Happy 21st!
Made this cake for my sister’s 21st birthday party. Happy Birthday MA!!
Strawberry cheesecake with a white chocolate mousse layer on top, green white chocolate trees and a chocolate house made of Lindt chocolate bars and chocolate biscuit fingers.
So worth the effort. But this week has been exhausting.
RM’s 21st Birthday, and two cakes.
So my sister, RM, just turned 21 recently! And to celebrate, I think I went a bit nuts. On her birthday proper, I booked us a table (or two) at Simon’s Peiking Duck restaurant in Boxhill. Then the next day, threw her a surprise party in the park!
And of course, I made two cakes! One for each day.
Cake 1: She requested a chocolate cake, “smooth chocolate, like eating chocolate frosting!” was the exact request, so I made her David Lebovitz’s Chocolate Idiot cake. Then covered it with a shiny chocolate lacquer glaze, and added a handpiped rose.
Shiny glaze!
There was a small drama when
Prawn Noodles/Hae Mee in Melbourne
We’ve been going to this little place for a while now – it’s been open for less than a year, but I think we’ve been there at least once every 2 or 3 weeks since we found it! It’s tiny, seats only about 20-25 people, has lovely people working there, and has great food!!
It’s little Malaysian shop called Sambal Malaysia.
Roy tried their Prawn noodles, and knowing how I adore the dish, brought me there the next time he went. I haven’t looked back since. It’s seriously, totally, definitely the best prawn noodles in Melbourne that I’ve tried so far (I live in the city, so anywhere too far from it doesn’t count!). Consistently strong prawn-y broth, with a little over the top spiciness and a heap of prawns, chicken, noodles and a hardboiled egg thrown in for good measure… heavenly!!
Mmm.... Prawn Noodles...
Now, Prawn Noodles seems to Read more…
Celebrating birthdays in the Yarra Valley
So a couple of our friends decided that they wanted to do something different this year. Their birthdays are about a week apart, so they decided that they would invite a bunch of people to celebrate with them with lunch in De Bortoli’s Yarra Valley Estate.
We ended up with 5 cars, ferrying about 16 people from all over Melbourne/Victoria to De Bortoli’s restaurant for a leisurely four course meal!
Roy and I were in Amir’s car, which reminded us of our Easter Roadtrip! Ah… good times. =)
Amir felt adventurous, as always, and decided to skip the highway and take the scenic (and faster, it turned out!) route. So we ended up with lovely things to look at…
- Rolling hills and open fields…
Cookie pictures
These are the cookie pictures I promised… I apologise if they’re blur – I took them with the iphone 3G camera (sigh…)
Bolognese or Bolognaise (Italian or French)?
The prerequisite bolognese/bolognaise recipe!
Gorgeous Spagetti Bolognaise
Disclaimer: this probably isn’t the ‘classic’ or ‘perfect’ or ‘whatever-you-want-to-call-it’ bolognaise recipe…. but it’s the one that I love – both to cook AND eat.
The full bolognaise recipe is something that I just started doing pretty recently. The soffritto (Italian) or mirepoix (French) which is the combination of onions, celery and carrots – makes the bolognaise, SO much better. I made this for a dinner we had recently, and the smell of it made a couple of people say “WHAT did you put in that?? It smells so good!”
I made cookies today!!
Today started too early for a Saturday, but then I had breakfast with some fabulous people, which made my 8am wake-up totally worth it. The pork-belly sandwiches, Kenyan coffee and mango, lime and toasted coconut rice pudding made a sublime way to start my weekend. =)
Then…. I went shopping with my grandparents at Costco – you know, that place where everything comes in bulk (like 3 bottles of rice bran oil and 36 rolls of toilet paper).
After making our way home, and collapsing on my bed, I started to think about baking, and how I haven’t done it in AGES. Yes, for me, a month is way too long in between bakes. So I made my way to tastespotting.com, and surfed for a while, looking at all the pretty pictures of food… the gazillion ways people have combined cake/cookies/booze/the colour green/irish stuff/shamrocks to make something special to celebrate St Patrick’s day… when I realised I had the perfect opportunity to make something for my 4th sister’s birthday! My grandparents are leaving Melbourne and arriving home in time for her birthday, so they would totally be my, erm, loving-delivery-people.
And so…I made cookies!! Chocolate, roll-out cookies, with pretty icing decorations! (pictures are coming soon, I promise.)
+ BONUS: won today’s gin rummy game with my grandparents and RM. wheeee…..
