Funtastic Family

Can't believe it's July is ending, and that's how late I am with this post! T'was sitting as my draft for like a month and since I couldn't get it out early July, shall wrap this July up on a colourful note :)

Our family always greet the month of July with a gastronomic affair coz it's Aunty Dawn's birthday, she's a food connoisseur, funnest aunt ever and THE most talented singer!! 

 

Theme for the night was Colourful!! With the prettiest and most colourful dessert spread that we were all lurking around the WHOLE entire night. No kidding man....was like a lion preying over the sweetest and most tempting macaroons, chocolates, cakepops, luscious creamy birthday cakes (so lions probably couldn't care less about dessets, but you get the idea). It was such a dilemma, can't wait for dinner to be over so we can feast on desserts, BUT,  Chef Mama's homemade Japanese omakase menu was simply too amazing and we just wanted more of it. HOW?!?!? Calories and being full wasn't the issue here, we wanted both the food and were preying over the desserts in between courses. Greedy right!! but how not to be greedy when everything is so good?? 

Presenting to you, Chef Mama's very own omakase dinner. Here's only some of the courses, greedy me ate up the rest. Mama's really creative and meticulous and SUPERWOMAN. She designed the menu, went to the market, cooked, and individually plated each course for 50 over peeps!! 

 And if you think the food and desserts are overwhelming enough. There's still games and dress up!!

Haha dressed papa and several other guys in Chinese Princess costumes and laugh all our calories away!! Papa attempting to be Chang er.....errrrrrrrrrrr

 

Thanks for always cracking us up papa but we prefer you like this... your beard didn't go too well with your Princess ootd. But no matter what you're always #onfleek

On a side note, had to post this last pic cos I'm loving this dress from Reformation so much. They're eco-friendly clothes that don't kill the environment. Their dresses are always perfectly feminine, with a subtle sexy touch. 

See you guys in August :)

Sinful Sundays: White Chocolate Matcha Cake Recipe

  こんにちは

Konnichiwa!!!!

I absolutely adore all Japanese desserts especially all things MATCHA!!!

For today's Sinful Sunday installment, I'm gonna share a green tea cake recipe I tried out a couple of days ago. 

I went through a couple of recipes and came up with my own concoction of

White Chocolate Matcha Cake.

Ingredients :

250g of butter (soften)

150g of white chocolate chunks

30g of white chocolate chips

100g of sugar

1 1/2 tablespoon of matcha

3 eggs separated

2 tsp of vanilla 

65g all purpose flour 

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 170degrees celsius.

Line the pan with parchment paper. 

Over a double boil, melt white chocolate chunks and butter and whisk until smooth.

Leave it to cool slightly. 

Whisk eggs yolks and half the sugar. 

Add vanilla to egg yolk mixture.

Then combine into chocolate mixture. 

Sift matcha powder and flour into the chocolate mixture. Whisk until smooth. 

In a separate bowl, whisk egg white with remaining half of the sugar until soft peaks form. 

Fold in egg white into the chocolate mixture.

Fold in white chocolate chips. 

Pour the mixture into the pan and bake for 45mins.

Cool and dust with matcha powder and serve it with a huge scoop of vanilla ice cream. 

Happy baking :)

(photo credits: rachel wee) 

Sinful Sundays at The Diner

Hey guys! 

Ever since I came to Taipei, I've realized that their breakfast culture is a must. You can easily spot breakfast bars everywhere, serving every kind of toast, sandwiches, mantou/steam buns, eggrolls, and prata-like scallion pancakes 葱抓饼. But these breakfast bars serve only during the AM, and with the Sunday Brunch culture taking over our world one eggs benny at a time, Taipei is definitely heading windwards, and now, there are loads of places you can have ALL-DAY breakkies EVERYDAY! 

*wooohoooooooooooo*

One of the widely recommended brunch places on tv, blogs and friends was The Diner. 

And in celebration of N's birthday, we decided to celebrate with Brunch!

Thankfully we've been rather active at the gym, which means we can eat whatever we want! I started off our pig out session with Smoked Salmon and Spinach Frittata (420NTD) and had it changed to an egg-white frittata with an extra topping of avocados. You might be wondering if these healthy swops would compromise on the taste, but believe me, it was just as good! Though the whole dish was slightly on the salty side, the crisp flax seed toast complemented well with the frittata. The portions here are huge! Standard american size. You might wanna share your orders. And each order comes with an orange juice and a refillable coffee or tea.

Another dish we ordered was the Baked Eggs with Oxtail Sugo Breakfast (460NTD). This dish reminded me of a Russian Borscht Soup and Wild Honey's Shakshuka baked eggs. It's like a breakfast pan from all around the world. Though it was heavy but delicious.

Since breakfast is the most important meal, we had to complete it with some sweets. The greedy pig in me kept a watchful eye on the servers while we were having our mains, and most of them were walking around with this thick fluffy stuffed french toast. The Strawberry and cream cheese French Toast (370 NTD)

Thick brioche bread stuffed with strawberries and cream, coated with a golden brown eggs mixture, topped with fresh berries, dusted with some icing powder and drizzled with maple syrup. Sounds good?  Can you imagine the taste already? But sadly, it tasted way better in my head and the looks of it. It was dry and the flavours weren't as robust as we expected it to be.

Unsatisfied with one dessert = order another!!

 *YES!!!* 

This is what I call a blessing in disguise.

We ordered the Cinnamon Roll drenched in cream which tasted kinda like a marshmallow sauce. 

The sweets kinda fell short of what we were expecting. Felt this was a tad dry and the cinnamon flavour wasn't soaked into the bun well enough.

All in all, The Diner is a decent brunch spot, but perhaps go for the savories instead.

Be sure to get here early or make a reservation cos it gets crowded especially during the weekends.

The Diner

ATT4Fun

No. 12 Song Shou Road

Tel: 02-7737-5055

10am-12am

Sinful Sundays

In honour of the weekend, I'm treated myself to one of my favourite breakfast desserts,
Pancakes!!! 
And since I was going to for body combat later on, rightfully I do feel I need some fuel.

Found this Hokkaido cafe along one of the alleys in Taipei's ZhongShan District. Konayuki is under the umbrella of Hokkaido's dessert chain store, LeTao, famed for their airy light cheesecakes. But what drew me to this place was their thick fluffy pancakes drizzled with strawberries. I couldn't pass on pancakes, not when they look so fluffy.

The berries pancakes (NT360) took about 20mins cos they're made fresh upon ordering. It was fluffy-dense and more like a cake-like texture. The pancakes itself weren't overly sweet nor special to wow about. Tasted pretty much like your average Moringa Pancake Mix that you can get in the supermarket.  Perhaps that's why they are famed for their Cheesecakes instead, which is actually flown in from Hokkaido. I had it some time ago during one of their food fairs, it has a light creamy cheesy texture that would be more worth the while than the pancakes. 

There's also a minimum charge per customer of at least one drink or a sundae and a food item per table.

Konayuki

No. 1 Lane20 Sect2 Zhongshan North Road

台北市中山區中山北路二段20巷1號

02 2522 2020

FRIED is the new HEALTHY

You heard me right!

Ain't no typo error, 

Fried is the new HEALTHY!!

In my foodie dream world, I'd be able to eat juicy fried chicken, golden brown goreng pisang (fried banana fritters), light and crispy tempura prawns and chewy fudgy doughy fried mars bars

***drooling***

BUT,

without worrying about the scales or health or heart problems.

Thanks to technology, we no longer have to restrain ourselves and spends hours on the treadmill for every bucket of fried chicken. Cos there's now a HEALTHY way of frying! And you're probably already familiar with it, AIR-FRYING. 

Thanks to Philips, we got a new Philips Avance Collection AirFryer XL with Rapid Air Technology.

Before we manage to start frying up some guilt-free sinful food, my health nut brother was so excited and amazed at this cooking machine, first things first was to "fry" his favourite chicken breast which some italian herbs. It came out tender with all its juices and flavours locked in it. I was expecting the chicken to be dry without any oil, but it tasted like a really good chicken. 

What's amazing about this air fryer is that it can fry, roast, grill and BAKE!! Can't wait to try out baking some sweets with this. And I'll definitely share it here, I'm pretty curious how baking with an air fryer would be like.

SeoulYummy!!!!!

One thing that always makes me happy is Food!! Which you probably figured out by now. And whenever I'm traveling, first things first is to check out foodie recommendations.. if you guys have any good recommends anywhere around the world, please share your love and leave a comment yeah :) 

So, currently Seoul is the destination of my soul, and BELLY. (every pun intended)

I shall start of with breakfast. Thick cinnamon toast drizzled with maple syrup and thyme, powdered with icing sugar and doused with a side of freshly creamy whipped cream. Now that's the reason why I wake up. Cafe Arriate is a really cute looking greenhouse cafe that looks like a floral boutique on the outside. Dining in this garden of eden is like a having a posh picnic indoors. I don't have the english address but this original korean version should be most helpful.

Next toasty recommendation is Isaac Toast!!

This picture doesn't do justice to how awesome this is. my bad. 

The eggy toast with eggs, ham, pickles, cabbage and cheese may sound like much, but trust me, this combi blends like it was made for each other. 

You can find Isaac toast in qt a few places, I got mine at Hongdae, and spotted another at Myeongdong.

Look out for a big red round signboard and welcome to sandwich heaven!!

*bells ringing*

And now's recess time which means lunch!!!

Modern korean food from squid ink gimbaps, to carbonara tteobokki to fried mandu.

Find old school food reinvented into dope unconventional deliciousness at reasonable "school food price"!! ok probably not that cheap..but its around S$10 per item.

How I wish we were fed like this in school....

before I hop on to the next place,

you can find school food at

School Food

541-15 Sinsadong, Gangnum-gu

(spotted another at Myeongdong too)

Time for a break from all that eating..

And the best way to take a break is to break for tea...

Deux Cremes Tarts are probably the the nicest tasting hybrids in Seoul.

A light puff pastry like crust topped with fresh cream or pistachio mousse, layered with berries or banana with another layer of mascarpone and another layer of whipped cream.
Add a little sweetness to your afternoon and rest your legs from all that shopping at this 3-storey cafe and indulge in some fruit tarts. 

Deux Cremes Tart Cafe

53-11 Sinsadong, Gangnam-gu

Now we should be around dinner time. 

Head over to Myeongdong for the famous Jimdak.

This dish isn't very photogenic, but you know they say "don't judge a chicken by its feathers."

Like how black chicken doesn't taste any different from a white one.

or how sometimes we can't decipher between a really really, I mean really well cooked and tender turkey from chicken.

or....

yeah you get me doncha.

this soy-sauce based concoction of potato noodles/tanghoon, super duper tender meaty chicken, stewed till they absorb very bit of sauce potatoes and carrots is comfort food for the soul.  

apparently people are into eating crap these days?!?!? but i didn't know that crap could taste so good. ok wait that sounds wrong.

Are you full already?

NO rest for the hungry!!!

You shall not be stop here but continue into the night with street food supper all in Myeongdong.

You'll find your regular indulgences, like tteobokki, tornado potato, ice creams, but this time round I found my ultimate favourite. 

Love it soooooo much I ate.... 2!!!! yes 2!!! 

Before you go on a revolt, I know I know, it's no biggie but *please give me some credit*

What is this that got me head over heels searching for the best?

Egg Bread!!!

It's no ordinary, yet quite ordinary combi.

A fluffy cake like pancake bread, that is steamed and baked with a sunny side up egg on top.

The perfect sweet and salty blend. The bread reminds me of the sweet aroma of McDonald's hot cakes with a pipping hot egg....

But please walk around to find one that looks like the picture above,

cos I was cheated with my 1st egg bread that looked pale and flat and didn't have that baked charred taste.

Proof I ate all these and MORE.

In case you were wondering if I just took pictures with food and look like I ate and then pass it on to someone else...

No Way in Foodie Heaven's Name I will ever do that.

Food is meant to be eaten. Period. 

Most important of all,

when traveling, especially when traveling to eat,

grab a bunch of your loveliest ladies and friends to pig out with.

Cos food is best when shared with good friends and family.

*And cos you can order a whole lot more*