to eat - hoping that means it had no calories!  The chocolate petals and butterfly on top were a nice touch.

All of these desserts were pretty tasty, but as I said, I loved the Golden Ducky best because it was just so darn cute.

Hats off to Adriano Zumbo, who is amazingly creative to come up with all of these wacky, attractive and delicious desserts.  I don't have the patience to make such things, let alone anything else (umm, like actual talent), so it was fun to experience a slice of the Zumbo's Just Desserts action through Zumbo's stores.