She’d made this Tim Tam cheesecake (read about Tim Tams at the manufacturer’s site and Wikipedia entry). She was very apologetic about the brown splodge on one side of the cake, which was a result of her piping bag bursting just before she finished decorating the cake. But seriously, did we care? Not at all! Personally, I thought the cake looked fantastic. Taking this photo, I could smell the chocolate biscuit crust and that sweet sweet cheese filling.

I wasn’t going to eat any cheesecake, but you know, JC had taken the trouble to make the cake for us, and it looked so good I just couldn’t say no :). I had a small piece and enjoyed it very much. The chocolate biscuit base was as delicious as it looked. It’s easy to take the combination of crushed biscuits and butter for granted; it’s the base of the cake and has to be there. Don’t forget the base! :) The cheese filling was sweet like white chocolate (I don’t think there was white chocolate in it, but that’s what it reminded me of). See the Tim Tams in the cheesecake filling? They were the best bit, I reckon.

JC also assembled a lovely platter of semi-sundried tomatoes, feta, Ritz crackers, olives and strawberries. I am now fully into feta. It took many years to get over the first feta I ate as a teenager which was horrible and made me think I didn’t like feta, but now I love the stuff. Still not an olive fan though. I placed a tomato and a cube of feta on a cracker and then popped it in my mouth. Mmmm.

For lunch, we went to The Royal (60 Royal Street, corner of Plain Street) . I ordered the Royal Cheeseburger (AU$18.00), which came with a generous serving of shoestring fries.

In the burger was a homemade beef pattie, baby cos lettuce, tomato, cheese and bacon. Underneath the pattie and spread on the bun was a tomato kasundi -that’s a kind of Indian-style tomato relish, which gave the burger a really nice flavour. It made the bun very soggy though; by the time I was almost finished, the bun had begun to disintegrate from sogginess. I loved the burger though – the pattie was really meaty and tasted great.

SRM, J and C all ordered BLTs (AU$18.50), which were made with ciabatta bread and also came with fries. The BLTs looked great, generously stuffed with bacon. The curly bacon hanging out of the bun is all Joey Tribbiani “How you doin’?” :)

But as they ate their BLTs, all three realised there was something missing. Can you believe there was no T? No tomato whatsoever in all three sandwiches. They were BLs instead of BLTs. The aioli in the BLs looked really creamy and delicious though.