Juniper Eatery and Meeya Cafe cake painting, South Melbourne

For her birthday this year, Sylvia chose to go across town for lunch at Juniper Eatery followed by DIY decorated cakes at Meeya Cafe in South Melbourne.  It was a fine way to celebrate.  The drinks were excellent, the food great and who doesn't love to paint a picture on their cake like an artist with a paint palate.

Before cake painting, we stopped at Juniper Cafe for lunch.  It was busy.  I had not noticed how close it was to the South Melbourne Market until I started to look for parking.  It was crazy.  And so busy on leafy Coventry Street.  When we arrived at Juniper, there were people waiting in the alleyway by the entrance.  We were told that there was about 15 minutes wait and we could hang out in the cool design shop next door rather than outside in the sun. 

By the time we browsed the design shop and noticed that the wait staff took dishes in and out to the outdoor seats via the shop, we were called in.  And we hadn't even finished going through the swatches of fabric colours for the couch!  Our seat on a long bench in front of a mirror.  Juniper isn't a big cafe but they use the space well.  Bench seats, mirrors and window seats.

To drink, Sylvia had a difficult choice between the frappe and the matcha latte.  She chose the latter.  It was an iced sweet milky coffee  with a creamy coffee froth.  Sylvia assures me it was very different to the milky foamy froth that is on a latte or cappuccino.  As well as lots of regular ice blocks, the drink was topped with an unusual oblong ice block that Sylvia thought might be made with a shaved ice or crushed ice.  It was certainly not ice as we know it.  She hadn't had a frappe before but loved it and looks forward to more.

I ordered the Yumbo blood orange soda.  The staff were great.  When I asked for the soda, I was told that the blood orange Yumbo was not chilled but I had an option of having it over ice or choosing the lemon or grapefruit flavours.  I went with the room temp blood orange over ice.  The ice melted so much quicker with the room temperature drink that I asked for more ice.  The staff quickly brought a cup of ice.  So I was very happy with my Yumbo.

The Juniper menu the waiter handed us seemed quite light on for the sort of food I wanted (ie too much meat and eggs and sweet dishes).  Then I noticed that there were sandwiches written on the mirror and considered the Roasted eggplant, stracciatella, gremolata and crispy shallot sandwich.  

I was glad I remembered that there seemed more at the counter.  They had salads and sandwiches and pastries.  So I chose the salads after all: Pearl couscous zucchini, asparagus, sun dried tomato chilli & lime crema, Tomato, cucumber, olives, nigella, herbs, lemon & maple dressing, Runner beans, snow peas, ricotta salata, mint & red wine vinegar.  I love a mix of salads and was happy with my choice. 

Meanwhile, Sylvia found her meal easily on the menu we were given.  She had the soft eggs on sourdough toast with an optional side of pickled mushrooms.  She was delighted with it, and described it as seeming quite Scandinavian.  The soft boiled eggs were quite pretty on the toast.

I rushed Sylvia out of Juniper because our 1 hour parking metre was expired and we drove to park the car elsewhere, even though we could have easily walked to Meeya Cafe.  As I parked the car, the thunder rumbled and the heavens opened.  Fortunately I had umbrellas in the car because we walked to the cafein incredibly heavy rain.  I arrived at Meeya with a wet back and wet sandals.  Then the sun came out again once we sat in the corner with a cute Miffy and flowers.  The weather was back up into the 30s and made photography slightly challenging.  Classic Melbourne weather!

We were at Meeya for the cake painting but Sylvia wanted an iced strawberry matcha.  She had read that they were worth trying and loved it.  The brilliant green with pink strawberry was a wonderful sight.

For the cake painting we paid $17 for a vanilla sponge cake with vanilla frosting.  It came on a wooden paint palette with red, blue, yellow and vanilla blobs of frosting, paint brushes, a palette knife and forks.  We asked if there was black paint but there was not.  Though I was told if we needed more frosting, we could ask for it.  We also had a the blue cup of warm water to wash our brushes and serviettes that I used to dry off the brushes and palette knives after washing them.

The object was to paint or decorate your cake with frosting and then eat it.  It was harder than it sounded.  If I tried to paint with the paint brush the icing was unwilling to part with it to be styled on the cake.  Sylvia was pretty savvy and showed me how to scoop some frosting up with the back of the palate knife and spread it on the cake.  She was also wise to start with mixing up the primary colours - orange green and purple.  There was quite a bit of colour mixing to be done as we started with quite basic colours.  Sylvia did a simple but gorgeous design of coloured flowers.

As we entered Sylvia suggested I do a mushroom and so I ran with the idea.  Getting the frosting on the cake was doable with the palette knife but shaping small shapes was still quite hard.  My fingers and the paint brush could be useful in shaping.  Fine lines were still very challenging.  I think that this is where piping would be useful - although I can also find piping frosting challenging. 

Here is my finished cake.  I was happy with the decoration.  I enjoyed experimenting with different sorts of flowers., though I might have tried to balance the colours a bit more.  (At the end I was concerned about colours being too similar together and did an impatient darker green stroke by the base of the toadstool that I regretted - it was  not the fine line I had envisaged though I should have known better than to expect it at that point.)  Mixing up the paints was fun.  I had expected to need more white or yellow but managed to just use the paint I had been given.

Once the our cakes were decorated, we then had the pleasure of eating them.  Sylvia had decided she did not need to wash her brushes in the water we were given.  Instead she just licked the frosting off her brush when she wanted to change colour.  I was impressed that the frosting was not too sweet.  The made the light fluffy cake all the more enjoyable.  And there was great satisfaction in having decorated our own cake.  

It was such a fun activity.  The cafe was full of people with their heads down like serious artists at work.  I wondered if it was only me who struggled to achieve my vision.  On the way out we chatted to the women at the neighbouring table who were working out how to use the equipment and I felt like maybe we weren't alone in being on a big learning curve.  I would be keen to return and have another go at cake painting with the experience of one completed "canvas" under our belt - in more ways than one!
 

Juniper Eatery
269 Coventry St
South Melbourne VIC 3205
Open: 8am-3pm, 7 days a week
https://www.instagram.com/juniper.eatery

Meeya Cafe
191 Clarendon St
South Melbourne VIC 3205
Open: Mon-Fri 8am-4pm, Sat-Sun 10am-4pm
https://www.facebook.com/MeeyaCafe