Madhouse Bakehouse, Australia

Update Review, November 2023 & February 2024 Visits

Another few trips to Sydney, more enjoying Madhouse Bakehouse items.  See below for my original reviews.

Baby Cakes.

The first few times I saw the baby cakes, I passed right by them.  They truly didn't look particularly good.  And then I tried one.  And I liked it.  I had them several more times over the course of my time in Sydney, and genuinely enjoyed them every time.  Madhouse also makes full size cupcakes, but I had only the smaller ones, dubbed "baby cakes".

Chocolate Truffle:

"Our dark chocolate mini cupcakes are utterly tantalising with their rich, velvety cake and dark Belgian chocolate ganache. We sprinkle them with colourful, edible confetti."

I actually liked the chocolate one, even though they didn't look great, and were kinda dry.  There was very strong chocolate flavor in the base, even though the color wasn't particularly dark. The frosting was really tasty too, again, great chocolate level.  They must use high quality chocolate.  ****

Vanilla Baby Cakes.

"Each is attractively piped with a sweet buttercream frosting in 3 different colours (white, purple, green) then sprinkled with edible colourful confetti."

Next I tried the vanilla.  I really liked these too.  Good flavor in base, sweet, buttery, and slight tang.  A dense style, not airy, which I prefer.  The different colored buttercreams were all the same flavor, but were enjoyable too, not cloying sweet, just the right balance of butter and sugar.  ****.

I'm not sure if I liked the vanilla or chocolate more, both were great.

Mini Vanilla Cheesecake.

"This creamy baked vanilla cheesecake is the perfect blank canvas to create your favourite tantalising cheesecake of the day. Switch it up from Blueberry, Chocolate, Oreo, Raspberry – the choice is endless!"

The cute little cheesecake here came from Madhouse Bakehouse, the cafe serving it added a drizzle of berry coulis, fresh berries, and boysenberry ice cream.  They clearly took the "perfect blank canvas" description to heart!

The cheesecake was fine.  Reasonably creamy, reasonably cream cheesy, but not particularly notable.  Same with the gluten-free crust.  Very average.  ***.

Chocolate Raspberry Brownie (Gluten-free).

"Our gluten free Raspberry Brownie is a dense, rectangular soft chocolate slice with intense raspberry and chocolate flavours. Lush raspberry swirls are visible through the chocolate and it’s all topped with white chocolate shavings and swirls of raspberry jam."

I have mixed feelings on the gluten-free chocolate raspberry brownie.  On one hand, it absolutely didn't taste gluten-free or strange.  It also was *exactly* as described, with intense raspberry and chocolate indeed.  But ... that intensity actually made me not care for it much.  It was too fruity, too rich, too chocolately.  Not bad by any means, and great texture, but, I didn't really want it.  Better warm with vanilla ice cream to cut the intensity.  ***.

Update Review, May 2015 & 2016 Visits

If you haven't already, I suggest you read my original review from my January / February 2015, and then return here.  I'm skipping all details about the company this time around.  The short version? Packaged cookies and brownies, that are actually quite good.  Who knew?

Cookies

I still don't understand why I like these cookies so much.  As I've said before, I don't really like cookies.  And others who love cookies don't even think these are great.  But I do.

Fig, Roast Hazelnut, and Orange Cookie. (May 2015)

I decided to try more of these cookies on my next visit to Australia, since the desserts in our cafes were pretty lackluster, and, unlike my visit during the summer, I wasn't exactly craving ice cream this time around.

I started with the interesting sounding fig, roast hazelnut, and orange cookie.  Like the Raspberry, Coconut, & White Chocolate it had a sweet, buttery base.  Yes, it was a crispy cookie, but, it was still good.  The bits of dried fig gave further pops of sweetness and a texture change, and I really liked the roast hazelnut chunks.  The orange though I didn't like, and the entire cookie was flavored with orange oil.  I'm not one for orange (or other citrus) desserts in general.

If it wasn't for the orange oil, I would have actually quite liked this, which is shocking since it is a cookie.

**+.

Fig, Hazelnut & Orange. (2016)

The fig, hazelnut, & orange quickly made its way to the bottom of my list.

I don't tend to like orange/lemon/lime flavors in desserts, so, that was obviously part of the problem, and I'll admit that the orange flavor was well done, if you like that.

The bits of hazelnut were fine for crunch, but the fig was just too chewy, and the base to this one was boring and offered nothing.

No need to try this one again.

**.

Smarty Pants. (May 2015)

This is a playful cookie, the least interesting flavor-wise of any that I tried, but good in its simplicity.  No dried fruit, seeds, or creative ingredients.  Instead, just chocolate chips and Smarties.

The Smarties added color and were somewhat perfectly distributed on top.  I wonder if I lucked out, or, if they really do these by hand or something?

The cookie itself, like all the Madhouse cookies, was crispy, buttery, sugary.  It was basic, yes, but, I really do like their cookie base.  The chocolate chips were large size, milk chocolate.  The Smarties were just Smarties, so nothing notable there, except that the extra chocolate was nice.

So overall, another decent cookie, that surprised me again.

***+.

Milk Chocolate & Roasted Hazelnut. (May 2015).

Another decent cookie.  I just don't understand why I like these.  They are packaged, crispy cookies!  And a chocolate one at that?

But the base is buttery and sweet, with a nice cocoa flavor. The little bits of roasted hazelnut add a great crunch and flavor.  Hard to go wrong with the chocolate and hazelnut combination.

***+.

Update review:  This was still a very good packaged cookie, with a great hazelnut flavor, salty even?  But, a hard, crispy cookie, not really my ideal dessert.  ***+.

Triple Chocolate. (2016)

It had been several years since I had the Triple Chocolate, as it was one of my least favorites before, but, one day, it was the only kind available, so, I went for it.

And, like many of the others, I basically liked it, against all odds.  Dry, hard, crumbly cookie and all.  Not my thing, on paper.  But it had a good cocoa flavor.  Nice sized chunks of white, milk, and dark chocolate.  I loved "discovering" them throughout.  Great with a cup of coffee.  Great dipped in whipped cream.  

I'll get another. ***+.

Brownies

The coffee shop in the building also sources several of the brownies.  For the foodservice industry, Madhouse Bakehouse sells them by the slab, so they were nicely cut down into little squares for us.  Of course, this just made me feel guilty when I took two brownies at a time.  But really, they were small, who eats a brownie that size?

Triple Chocolate Brownies.

These things were decadent and awesome.  So rich and fudgey.  I don't usually pick brownies as my dessert of choice, but these were shockingly good, particularly for a product that wasn't fresh.  I especially enjoyed them topped with whipped cream (shhh, don't tell anyone!)

***+

White Chocolate & Macadamia Brownie.

The blondies were also shockingly good.  I only tried them because the chocolate ones were so amazing and one day they had no chocolate.

The base blondie was perfectly sweet, with little pops of sweetness from the white chocolate.  The macadamia chunks added a great crunch.  And the powdered sugar on top amped up the sweetness even further.  Quite successful!

***+.

Original Review, Jan/Feb 2015 Visit

Madhouse Bakehouse is a commercial bakery in Australia.  They produce goods for cafes, hotels, airlines, caterers, etc country-wide, including Qantas.  Although they are a large commercial bakeshop, they do not use mixes or preservatives, and make everything from scratch.

Their products range from cookies and brownies, to "slices" and cakes, plus granola, muesli, and breakfast breads.  Each product line has a large variety inside of it, like the brownies, which includes interesting flavors such as ginger with caramelized white chocolate, and a large selection of gluten-free options.

 My office in Sydney stocked a few of their cookies, so I was able to try several of those, but I never encountered any of their other products, so I can't evaluate those.  The cookies were great, and I'm not a cookie person at all, so I would really love to try some of the other items, like the slices, in particular, the honeycomb slice!  I love honeycomb (another Australian discovery)!

Raspberry, Coconut, & White Chocolate Cookie.

Ok, like I said, I'm not a cookie person.  Sometimes I enjoy a cookie, but in the realm of desserts, I will never pick a cookie.  But, my office cafes, while wonderful for the savory cuisine, really, really didn't make very good desserts.  After a few weeks in Sydney, I was seriously needing good dessert.  I was getting desperate.

So I tried a Madhouse cookie.  Now, back to my general lack of interest in cookies.  The only cookies I ever like are soft ones (or, perhaps, ones coated in icing), fresh out of the oven, still warm.  I never like hard style cookies.  I never like packaged cookies.  Why on earth did I try this?  Again.  Desperate.

But, I was rewarded for trying.  It was really, really good!  Yes, it was a hard, crispy style cookie.  But the base was buttery and sweet, really pleasant, loaded with coconut for a bit of crunch.  There was a generous amount of little bits of dried raspberry, super flavorful.  The only disappointing part was the white chocolate, there were only two chips in the entire cookie!  I wanted more creamy, sweet, white chocolate.

Anyway, this was a complete surprise.  I loved it, and devoured it.  I wish I had discovered these earlier on in my visit.

****.

Dark Chocolate, Pistachio & Sour Cherry Cookie.

I also tried the chocolate, pistachio, and sour cherry cookie.

It was again a hard style cookie, a bit too crumbly for my taste.  I did like the bits of dark chocolate, the crunch of the pistachio, and flavor from sour cherry.

But, not my sort of thing at all, and I handed it off to Ojan. **+.

Update: I tried another.  I again didn't like it.  Hard cookie.  Crumbly. Bitter from pistachio.  The dark chocolate bits were the only thing I liked. **.

Triple Chocolate Cookie.

Next up was the Triple Chocolate Cookie.  It featured, well, three types of chocolate: white, milk, and dark.

The base was about the same as the other chocolate cookie, hard, crispy style, too crumbly.  It had a subtle cocoa flavor to it.  The other chocolates came as chips, all of which were unremarkable.

My least favorite of the cookies. **.