More Starlings

Sainsbury's, Truro, Cornwall.

27th August 2009.

For many years Sainsbury's have blotted their copybook rather by failing to produce a respectable Belgian Bun. There is an iced Danish Pastry but it is a poor compensation for the baked deficiency. As if to emphasise the foolish oversight they produce a fresh cream Belgian Bun which is an astonishing confection, but it should be noted that it cannot really be compared with the classic Belgian Bun.
In recent weeks Sainsbury's have started to sell a classic Belgian Bun which will be reviewed separately - it is a completely different baked product to the one that they split in two and fill with whipped cream!
The Sainsbury's cream filled Belgian Bun is sold in pairs, packaged in a cardboard bod with a clear plastic window. It is a soft and rather sticky bun, and in the packaging a certain ammount of 'bun-bounce' can occur allowing cream and icing to spill into the packaging.
The ingredients of the pack are noted as:
Belgian Bun.
Sweetened whipping cream - 23%
Fondant - 22%
Lemon curd - 8%
Glace cherry - 2%
(I assume that the remaining 45% is taken up by the baked body of the bun. Interestingly, although they offer a figure for the glace cherry, they do not offer a sultana content percentage.)

It is no surprise to discover that it is "Not suitable for nut allergy sufferers due to the methods used in the manufacture of this product." Those pesky little nuts get everywhere, don't they! It is however, suitable for vegetarians.
It contains:
6g of protein per bun.
61.1g of carbohydrate, of which 34.2g are sugar and 26.9g are starch.
12.6g of fat.
3.1g of fibre.
0.3g of salt.

The bun looked attractive in its packaging, though it is difficult to see how a cream filled Belgian Bun could fail to look attractive. On removing it from the package I was a little disappointed by the enonomical use of icing. A small dab in the centre of the bun seemed rather like paying lip service to the idea of icing, in an attempt to attract the healthy eating brigade. Word to the wise, darlings, if you are interested in healthy eating, a cream filled Belgian Bun is not the way to go.
On lifting the bun from the plastic tray in the box, it was clear that a certain amount of curd spillage had occurred, though in general terms the bun had retained its succulent contents admirably.

The icing was soft and absorbed atmospheric water as I photographed it, running off the bun in clear sugary tears. The cherry was a small section from a glace cherry. The red colour had a more natural than offensively synthetic red colour, with tan undertones. It was sitting rather lopsidedly in the centre of the dab of icing. The sultanas and currants were well embedded within the body of the bun and had been chopped to spread them further. The body of the bun was not distinctively coiled. The currants had a distinctive musty aroma and flavour, the sultanas were surprisingly soft , luscious and sweet. I counted 32 pieces, six of which were whole fruits.
The lemon curd was yellow and custardy but not convincingly lemon.
The bun was very soft, the lower part collapsing when handled under the weight of the cream.

Durability testing.
A fragile object like a cream filled Belgian Bun cannot be expected to resist a serious physical attack for very long. With this in mind I have looked to history for a testing precedent.
When Guy Fawkes was found guilty of involvement in the gunpowder plot he was condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered. That is to say, hanged by the neck until almost dead, then his intestines and genitals and burned in front of his face, and then finally have his arms and legs attached to four teans of horses and be torn into four pieces by them. In the event he jumped from the gallows so that the rope snapped his neck and killed him outright.
I have not yet found a satisfactory way of hanging a cream filled Belgian Bun. I suspect that it would collapse under its own weight if it was suspended.
The red glace cherry was removed from the top and displayed in front of the bun as if to taunt it.

For practical reasons I was unable to employ the services of four teams of horses to tear the bun into pieces, so I have improvised with a horse, a goat , a pig and a donkey.

The quarters were crisp and delicious mouthfulls.

Conclusions.
Generally, the bun was succulent, the dough slightly spicy and slightly yeasty. It seems rather cautious of being sweet, as though ashamed of its bun-heritage. The softness of the bun and cream and the stickiness of the icing make the ensemble rather unmanageable by hand, and might have been better subdued with a fork, which makes it rather more of a delicacy than a hardcore bun. Certainly it was at the fancy extreme of the envelope of bunnishness.
An interesting and succulent tea-time treat with a robust and rugged appearance but rather enfeebled by the heavy burden of cream it carried and unlikely to appeal to the hardened bun enthusiast, being more of a whimsical oddity.