Random Round-up! Part 3

Here's another one of those "closet clean out" posts; just a little something to entertain everyone until I come up with a proper post :D

1) High tea at Tea Parlour, Redfern.

An awesome-looking spread, yes? And not your usual "High Tea" fare either. We visited this quaint little hole-in-the-wall 'parlour' for a friend's 21st. All the goodies you see above are baked by the owner herself, onsite; a feat I am most impressed by. The scones featured in the middle are THE BEST that I've ever tasted. Yes, even better than The Tea Room's down at the QVB! I love this sort of baking: unapologetically unpretentious, and clearly made with real butter xD Everything I had on the day (and I tried everything!) was so good that I couldn't help but eat, eat, eat the whole time I was there. The pecan pie! The cheesecake! The apple crumble tart! *salivates*

2) Durian ice cream from Breadtop.

I know my recommending ice cream from a chain bakery may raise some eyebrows, but this was actually really, really nice! The durian flavour was unmistakable, and did not taste at all artificial. The texture was smooth, but with that "chewiness" which I associate with added thickeners in ice cream. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but I quite liked it.

3) Various small cakes and slices from George's Hot Bread Shop, Hurstville.

Situated right near the ticket barriers at Hurstville Railway Station, this little bread shop appears unassuming from a distance, and I for one often passed it by with nary a second look. Had I ventured closer though, I would have discovered much sooner its amazing display of cakes and slices. We're talking real old-school, Australian baking; they even have chocolate crackles! On this occasion, I purchased one of their  sizeable Anzac biscuits (only 90 cents!), which was delicious and one of the best I've tasted, and the three cakes shown above: Black Forest cake (left), vanilla custard slice (right) and baked cheesecake (bottom). All three were bona fide fresh and scrumptious. My favourite was the vanilla slice: cold, sweet eggy custard, contrasted with the crisp, multi-layered pastry which shattered when I sliced into it. Mmm. And you know what? It's all so affordable. Where else can you get a ginormous slice of cake in the $3 range these days?

3) The 'Multi' at Noggi, Strathfield.

To celebrate a recent piece of happy news, I took my siblings out for frozen yoghurt at Noggi. And since we were all fro-yo aficionados and possess iron dispositions impervious to the wintry climate, I went ahead and ordered a 'Multi', the second largest size on offer. I don't think there were quite enough of us to tackle the 'Groupi' xD We got all four flavours (original, pomegranate, biscotti and green tea) and five toppings (gummi bears, Tim Tam, mochi, fresh strawberries, and Crunchie chocolate bar).

4) 'Fine apple tart' and the panna cotta lamington from Flour and Stone Bakery, Woolloomooloo.

After hearing rave reviews all around about these two items from Flour and Stone Bakery, I went and purchased said items the first opportunity I got, and could barely stop myself from tucking into them on the train trip home. The apple tart was visually stunning, but was a bit too tart for my liking, and perhaps would have tasted better warmed up. The panna cotta lamington was an indisputable winner. Incredibly moist, yet not soggy from being drenched in panna cotta mixture - a true wonder. This was one HUGE lamington, yet I managed to finish half of it in one go, and would have eaten the other half as well if I hadn't been sharing with my sister :D

5) The 'I need to unwind with sugar after a long, long week' fridge clean out.

I credit myself on being able to assemble a sugar feast on the slightest whim. It's most likely to do with the fact that my fridge is always stocked with leftover bits of cake, dessert liquers, and embarrasingly, heavy cream. Or in this case, 'lite' heavy cream. No, I'm not at all fat-phobic, it was simply because the lite version was on discount, lol. This concoction of cream, milk and Baileys, along with a slice of homemade caramel cake and the last of my precious Nigella Lawson brownies, sent me into a pleasant, dreamless slumber, and I awoke the next morning cheerful, well-rested, and 10kg heavier. Ahem.

Here's Part 1 and Part 2 of my 'Random Round-up!' series.


Tea Parlour
569 Elizabeth Street
Redfern, NSW 2016

Breadtop, Hurstville

Shop 2, 227-231 Forest Road
Hurstville, NSW 2220

George's Hot Bread Shop

Hurstville Railway Station (Hurstville Central shopping centre)

Noggi

2/2 Albert Road
Strathfield, NSW 2135

Flour and Stone Bakery

53 Riley Street
Woolloomooloo, NSW 2011

Random Round-up! Part 2

Here's the second instalment in my "Random Round-up" series (for Part 1, see here). This is simply a way for me to condense  a whole load of unwritten posts into one big one. The ultimate time-saver! xD

The very existence of this blog is evidence that I take enormous pleasure in food. Perhaps using food as a form of distraction during the more monotonous times in life isn't the most healthy relationship one can have with food, but I do not believe it to be pathological either. After all, the notion of "soul food" had to have come from somewhere. I feel blessed to have the means to satiate my physiological hunger with the beautiful, fresh produce of this country, and fulfil some of my spiritual and emotional needs with the sheer number of unexplored avenues in food: eating it, preparing it, reading up on it, etc.

The 2012 Food Bloggers' Picnic: exemplifying the pivotal role in maintaining a sense of community, and facilitating the social-networking process.

I consider myself to be a person of very simple taste when it comes to food. I don't like having too many different things on my plate, and my poor brain easily gets overwhelmed by too many different flavours and textures administered all at the same time. A hunk of roast beef suffices for dinner, and I find nothing more satisfying than a few squares of dark chocolate for dessert. Therefore, what I'm about to list down as my recent "interesting eats" may not be at all that interesting for most people who read this. Especially for my fellow food bloggers, whose tasting experiences far exceed my own!

The above is a cheeseboard I assembled for a casual dinner party with a few close friends. It wasn't anything special - the cheeses themselves were of the, ahem, supermarket variety. I guess I was inordinately proud of it for that very reason. Here's proof that luxury can be had on a modest budget :D From the top left hand corner we have: white figs, blue cheese, red leicester with walnuts, black seedless grapes, edam, a piece of honeycomb, cream cheese with chives, salt-cured pork charcuterie, dried figs and medjool dates, and some crackers/crispbreads I baked myself using almond flour and chickpea flour.

I assembled the plate above at farewell luncheon we threw for a friend who was due to head off to the United States. I contributed the quiche, while one of my other friends made the dainty wraps and the avocado salad. Although the food was delicious, it was really the people there who made it special. The five of us who were there have been the best of friends since the beginning of high school, and I couldn't have imagined a better way to send our 'sister' off to her new home for the next few years than spending the afternoon chatting away on the verandah, under the warmth of the Australian sun.

One of the perks of having friends who are as interested in food as you are is that you always eat well at social gatherings. The farewell luncheon was but one example of the superb spreads we would have at such events. The white chocolate and berries cheesecake, looking as gorgeous here in the photograph as it did in real life, featured at a tea party at a friend's house. No need to fork out a load of cash for finger sandwiches at a swanky tea room! We sure had ourselves a proper feast that day. Gorging ourselves on chicken schnitzel sandwiches and cold roast beef didn't stop us from going back for seconds of this no-bake cheesecake. The fact that it tasted light as air only helped with our self-deception that we totally didn't just undo a week's worth of cardio with this bad-ass diet-breaker.

WHAT IS THIS?! you ask. Talkin' about diet-breakers...during one of my more desperate (and shameful) moments in the midst of preparing for exams, I said "stuff it!" to the low-carb eating plan I was following at the time and made myself a kaya toast sandwich. Two pieces of fluffy white sandwich bread, toasted to the point of charring, then slathered with kaya (coconut jam) and covered with thick slabs of cold butter. I didn't skimp on the butter, as you can witness yourselves in the cross-section shot:

I ate it at 3am in the morning, my eyes swollen half-shut from lack of sleep and my head filled with images of bones, blood vessels, and miscellaneous body parts (I was studying anatomy; just thought I should qualify that statement). This tasted so good, and I was so tired I was past caring about nutrition. The diet could wait until after the exams, my sugar-numbed mind said.

And now - a change of pace. I try to eat healthy most of the time, and avocadoes are so good for you. Yes, they're calorically-dense, but having one of these for a snack is better than a sugar-laden muesli bar, or a tub of low-calorie yoghurt stuffed to the gills with artificial sweeteners and thickening agents. Such was my love for the avocado that I went to great lengths to procure a perfect specimen of each cultivar (which are commonly sold in Sydney) just so I could do a blog entry on it. The entry is still in the works, but the avocadoes themselves have long been eaten. From the left, we have the 'Shepard', the 'Reed' and the well-known 'Hass'. A few spoonfuls into the 'Shepard', I was greeted by the sight of a love heart. How apt. Can you spot it?

The avocado saga continues! Not content with simply eating them, I am in the process of germinating some of the avocado seeds I've kept. I'm pleased to report that at least two of them are showing signs of sprouting!

I stumbled upon some organic purple carrots while browsing Maloneys Grocer. Purple food excites me. The carrots were less sweet than the orange variety, and tasted more...watery? I don't know how else to describe it. I think I prefer the normal orange ones, but I did enjoy the novelty factor (and having my teeth stained purple for the rest of the day).

Going with the theme of purple vegetables - I bought some purple congo potatoes at the Sydney Produce Market at Flemington. There were also many other uncommon varieties being sold there.

Just a few more pictures. Wow, this is getting to be a long post.

I made this black sesame ice cream in the Cuisinart ice cream machine I got for my birthday, following the success of the vanilla bean ice cream. I must have dumped a quarter of a bag of ground black sesame in there to get that shade of grey. Which was fine, because I like my black sesame ice cream to taste strongly of black sesame. Recipe to come!

I call these retro flower cupcakes, because they look like something right out of a vintage issue of Women's Weekly. The frosting is a cream cheese one. I used chocolate freckles and Smarties for the flowers themselves.

Here's the flourless chocolate cake I baked for Valentine's Day...for a female friend and her family. Yeah, no one's snagged me up yet. Gentlemen, send in your applications and I'll make a short-list xP To make it extra-special, I sprinkled it with silver edible glitter, and love heart-shaped confetti. Nauseating, ain't it?

And finally - posing with the king crab that formed the centrepiece dish of our Chinese New Year celebration dinner. I debated for a long time whether or not to share this photo, as I do realise that some may be offended. However, I think that those of us who are omnivorous should acknowledge that our food were once living organisms. This king crab was a magnificent creature, and I enjoyed every single bite of its sweet flesh.

Yeah, I think that's it for now!

The Happiness Cake

I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a pessimist, but there are certainly times when I fail to see the silver lining in anything. It's usually a case of wallowing in self-pity, and I get over my bouts of folly and narcissism quickly enough. Nothing cheers me up quite like baking a cake, and taking my time decorating it. Sometimes I get accused of wasting precious time by experimenting with swiss meringue buttercream, or building a gingerbread house, when I could have been studying, or cleaning my room, or doing some other 'not meaningless' thing. My only retort is that people have different ways of dealing with stress. Some people go get drunk. Others turn to retail therapy. I play with nonpareils and silver dragees.

This cake proved to be the ultimate stress-buster. For starters, it's hard to obsess over the ever-increasing pile of uni work when you're positioning each dragee with a pair of chopsticks (the only tweezers I own are the ones in my dissection kit). And then there's the anticipation of tucking into a slice of chocolate cake in bed right before lights-out on a Sunday night; a prophylactic dose of sugar before the weekday crazies start anew.

(Yes, I eat in bed. Nigella Lawson said it was okay, so cease your disapproving muttering at once!)

 

So, what's with the "B"? No, this isn't some homage to Nathaniel Hawthorne, or an attempt at disguising my shoddy frosting skills (okay, maybe a little of the latter). This cake is actually for my sister to take to her school chapel service on Sunday, and the "B" is the first letter of the name of the House she is in. Since everyone in her House will be bringing something to the service, I have no doubts that there'll be chocolate cake left over. But if this Happiness Cake proves to be especially popular, I'll make sure that the sister saves me a slice for my planned cake-eating-in-bed.

Some other things which make me HAPPY:

Macarons!

Flowers!

And some more flowers.

Beautiful views.

Eating pieces of the beautiful view (a shard of glacier in this case).

Fruit in bulk.

Jumping in fields of gold.

And, of course, cupcakes.

So...what makes you happy? ;D

Random round-up!

Still in the throes of preparing for some great, big exams *stresses*. So here's another quick quickie post :D

Firstly - Pappa Roti opened in Strathfield yesterday! There's a special offer for a free bun with any drink purchased.

Very nice piping 

Sick of studying, I ventured out under the blazing sun and brought back one of the fluffiest buns I've ever seen. The smell was absolutely incredible. 

Despite trying to spend every waking minute cramming useless knowledge into my brain, I find the time to do some therapeutic baking. I made Portuguese egg custard tarts:

As well as my very first quiche, loaded with bacon, cheese and caramelised onions. Yum! I was supposed to take it to a revision session with some uni friends, but since the date passed and I didn't hear from any of them, I was - ahem - forced to eat most of it by myself.

The quiche got me in the mood to do some more fancy cooking. I don't know if this constitutes as "fancy" to other people, but for a rookie cook like myself it seemed quite involved. Those eggs Benedict from 2042 Deli & Cafe left me craving eggs for breakfast for the next few days, and I took it upon myself to replicate a cafe-style brekkie at home:

Pan-fried eggs with smoked trout, cream cheese, and sauteed baby spinach.

Last but not least, a trip to Balmain led to an impromptu visit to Adriano Zumbo's Patisserie...oh, who am I kidding. I drove to Balmain for the very purpose of acquiring some macarons. Or Zumbarons, as they're now apparently called. I gawked at the cake display:

And came away with three 'Zumbarons': 

Must. Go. Study. NOW!

Making the most of one's mistakes

Around October last year, I had my first go at making a swiss roll.

It was a disaster. The cake was hard.

So, I recycled the mess and made it into a cream cake.

Haha, quick thinking eh? The sponge was a green tea-flavoured one, so what I did was soak the tacky, hard shards in a green tea syrup made from powdered matcha and sugar dissolved in warm water. In between layers of this was sweetened adzuki bean paste and fresh whipped cream. I squeezed the whole thing in a "mould" (read: random glass bowl), shoved it in the fridge for a few hours, then covered it with some more whipped cream and strawberry slices just prior to serving.

This was a quite tasty mistake!