Australia’s hottest chocolate desserts

Wattleseed custard with Daintree chocolate, GOMA

This clever wattleseed custard dessert evokes the outback and almost looks painterly enough to share gallery space with Rover Thomas’s Barramundi Dreaming. Originally conceived for a dégustation celebrating the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art’s Harvest: Art, Film + Food exhibition, it has become a regular feature on Instagram and the menus of its creator, GOMA chef Josue Lopez. It was also the grand finale of a banquet at the 2014 G20 summit. A pristine double strip of white dots made from creamy Daintree vanilla curd embellishes a matte burnt umber skin created by carefully spray-painting a mix of cocoa butter and 70 per cent dark Daintree Estates chocolate over a subtly coffee-flavoured, wattleseed-flecked custard. The result presents as a deliciously edible tribute to dot painting.

GOMA Restaurant, Gallery of Modern Art, Stanley Pl, South Bank, Qld, (07) 3842 9916, qagoma.qld.gov.au 

PHOTOGRAPHY: AJ MOLLER

Chocolate and liquorice tart, Ester

There’s plenty of colour at Ester, but two of its desserts are marvels of the monochrome. The first, a one-two punch of young-coconut sorbet and unpasteurised sake, contains no chocolate, so we will speak of it here no more. But the second fits our theme nicely. To make it, chef Mat Lindsay blind-bakes a tart shell of chocolate shortcrust, darkened further with the addition of vegetable ash. Meanwhile, he prepares a water-based ganache of boiled soft liquorice, whipping it with 58 per cent milk and 72 per cent dark chocolate. It’s poured over the pastry and left to set before being plated with crème fraîche and a dusting of chocolate sherbet. “Simple but effective,” says Lindsay.

Ester, 46/52 Meagher St, Chippendale, NSW, (02) 8068 8279, ester-restaurant.com.au   

PHOTOGRAPHY: AJ MOLLER

Warm chocolate fondant, Me Wah

A Cantonese restaurant may seem an unlikely place to find Hobart’s best chocolate dessert, but Me Wah has Hobart’s most interesting dessert list, full-stop. And while chocolate fondant may sound ho-hum, this version is good enough to bring it into favour. Cooked and served in a broad white cup, the dark, almost savoury fondant oozes in a gratifying way when its fine crust is pierced. You could do that with a spoon but the shard of cardamom caramel served on the side does a fine job. There are other condiments to add to the mix as well. The fondant is hot enough to gently melt the taro-coconut ice-cream, and some biscuity crumbs of almond bricelet (traditionally a fine waffle made in western Switzerland and served with coffee) add a nice crunch. The cup itself is an inspired choice. It contains the oozing chocolate, making it easy to mix and match the condiments, and its shape makes it easy to get to every last morsel. The recommended match of a glass of Equipo Navazos Pedro Ximénez is spot-on, too.

Me Wah, 16 Magnet Court, Sandy Bay Rd, Tas, (03) 6223 3688, mewah.com.au

PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRIS CRERAR

Chocolate mousse eggs with lemon marmalade, Lûmé

The most Instagrammed dish at Lûmé is surely its cerebral showpiece chocolate dessert: a cacao pod made from chocolate that’s smashed open at the table, revealing multicoloured elements that reflect the chocolate’s flavour profile. But despite being less immediately showy, the chocolate eggs from the bar menu might just nudge ahead in terms of pleasure. Tempered Cluizel chocolate is poured into egg moulds and then filled with a gorgeously textured chocolate mousse made with more Cluizel and a vanillaspiked crema Catalan ganache. The eggs are teamed with a slightly salty Meyer lemon marmalade and seasonal fruit, fresh blood plums, perhaps, or apples compressed in an absinthe syrup. The fruity supporting cast is fine and considered but it’s the simple pleasure of those eggs, shiny and perfect and satisfying to break open to reveal the mousse inside, that really fixes this chocolate dessert on the radar.

Lûmé, 226 Coventry St, South Melbourne, Vic, (03) 9690 0185, restaurantlume.com 

PHOTOGRAPHY: MARTIN REFTEL & JESSICA REFTEL EVANS

Cherry jam lamington, Bennelong

It all starts with a good sponge, says Peter Gilmore. It’s layered with a jam made from preserved cherries, coconut cream, cherry ice-cream, chocolate ganache, all moulded together, then coated in a chocolate mirror glaze. Instead of using desiccated coconut, he makes a coconut parfait, shaving it into liquid nitrogen, scattering the resulting evanescent wisps around the cake. “It’s a dessert we can claim as our own… it has heritage but continues to evolve.”

Bennelong, Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point, Sydney, NSW, (02) 9240 8000, sydneyoperahouse.com

PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB SHAW

White chocolate and mascarpone tart, Café Di Stasio

Though many serious chocolate folk recoil, hissing, at white chocolate, when it’s treated with a firm hand, it deserves a small but legitimate space on any dessert repertoire. Take the torta di vaniglia at Café Di Stasio. It arrives pale and beautiful, the short, short pastry filled with a smooth mixture of mascarpone, white chocolate, star anise, orange and roasted Sicilian pistachio nuts, a combination that teeters thrillingly between sweet and oversweet without ever toppling over. The filling is topped by texture – roughly chopped white chocolate pieces and more pistachio – all softened by a blizzard of icing sugar. The subtle citrus and spice notes, plus the texture, make the torta interesting, as well as pretty and sweet. It’s made to pair with something herbal, slightly bitter and superstrong. Or Champagne.

Café Di Stasio, 31 Fitzroy St, St Kilda, Vic, (03) 9525 3999, distasio.com.au 

PHOTOGRAPHY: MARTIN REFTEL & JESSICA REFTEL EVANS

Chocolate soufflé, Grossi Florentino

The Florentino chocolate soufflé is Melbourne dessert royalty. It was on the menu before the Grossi family took over at the turn of the century and nobody can pinpoint when it first appeared before then. Unsurprisingly, any attempts to change the flavour of the soufflé have been met with fierce resistance. It’s not revered merely for sentimental reasons, either; it’s a classic of the genre, simultaneously light and rich, made with dark Callebaut cocoa, served in a copper pot and teamed with hazelnut praline and a chocolate sauce flavoured with Valrhona dark chocolate. The only real change has come with the accompanying ice-cream. Once upon a time it was malt, but now it’s vanilla flavoured with grains of paradise, giving it a slightly peppery, spicy, chilli-citrus kick that adds a satisfying level of complexity.

Grossi Florentino, 80 Bourke St, Melbourne, Vic, (03) 9662 1811, grossiflorentino.com 

PHOTOGRAPHY:MARTIN REFTEL & JESSICA REFTEL EVANS

Milk chocolate sorbet, orange jam and Anzac biscuit, Pei Modern

A sorbet made with Valrhona is the centrepiece here, the French brand selected, says Mark Best, simply for its rich chocolate flavour. It’s complemented by a marmalade made with oranges (or blood oranges in season) set with their own pectin, and an Anzac biscuit. “We also put gold leaf on the chocolate because the punters like things that glitter,” Best says. “The crunch of the biscuit is just a good match, texturally, and the marriage of the chocolate and orange is classic. We wood-roast whole oranges to make a bitter-orange powder to dust it with. It’s yin and yang – gilding the lily with the gold, then undercutting that with the bitterness.”

Pei Modern, Four Seasons Hotel Sydney, 199 George St, Sydney, NSW, (02) 9250 3160, peimodern.com.au 

PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB SHAW

Chocolat de passion, Montrachet

For those occasions when too much isn’t nearly enough, we turn to chocolat de passion. This miniature gâteau, precisely spray-painted in 64 per cent Valrhona Manjari, is a paean to classical pâtisserie skills. The base is a sliver of Manjari hazelnut praline, topped by a layer of Manjari hazelnut mousse, tart passionfruit crémeux and a Grand Marnier-soaked joconde sponge. This is followed by a layer of orange jelly topped with Grand Marnier brûlée. The bar is blast-frozen and sprayed to order. When it hits the table, it’s finished with a ribbon of tempered Manjari and a quenelle of sorbet made from overripe strawberries. Each plate is dotted with strawberry and passionfruit purée with a single hand-drawn line of tempered Manjari. 

Montrachet, 224 Given Tce, Paddington, Qld, (07) 3367 0030, montrachet.com.au 

PHOTOGRAPHY: AJ MOLLER

Set chocolate, chestnut cream, blackberries, The Bridge Room

There are two secret weapons in Ross Lusted’s armoury for this dish. The first is the particular brand of chocolate. It’s a professional-grade concentrate from Valrhona called P125, which Lusted has chosen for its low fat content. “It’s only 36 per cent fat, which is low for a dense chocolate, and it’s 80 per cent cocoa and just 19 per cent sugar, so it has a strong flavour but doesn’t leave your mouth coated with fat.” Lusted whips the melted chocolate into a mousse, folds in chestnut and cream to make a base and teams it with a syrup made with seasonal fruit – here cherries and blackberries. And the other secret ingredient? Burnt bread. “We char Sonoma miche in our robata grill until it’s good and black,” he says. “It ends up with malty tones similar to the chestnut, and gives it a nice texture and depth of flavour.”

The Bridge Room, 44 Bridge St, Sydney, NSW, (02) 9247 7000, thebridgeroom.com.au

PHOTOGRAPHY: BEN HANSEN

Tipomisu, Tipo 00

Variations on tiramisù are infinite and in some ways Tipo 00’s take on the classic Italian dessert could be considered another. But, as the name suggests, this is more “inspired by” than “tribute to”, with the Tipomisu going into fancier, more theatrical territory than the booze and coffee-soaked original. Tipo’s version starts with a dense chocolate brownie hollowed out and filled with mascarpone, cream, yolk, dark rum and sugar. The brownie is capped with a disc of tempered dark chocolate and taken to the table. Once there, a hot sauce made with caramel, espresso, dark chocolate and salt is poured over the chocolate lid, melting it and making the whole thing a kind of self-saucing pudding/Euro mash-up. The most surprising thing, given all that rich chocolate action, is it’s not too sweet – the one way it cleaves to Italian dessert tradition.

Tipo 00, 361 Lt Bourke St, Melbourne, Vic, (03) 9942 3946, tipo00.com.au

PHOTOGRAPHY: MARTIN REFTEL & JESSICA REFTEL EVANS

Valrhona chocolate after-dinner mints, Rockpool Bar & Grill

There’s no shortage of walloping chocolate things to tempt the cacao-inclined at Rockpool, not least the chocolate fondant choux with honeycomb and rum. (Let that sink in for a moment: honeycomb and rum.) But for those of us who retain fond memories of dinner parties in the ’70s and ’80s (or want to cultivate a little fresh nostalgia), there’s just no going past the after-dinner mints on the petits-fours menu. Throw in truffles and dark-chocolate bark, and you’ve more than enough excuse to linger longer.

Rockpool Bar & Grill, 66 Hunter St, Sydney, NSW, (02) 8078 1900, rockpool.com 

PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB SHAW

Goma Street, Kiyomi

With wafer-thin discs of perfectly tempered 62 per cent Satilia Valrhona chocolate forming the structural basis for a lightly caramelised white-chocolate mousse studded with candied sesame praline, this looks like an adults-only dessert, not least when it’s paired with a lilac-hued ball of black-sesame ice-cream. But the clue to Goma Street’s true appeal lies in its name: “goma” is Japanese for sesame, a nod to the home of TV’s Big Bird, Bert and Ernie. “We stack it up straight so you can smash it with your spoon and feel the crack of the chocolate to get that wow factor,” says chef Chase Kojima. “It makes you feel like a kid again.” The mousse filling offers a toasty, lightly nutty complement to the earthiness of the black and white sesame, and the bittersweet almond and roasted notes of the Satilia. And, as befits a pud doffing its cap to our greedy inner child, there’s not even a hint of fruit. It’s all about textured, mouth-filling, nutty, chocolate richness.

Kiyomi, Jupiters Hotel, Casino Dr, Broadbeach Island, Broadbeach, Qld, (07) 5592 8100, jupitersgoldcoast.com.au 

PHOTOGRAPHY: REMCO

Chocolate sorbet with black kinako milk gelée, Wasabi

This confection uses innovation, textural variety and pastry craft in place of heavy fats and masses of sugar to grab diners by their shirtfronts. At heart it’s a rejig of the classic booze-coffee-chocolate dessert combo, says head chef Zeb Gilbert, with small cubes of milk jelly infused with roasted black soybean flour (aka kinako) standing in for the coffee element. A thick gel made from rare aged Ogasawara mirin, a mellow artisan drinking mirin from Japan’s Aichi prefecture, adds complexity. Freeze-dried cherry and cherry cheeks dressed in a light syrup made from mirin, sake and the cherry pits bring freshness, and the bitterness of organic cacao nibs offset the sweetness of a punchy sorbet made from Lindt couverture and Dutch cocoa. It’s all topped off with black and cream shards of crisp tuile and cacao snaps, plated with a dark-chocolate sablé soil and chocolate meringue. It’s thoughtful, detailed and different – pure chocolate-eating pleasure.

Wasabi, 2 Quamby Pl, Noosa, Qld, (07) 5449 2443, wasabisb.com 

PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy Wasabi