Posts Tagged ‘Yummy’

When we decided to take a trip to Melbourne, the one thing I *really* wanted to do was have a big meet up where I could catch up with all of my blogging friends and everyone else we knew in Melbourne ^_^

SuperKawaiiMama was completely awesome about the idea and organised a tea party for us at the new Cristina Re flagship store. I had only heard of Cristina Re in the sense that she makes the beautiful scrap-booking supplies and stationary and I had no idea that there was a beautiful little cafe attached!

The cafe was decorated with beautiful butterflies:

We had a great turn out! From left to right below:
Super Kawaii Mama, Me!, AuroraHime, Nicole from Circa Vintage, Esme and the Laneway, Fables in Fashion, Kitty’s Drawings, Petite Valse

Being that we were pretty much all bloggers we had a huuuge amount of photos by the end of the day!

There were two token boys there as well, Kitty’s Drawing’s partner Johnny and James who was being the photographer for the day ^_^

Here he is!

Everyone was dressed so immaculately!

The setting was delightful and oh my god the food… the food!

There was so much food! We had spinach quiche…

Macarons:

Tiny delicious cupcakes:

And the most beautiful hand made chocolates:

James ate about a billion of the delicious sandwiches!

Everywhere you looked there was something else beautifully presented!

It was quite funny, not many of the people who came had actually met in real life before but I don’t think there was an awkward pause the whole time! We bloggers sure can chat!

SuperKawaiiMama and I chatting to our hostess, who was the friendliest person in the entire world!

I so love this photo:

We ended up staying right up until closing time because we were having so much fun

Some of these photos are by James and some are by SuperKawaiiMama

Esme and the Laneway looking beautiful as usual!

Some of the yummy food:

There were several yummy teas served that day including mint, lemon, chamomile, fruit and others that I’ve forgotten. We had a lot of fun trying to work out which tea was which because they all came in the same tea pots Lucky dip tea!

I was totally jealous of Aurora Hime’s nails, they had little bunnies on them!

SuperKawaiiMama, Aurora Hime and I all had crazy nail art on so we had to take group photos

More food… because I just can’t get enough of it! The service at the cafe was really great, and they just kept bringing more tea as we drank it all.

I wanted to take this chandelier home with me!

We had such a wonderful time that day, it was a really lovely introduction to Melbourne and it was great to finally meet some of the people I’ve been chatting online to for years! I can’t wait to go back!!

Thanks so much to everyone who came <3 <3 <3

This is my guide to baking an epic cake. Yes it’s seriously epic! Those of you with dial up might want to not continue because there are around 50 photos! Trust me though, it’s totally worth it because the end result is both pretty and delicious!

So here’s roughly what you need:

-3 standard cake mix bags (I know cheating :P) If you are in Australia get the Home Brand butter cake because it is AWESOME and it’s only 60c per bag.
-Eggs
-Milk
-Butter Milk
-Fondant icing
-Ingredients for royal icing (check this recipe it’s great)
-Milo (or just plain old chocolate powder if you’re not in Aus)
-Red and green food dye

Gather your ingredients.

Preheat your oven following the instructions on your packet mix.

Now it’s time to make the cake mix Depending on your cake mix the ingredients might be different but this is how I do it… Packet mix in the bowl!

This cake requires 3 different layers, 2 of plain butter cake and 1 of my version of red velvet cake. We’ll make the red velvet version first.

Add an egg! Eggs look so gross

Add in the butter milk, you should use however much milk the packet mix says to, mine said 3/4 of a cup. For the other layers you should use plain milk.

Mix it all together

And then beat it to death! It should be nice and fluffy ^_^

Once it’s fluffy add 3 table spoons of Milo and beat it in.

Now add some red food colouring, this is why it’s called red velvet cake and it makes for a really pretty effect when it’s finished.

Pour it out into your cake tin, I use a silicone one because it’s easy to get the cake out of.

Put it in the oven until it’s cooked all through

Turn it out onto a rack to cool and make the other 2 layers.

The other two layers should not have milo, food colouring or butter milk in them. They should just be plain old butter cake following the directions.

If your cake breaks when you turn it out, just use some icing and glue it back together

Once your 3 layers have all cooled down it’s time to cut the tops off them. The reason you cut the top off is so you can get a nice flat cake and it doesn’t look like a gigantic lump on top ^_^ It’s much easier to ice a flat cake! So get a knife and poke it in the side towards the middle and start working your way around. Keep going until you’ve done the full circle. Use the knife to lift the top off (and eat it because by now you’ve spent forever staring at cakes bloody baking and you’re probably hungry).

Once you have 3 flat layers get some icing (I’m using Betty Crocker) and cover the top of the red layer/

Once it’s covered use the plate you had it on to flip it onto one of the plain layers.

Cover the top of the red one again and flip the last layer on to it. This is what you should end up with!

Cover the entire thing with icing ^_^

One for the cake, one for the cook!

Now get your fondant icing and roll it on the bench top. If it’s too hard pop it in the microwave for 10 seconds, if it’s too sticky dust it with icing sugar. Once you’ve rolled it out, drape it over the whole cake. It should end up something like this… You can see that I’ve repaired a crack by putting water on my finger and rubbing it. It’s going to be covered in icing so no one will ever notice!

Now it’s time to decorate! Make some royal icing in the colour of your choice, mine is pink! Put it into a piping bag and start decorating! Ok mine isn’t very even but this was my first time using a piping bag so it’s ok!

I tried to make it very decorative, there is a big heart on top, scalloping on the outside and lots of little bumpy bits. Whatever you do as long as you put effort in everyone will enjoy it!

Now put it in the fridge to cool and it’s time to learn how to make icing roses Grab some fondant icing and colour it pink with food dye. You do this by putting a tiny amount on and kneading it until it’s pink. Make sure to do this on a surface that you can clean easily, food dye will stick to EVERYTHING. Maybe wear gloves, look at my hands, they’re all red

So let’s start making a rose! Pinch off a little bit of icing and roll it in a ball.

With your finger squish one side of the ball…

Pick it up and roll the squished end in on itself like the photo below. You should make a bunch more squished balls, these are the petals.

Roll the second petal onto the first but on the opposite side like below:

Keep making petals and placing them around the part you’ve already made. You should over lap the next petal slightly with the one you’ve just done.

As you go you should use your finger to push the petals out a bit.

Once you think you have enough petals roll the bottom of the rose together with your fingers so it’s a bit rounded.

Make a bunch of them This is what you should end up with!

Now bring out your cake from the fridge. Mix up a bit of royal icing and colour it green.

I put a bunch of green icing in the middle of the heart and placed the flowers on top.

I make a lot of flowers in different sizes so….

…I can shape them into a heart too!

Yay! Finished

NOM NOM NOM!

Delicious cake…

I think the flowers really make the cake… and they are delicious too ^_^

And the best bit… When you cut it open it looks even prettier!

How pretty is it? And the red velvet is delicious!

Now serve with thickened cream…

And enjoy!

So there you have it, it’s delicious! What do you guys think? What’s your favorite type of cake?

A warning that there are a lot of photos in this post so be warned If these photos just aren’t enough, I’ve uploaded a large selection of everything we took over at my Flickr account. Hey it’s not everyday that someone flies you to Singapore for free so I took a lot of photos!

So starting on Thursday night, our flight was at like 11:45pm so James’ Dad drove us to the airport and we chatted before going through security and customs and doing a little shopping. We were keeping an eye out for Erica from Girl With a Satchel who was the only other blogger coming from Brisbane. We travel in style baby!

This is a kind of silly inside joke but ever since we started going out like 2 and 1/2 years ago James has been promising to buy me a mood ring and he finally did! Hahaha guess what I’m feeling!

The food and service on the plane was lovely, we flew with Singapore Airlines. They gave us little travel packs with socks and tooth brushes, how cute! For dinner we had yummy noodles.

We arrived at the Link Hotel at around 5am and we were all so tired that we piled into bed! Erica was only a couple of rooms down the hall from us which was awesome! She was such a wonderful traveling companion, we had lots of fun together! Here is our hotel room…

To give you an idea of the size, that’s a double bed and the wall is behind the desk on the right. My little laptop Edward lived there but the internet connection was very sketchy so I couldn’t post

After a few hours napping we met up with Erica, Candice and her husband Craig for an… interesting breakfast. Erica ordered coffee with skim milk and they brought her a cup of frothed milk. I ordered tea and they brought warm milk tea like you would have with pearls in it… it was very pretty though!

After breakfast we headed out to a shopping center and shopped around, the girls were super excited that there was a Zara! We met up with Grace and Dave here and she introduced herself by sneaking up behind me, poking me in the back and whispering in my ear “GIMME ALL YOUR MONEY!!” she managed to scare the hell out of me

I bought a pair of earrings and Candice bought me a shiny pink bling ring, the shop assistants kept telling I looked like a Barbie Doll so we took a photo together

Erica was sleepy so she went back to the hotel while Candice and I got pedicures! Ah felt so good and so much nicer than the places here in Aus! Woo for deco iphones!

After that we went back to the hotel to get ready for the awards, which you saw last post so I’ll skip to the next morning which was Friday. I stayed up after the awards and got up early so I could pin curl my hair. I was going to take hot rollers but they were too heavy so I learned to pin curl instead. I was super happy with the results and they lasted all that day and night! James and I met up with Candice and Craig for breakfast at the hotel before the tour started.

Our first stop was the Mint Toy Museum… which is exactly what it implies: a museum for old toys in mint condition. Our tour guide was hilarious, this kind of sums the whole thing up:

I got to pose with a life size model my childhood hero Tintin and his dog Snowy as well as Captain Haddock so I was happy!

We were literally like kids in a toy shop amongst all of the memorabilia! Old favorites like Strawberry Shortcake brought back childhood memories and it made me sad to see the new slutty version they’re trying to pedal now.

Next we went to the Museum of Early Chinese Settlers. You should all note that I’m saving the cutest girliest photos for a special treat on Monday or Tuesday You’re going to love it!

We stopped for lunch at an insanely busy crowded pavilion. Everything was so cheap and there were so many smells in one small area!

It was so awes
ome to be with other people who understand the importance of photos

Our next stop was the Singapore Planning Museum. They had a replica of all of inner Singapore in miniature! Oh what’s that I spy down there?

ZOMG IT’S GIANT VIOLET ATTACKING THE CITY!

We stopped off for a spot of shopping but the museum of planning kept reminding me to look at the architecture There were so many pretty buildings, I wish my windows were rainbow!

The next stop was Merlion park which I was totally looking forward to!

We spent ages just being silly and taking photos, most of those will be in the post on Mon/Tues.

Lots of posing!

Our next stop was the Singapore Flier which is basically a very fancy ferris wheel.

The view from the top was great!

We were fortunate that our capsule was full of awesome people!

Group shot! James, Me, Candice, Craig, Christie with little Immy and Erica.

It was such an action packed tour that Nuffnang had planned at this point we took some time out to just chill with some cocktails at the bay. I had a mocktail version of the “Sinagpore Sling” and it was yummy!

Little Immy was so adorable she had herself a bunch of admirers when the day was done. Here she is with Martin from Nuffnang, she was eating ice cream, too cute!

James made me take this picture of him next to the bus. Low brow humor…

That night we went to a crazy shopping center called Mustafa. There is no way to describe it other than insane. So huge, sold everything from cosmetics to diamonds to cheap shoes to frozen goods to ANYTHING. It was so hard just to find the exit once we were in *_* The lights outside were beautiful though.

We had dinner at a celebrity hot spot (apparently) and out the front there was the ultimate deco project… a motorbike!

I had the most disgusting grass jelly drink for dinner. It was like frozen rice noodles in sugar water. ICK.

After a good night’s sleep we were ready for shopping again Quick breakfast and some photos.

We headed off to Orchard Rd for fancy upmarket shopping.

I bought a bunch of Japanese magazines, I was so happy! They are like 1/3rd of the price compared to Australia!

The boys played Wii Sports Resort while we all shopped.

Then it was our last shopping stop for the trip…. SIM LIM SQUARE! Everyone had been waiting so long to get here, it’s basically a whole shopping center devoted to gadgets and cameras I wanted to get a video camera (mission unsuccessful) and James wanted to look at lenses. We ended up spending 3 hours there because everyone wanted to bargain for things! Some of the guys got really good deals t
oo I had a hilarious experience with Grace as she put on her famous Singaporean accent to try and bargain on my behalf The shop keeper was a nut job and he was yelling at us not to leave! Grace’s bargaining skills were so awesome she even got $5 off a steam iron which was supposed to be set price!

While we were wandering around waiting for the boys to finish haggling Kruppy took us on his magical tour of the past and educated us on the subtitles of the landline phone

Apparently his tour made him so tired that he felt the need to try out a magic eye massaging gadget… hahaha! I sure hope he didn’t sustain any lasting damage ^_^

Oh and I couldn’t help but share the signs we could see from the hotel… Frog porridge sounds interesting! We were all daring each other to try it but there just wasn’t time!

After all that there was time for one last hurrah online and then a dash to the airport!

Erica can testify to the fact that our taxi driver was the funniest man in the universe! He was giving us the good old cab driver philosophy and saying we should work less and enjoy life before our retirements! We were convinced he should write a book.

At the airport we grabbed some dinner and did a dash to the plane (almost missed it oops!). James couldn’t believe there was a Burger King, he was so excited! In Australia Burger King is called Hungry Jacks because when it first arrived the name was already taken, so it’s a novelty.

On the plane back I managed to get some sleep, dinner was some kind of fish which was icky but smelled good.

The best part was desert which was chocolate covered icecream bites!

James really enjoyed his hahahaha!

And that was our lovely trip! Now what you really want to see… the loot
Here’s the candy!

Things that I bought:

Nuffnang Australia had these awesome shirts made up for us, I love the one I got!!

And look… FOREIGN BUENO! And yes it tasted just as good Damn Kinder, just sponsor me already

To say thank you very much to Nuffnang and all the sponsors James and I made this photo <3

I had such a wonderful time, I wish it had lasted longer but it was lovely and it all feels like a dream now