THE BUZZY BEES AWARD

Image: The iconic Aotearoa NZ Buzzy Bee Toy

This story is dedicated to the staff of the Seabreeze cafe Westmere Auckland Aotearoa New Zealand. SEABREEZE

Once upon a time I worked in cafes. Making coffees, waiting tables and cooking in kitchens. A lot of us who worked in cafes back then were musicians or actors or students and those day jobs paid the bills.

Decent café employers showed us the skills in prepping food, presenting food, learning food safety, making a quality coffee, ordering food supplies, and maintaining the flow of customers with good humour at the till and front of house.

These decent café employers trained us with care and as a result we could learn lots of food and customer skills on the job.  Some of us learnt so much we went on to have careers in the food industry.

These days I always check out the cafes that consistently buzz with good vibes, great music and awesome simple, fresh food and I know how that happens. It’s never just the food that brings us back.

It’s the staff that make a café the place people want to visit time after time.

I was thinking of that when I was getting a coffee at the Seabreeze cafe the other day listening to funky music and watching the staff buzzing around gently and respectfully managing a café full of sit-downs and takeaways. The place hummed effortlessly.

Suddenly I thought I would dedicate a fun recipe to all the staff of the Seabreeze cafe.

Recipes have been created and dedicated to ballerinas and opera singers and our mothers and even an aeroplane.  Why not dedicate a recipe to the entire staff of a café?

The recipe I chose is one that I made for the Aotearoa NZ Annual Taste Nelson Festival in the 1990’s.

The recipe is edible mini-Buzzy Bees modelled on the iconic Aotearoa NZ toy invention.

It’s not a recipe intended for a café menu. Edible Buzzy Bees are a sweet or confection or the perfect decoration for a celebration dessert or cake. It is a speciality item for special occasions. Like an occasion to honour the staff of the Seabreeze cafe.

This recipe was created when I was working for a fabulous Nelson catering business called Bay Catering. The chef owner Corinna Parker decided that a plate of edible miniature Aotearoa NZ nostalgia would be our showcase at the annual Taste Nelson Food Event. Like, let’s make edible miniature Buzzy Bees. The perfect job for me.

The Taste Nelson brief was to make 500 miniature Buzzy Bees. Really small ones.

There was marzipan to make and then food colour dye-testing to make sure we created the true Buzzy Bee colour palette. We had to calculated the proportions of the body parts to scale, construct the body, wings and antennae components and then paint the details on to the completed miniatures.

It took 4 days and the team of Bay Catering chefs to complete the order.

After hilarious trial and error 500 edible mini-Buzzy Bees were successfully created. They were a standout sold-out item at the Taste Nelson Festival and people hummed with fun foodie happiness.

Image: Painting the final details on 500 edible Buzzy Bees

You need a bit of patience and time to make Edible Buzzy Bees but the end results are truly worth the effort.

This recipe in now named in honour of Brodie the owner and all the Seabreeze cafe staff. It’s called Brodies Buzzy Bees