Poire D'Eve

Following my success with the matcha opera, I wanted to try my hand at making other layered desserts. Who else should I turn to but my favourite site, Tartelette. I've bookmarked most of her recipes but the one that I decided to make was this. I was in the mood for fruits. And lately, pears are on my mind alot, they are sweet, and cheap, and plentiful. When I dropped my the supermart and saw those tiny Honey Belle pears from New Zealand, I immediately took a box and place it into my grocery basket. No need to think what I should do with them first. I can easily go online and check my bookmarks for inspiration. And when I did, it was surely the Poire D'Eve that I must do. Poached pears, and crunchy hazalnut biscuit base? I'm in.

Poire D'Eve

Childhood fantasies

When a woman was just a little girl, she most likely (90% of the female population I bet!) often daydreamed that she was a princess and made up stories to go with her fantasies. I'm a girly girl, so I definitely belong in the party of 90% (estimated accordingly to me, the expert on females. Ha!). The disney princesses were a shoe in for my stories. My favorites include Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, Cinderalla from (duh!) Cinderella and Snow White from (well duh again) Snow White.

I remember on my seventeenth or wait, was it eighteenth (oh well one of my teenth birthday anyways), my girlfriends surprised me at midnight at my house with candles, a cake and my present. They had bought the Disney's Princess Treasury for me. I remember being so happy cos which girl (in my mind) doesn't love a good happy-ever-after story (in this case, since it's a compilation of Disney Princesses, it's stories).

I found this image on one of my daily reads, and it brought to mind little girls, whimsical stories, prince charmings and also, evil witches. Ha. I mean, one must be realistic rights, there's always a badass in any story that one is bound to hate. Smirks.

Isn't that cool? Real-life princesses? I mean, as illustrated from the lookalike celebrities. Sleeping Beauty and Beauty look pretty as Taylor Swift and Anne Hatheaway respectively. Gorgeous celebrities with youthful complexions and striking eyes in all the pictures. This made my day. It would be cool if Disney comes up with real life Disney Princess stories using real life celebrities, not the cartoon animation. I would be first in line to catch the movies man.

Now where's my Prince Charming? I'm still waiting for him to ride up on his horse, so I can kick him off it, and question him what took him so long. Haha. (:

Gimme some macs.

Remember like a month or so ago in March, I mentioned that while I was at Jurong Point meeting a girlfriend for dinner and movie, when I saw that Bakerzin was having their monthly promotions for macarons? Well, I knew that I was definitely going to get my hands on some, as they were $6 for a box of six macarons. I'm not that big a fan of macarons, I mean I won't especially go all the way to make them specially or something, I only ever make macarons when I have leftover egg whites from making other deserts. But looking at the list of macaron flavours that Bakerzin offered, I couldn't resist temptation as they sounded really good.

Well, technically I don't really love macarons, I just...enjoy. Yes, the word is enjoy.

My dream kitchen.

I was surfing the net as usual, dropping by all my favourite websites, when I saw heaven. Well, heaven in a kitchen anyway. This is how my dream kitchen would be.

Spacious, with a kitchen island, elegant cutlery and utensils, airy, and lots and lots of natural light. Oh my gosh. Food photography will be totally easy peasy. Now, what I see lacking is the ovens, refrigerator and KitchenAid. If the image had these three items. I'm so gonna duplicate it in real life... haha!

It doesn't have to be all white as shown above. Imagine the cleaning. Shudders. All I want is that the kitchen have a cosy, warm feeling to it, so more woods-y themed than white/black mono themed. Now, to start saving up...

Grapefruit mandarin pomegranate white tea jelly

Singapore, being this hot humid tropical island, brings to mind ice-creams, chilled citrus drinks, and fresh fruits. Isn't it a great thing to have such things on hand on a typical hot day? Licking an ice-cream cone, sipping a cool beverage, or munching on refreshing fruits. Mmmmmm. Bliss.

Well, this dessert is splendid cos it contains citrus fruits (mandarins and grapefruits), is cold as it is refrigerated, and the best part is that I don't need to switch on the oven and make myself even hotter than I already was. It's also flat out easy to make, say, ten minutes top? Okay, maybe not ten minutes if you count the peeling fruits time and chilling time. It does take ten minutes to prepare with ready ingredients though!

 

Grapefruit mandarin pomegranate white tea jelly with strawberries

Black Angus Steakhouse

A few weeks back, Sis took leave to have lunch with me and also, squeeze in a mini shopping trip to Bugis. She was craving beef, so what better to have than a big juciy steak? We popped by the Black Angus steakhouse near the NUS Law school at Bukit Timah. We went around a merry chase trying to locate the place, and finally had to call the restaurant to ask where they were at. Haha.

Finally, we arrive for our steak feast.

Matcha Opera

For no reason whatever, I made a cake. That's rare. Me thinks. I mostly venture to cakes only when there's something on, like a meeting with friends, a birthday or you know, something. But for this, this is just purely for the sake that this recipe has been in my bookmarks for almost close to two years. And it never strayed far from my mind. It was always there, a sly one, teasing and taunting me to make it. And so, I decided to make it. Just because.

Matcha Opera; the seductress.

Sydney 2009 (Part 1)

This is super way overdue. It's like almost close to a year after I took these photos that they are appearing now. Oh no. My photo uploading skills are seriously atrocious I know. Another level all together. *hangs head in shame*

But, I simply must share my Sydney/Brisbane photos. Cos I love them! (: This was last year in August when I went back for my convocation. I dropped by Sydney for a few days before my graduation and together with my Sis, we ate, sightseed and shopped. Though we privately (not so now) nicknamed the trip "the worst holiday trip ever" (many many reasons...), from these photos, you certainly can't tell why. Haha. Part 1 is mostly about our eating. We went the Sydney Fish Market on the first day, and had a feast of fresh seafood. Yums.

Sydney Fish Market; Cooked food; Sashimi bar; Crowds

Chocolate lemon tart

I made this cheerful yellow tart some time back when I was craving citrus. My sister suggested a chocolate lemon combination. I thought it sounded pretty good. What could go wrong with my two favourite flavours? Thus, I set about searching for recipes to make a chocolate lemon tart. My mind envisioned a crisp chocolate tart dough, layered with a chocolate ganache, followed by lemon cream, then topped with candied lemons. And the tart came out looking exactly like how I had dreamt it to be.

 

Chocolate lemon tart