terang bulan, on a moonless night

Did you know that chocolate sprinkles (or jimmies for americans) were first invented by the dutch? There it goes by the name of hagelslag (hail storm). It was brought to indonesia during the dutch colonial times, where it has been adorning children's breakfast sandwiches ever since. Since its introduction, in indonesia the chocolate sprinkles somehow came to be named meses. But whatever it's called, I love it and I can certainly remember the happiness I felt when eating a blue band slathered & chocolate sprinkled sandwich.

profiterole - pâte à choux (part 2)

You cannot have profiteroles without the pâte à choux.

In this post I'm going to show you how to make this choux pastry. As you can see, I went a bit crazy with my baking. I made lots of them, different sizes, big and small.

I will also show you how to make an easy dark chocolate ganache. And of course, how to put them all together to make the most delicious profiteroles.

jean pierre sancho macarons

Hot chocolate - $4

After my friend Dave came back from Bulgaria, I caught up with him over coffee to hear all about it. I always wanted to try Jean Pierre Sancho in the city since Maru told me that their bread was great, but either she forgot to mention that everything else was not great, or that I chose to ignore it, I'm not sure.

san churro churros for two

A recent article in the New York Times, talked about a form of dieting, whereby you imagine eating the food before you eat it. They call it the Imagine Diet (link here while it lasts). The Imagine Diet works this way: before you want to eat that chocolate truffle you're really dying to eat, first you would imagine devouring one chocolate truffle after another, imagining the smell, the texture in your mouth. This apparently will take the edge of that craving and therefore make you not want to eat it as much. So, theoretically, instead of eating three choco truffles, you'd end up having just one.

This mental dieting is probably something that I should have put into practice before I went to San Churro. For the sake of my companions, more than for myself.

cathay pacific meals

Seasonal fresh fruit

Yoghurt

Sweet & sour chicken with vegetables & steamed jasmine rice

Banana loaf

It's been so hectic lately that I find it hard to find the time to blog, what with the new house, the furniture shopping for the new house, the assembling of the furniture, the cleaning and the moving. It feels like I've been spending every single hour getting the house ready. But tonight I have resolved to make time to write this blog. It's about the food I ate during my journey back to Australia flying with Cathay Pacific.

groceries in montmartre

I find it curious when I'm in a country where I don't understand the language of, suddenly everything seems such a novelty. A trip to the grocery, which normally takes 10 minutes, would take triple the time.

ladurée macarons

Someone once told me that macarons are Les incontournables des Paris (english: Paris must-haves). It's dainty, it's colourful, it's like eating art. And no other place in Paris more famous for its macarons than Ladurée.

Ladurée is more like an institution than a simple macaron shop. As I was opening the door to the Champs-Élysées branch, I was greeted by a long queue at the counter. I was really tempted to just turn right to the restaurant and warm myself from the bitter cold I have just escaped from. Second option was to relax at the bar towards the back of the building. But, I was there to buy the macarons, get out and move on with the day. So, I queued.

glory box dark chocolate & pistachio scrummo

I have neglected my blogging duties, but I have allowed myself to have this as I have been quite busy with the commotion of my wedding. That's right folks, you are now reading the blog of a married woman!

Anyways, my sister and I found this quite accidentally. We drove along our usual neighbourhood road and noticed that our local town was having a cappuccino festival. Not sure what a cappucino festival is exactly, but it gave us a distraction to an otherwise quite a boring afternoon.

One of the stalls was this cake shop called the Glory Box. They had this small cylindrical tubes of cake, not unlike muffins, but more tall and thin. I found out that they also do this as a wedding cake, so instead of having one big cake, they'd do small portions of cake baked individually and then arrange them to shape like a cake. Pretty ingenious really, because the cake tasted better, the dark chocolate was so good and each individual cake was crusty on the outside just like it should if it was individually baked.

1. The band on the festival
2. The Glory Box stall
3. Dark chocolate & macadamia scrummos
4. Dark chocolate & pistachio scrummo

Kudos to the concept! Don't know why nobody thought about it before.

Glory Box
358 Charles St
North Perth WA
Open Monday-Friday 10am-5pm, Saturday 10am-3pm

krispy kreme original glazed doughnut

I still remembered the first time I had the infamous krispy kreme glazed doughnut. It was nothing short of gluttony and I wouldn't expect anything less from the Americans. Of course, I would not eat it every other day like they probably do, just once in a while when the mood strikes.

The one I had recently, bought from Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport, was not as good as that first time, though I can say that it was still the same glazed doughnut. It was perhaps because nothing is ever going to be as good as the first time, that sense of wonderment of discovering something new.

3 original glazed & 3 chocolate iced doughnuts - $13.95

All I can note, therefore, is the service. An older lady served behind the counter, taking orders from me on which donuts I want, whilst a teenager manned the cash register. She was, somewhat appropriately, on the chubbier side, but looked like she hated the job and didn't really care what anyone thought.

The service I got wasn't too bad, to be expected from a doughnut store, I suppose. But, while I was waiting for my change from the over-indulgent teenager, the lady behind me muttered to the gentleman behind her, "It's like we're invisible or something", referring to not being served. To be fair, the older lady was at the back greeting another employee, who I think was relieving her shift.

Krispy Kreme
Melbourne Tullamarine Airport
Qantas Domestic Terminal Foodcourt, Terminal 1
Open 7 days 6.30am-9pm

kenny's chocolate croissant

The bakery opposite the hotel I was staying in looked so inviting, with orange/yellow coloured theme and friendly asian ladies (in their 20s and 30s) serving behind the counter. The bakery was clean, modern and well stocked. In the morning, when I was there, their service was quite prompt, if not a bit haphazard, like they couldn't quite cope with all the customers.

Chocolate croissant - $2.40

I went with two chocolate croissants. The pastry themselves were mildly sweet and appetising. But the chocolate I found a bit odd. Instead of swirls of chocolate meandering their way inside the pastry, I was greeted by a block of chocolate in the centre. It can almost be categorised as eating a croissant with a piece of chocolate on the side.


Kenny's Bakery Café
Shop 2, 190 Queen St
Melbourne VIC
Open weekdays 7am-4.30pm

lindt chocolat café macarons

The Lindt Chocolat Café is unique to Australia. Aren't we just lucky! It was also serendipitous for me that one only recently opened in Melbourne. I picked a cold rainy afternoon to go there, which might explain my hankering for hot chocolate, apparently so did everybody in Melbourne. The café was packed to the rafters, there was even a queue of people waiting to be seated. So I skipped all that and headed towards the take-away counter instead.

The café was just class all the way, I'd say Lindt went all out to decorate this place. Exquisite chandeliers, tasteful furniture, great location and friendly servers. Hey, it is Lindt after all.

Macarons - $2.00 each
Hot chocolate - $4.00

The hot dark chocolate was scrumptiously warming and beat all of my past experiences with hot chocolate in the arse. It was just that good. I also got some champagne and raspberry macarons (I can't quite figure out why Lindt had to be different and called them Delice). They are these dainty little biscuits with creamy filling in between. They were melt-in-my-mouth delicate, I especially liked the creamy champagne ones. Though I am disappointed there wasn't any of the dark chocolate macaron left.

I should have visited Max Brenner to compare, but I just didn't have the time. I have been thinking of visiting Ladurée in Paris, but was doubtful if it would be worth it, but now I would not think to even miss it.


Lindt Chocolate Café
271 Collins St
Melbourne VIC
Open Monday-Wednesday 7.30am-6pm, Thursday-Friday 7.30am-9pm, Saturday-Sunday 10am-5pm

babycakes cupcake!

I had driven to my sister's place hundreds of times, not one time did I realise there was a delightful pâtisserie on my way, until two weeks ago. I was waiting at the traffic lights, I happened to look to my left, there it was, BabyCakes. I went back home, googled, amazingly found their website. Even with all this research, I still wasn't motivated enough to go. Then, on Tuesday, my sister told me she needed to get a birthday cake for his kid's birthday. Now I had an excuse to go.

If I haven't told you so, I am totally obsessed with cheesecake. Every time I'm in a café, the first thing I do is check if they serve any cheesecake. So, while my sister was busy choosing birthday cakes, I went straight to the mini white chocolate cheesecake and mini chocolate muffin. The mini cheesecake is honestly a little bitty bit of creamy heaven. Its base is sweet pastry, filled with cream cheese, topped with a chocolate curl. I had a eureka moment, then and there.

White chocolate cheesecake - $2.00

Mini chocolate muffin - $2.00
Key lime pie cupcake - $3.75

I wasn't really interested in the cupcakes, eventhough they actually specialised in cupcakes. The reason being, I know I will get chastised for this, I simply hate frosting. So, when mum bought the key lime pie cupcake, it was left untouched for the better part of the day. Though, after hours of shopping, that cupcake started to look more appetising. I snuck in one little bite, and boy oh boy, was I surprised. The cupcake was topped with cream cheese! I died all over again and went to cupcake heaven. How could I not go back for more after that?

The shop front was bright, the interior was clean and well kept. If you are looking for it, you can't miss it, it's purple and has jelly babies banner. The shop manager, Monty, was really friendly, he didn't mind one bit when I took copious amounts of pictures.


BabyCakes
98a Wanneroo Rd
Tuart Hill WA
Open Tuesday-Friday 7am-2pm, Saturday 8am-3pm

job cut detox

I went to Adelaide last week and let me tell you, if you felt the same sense of doom and gloom as I did, I would prescribe a few days of holiday at a location of your choice. Sometimes you just need to get away from it all to lift up your spirit and recharge the body, mind and soul.

In all honesty, I did only go because I had a Qantas voucher that I had to use before its January expiry date. But, it turned out to be a holiday taken at the most opportune time, I could not time it better myself. Even with the crazy heat wave, I really enjoyed myself.

chocolate croissants

Fact: I'm just a simple person who likes simple recipes that don't require elaborate techniques and use too many ingredients.

Ergo: I really L-O-V-E Nigella's show, Nigella Express (If I haven't made that so obvious already!). Her recipes from this show are yummy, easy to recreate and so unexpectedly creative!

I was intrigued by her mini chocolate croissants. You can have them for a quick breakfast in the morning or a snack in the afternoon, I did the latter.

But, the first time I made it, it was so burnt to the point of being inedible! Gah!! Please adjust your oven temperature to suit. I trusted Nigella's instruction to my own peril.

self-saucing chocolate pudding

One Friday morning, I had a craving for something sweet. Not enough to make something elaborate, but enough to dig out an old recipe for a chocolate pudding. This recipe was given to me in my uni days when I was a summer vacation student (similar to an intern) in South Australia. A fellow vac. student had this recipe from his grandmother and decided to make it for us to enjoy. Lucky us.