Light Fruity Japanese Tarts @ Fruit Paradise

Offtopic: We are now on Twitter, so Follow Us on Twitter to get first-hand updates whenever we ... update!

Have a sweet tooth and hankering for something light and indulging after a meal? Visit Fruit*Paradise, Tokyo Fruit Tart Shop & Cafe! Original Recipe from Japan



Mango Banana was our choice! SGD7.80
A very interesting match in fruits for us, but turned out pretty nice. Semi-sweet Tart base, with layers of fresh cream, thin layer of sponge cake, banana & mango. The top of the Tart is nicely decorated in fashion, with slices of Banana and Mango fruits and covered with sparkles that make it looks more delicious and keep the fruits fresher.

Domo can't wait again!



There are TONs of different selections!
Whole Tart for party's dessert or to replace birthday cake, comes in 8" and 11".
**Remember to place your order 2 days in advance**

Price range up to date is as the below picture taken for YOU~
Click the photo for a larger view in flickr.



Check out their website: Fruit*Paradise Fruit Tart Shop

They have 4 outlets:
Tampines 1
10 Tampines Central 1
#03-16/19 Manpuku
Tel: 6789 6810

Raffles City
252 North Bridge Road
#B1-44F Raffles City
Tel: 6333 4849

Orchard Central
181 Orchard Road
#05-51/52 Orchard Central
Tel 6509 9920

Vivocity
1 Harbourfront Walk
#01-59 Vivocity
Tel: 6376 9978

Roasting Exploration ::: Chinese Style BBQ Pork / Char Siu / 叉燒 (叉烧)

Offtopic: We are now on Twitter, so Follow Us on Twitter to get first-hand updates whenever we ... update!



Wondering how to make sure lovely Chinese Style BBQ Pork / Char Siu / 叉燒 (叉烧)??? So many names for it... One of the very love Roasting Meat among Chinese!

Buy 500g of Pork with slight fats (a must) cut them into 1 inch thick and 3 inch in length. Make sure the sizes of the Pork is same so it will be evenly cooked and not turning some dry. Rinse them and pat dry with kitchen towel. Put in enough Lee Kum Kee Char Siu Sauce, mix and enough to cover all your pork.

NOTE**Marinate this 3 hours or more ahead of Roasting time for more flavored Char Siu.

It's easy because Lee Kum Kee Char Siu Sauce 李锦记叉烧酱 is available! Another long serving trusting sauce to use.



I marinated mine overnight in the fridge!

Pre-heat oven to 220°C.
Prepare a aluminium foil basket (like in the below picture) for the Char Siu to sit in so no tough crusty washing needed after all roasting, JUST THROW IT AWAY...



Check on the pork, on and off and turn it every 5mins. When you see the corners of nearly all the Char Siu are slightly Burn/Charcoal then you're almost done. Turn off the oven and let the Char Siu sit in there for another 5-10mins while the oven cool itself.

Take it out and slice them up and arrange it nicely to be serve.



You can make extra, slice thinly and add it to your Fried Rice! Lovely~~~

Click here for our blog page Cooking Classes for more recipes. Hope you will be inspired~

Marché VivoCity - Swiss buffet-style goodness.

Offtopic: We are now on Twitter, so Follow Us on Twitter to get first-hand updates whenever we ... update!

Marché is a Swiss chain of restaurants that have outlets in a dozen countries spread over Europe and Asia. The concept is simple - it's set up like a buffet with multiple cooking stations and bread, dessert and drinks stands, but instead of paying a fixed price, you only need to pay for what you eat for.


The Marché outlet in the Curve in KL uses a card-and-stamp system, but the ones here in Singapore use an electronic card. Personally I prefer KL's system - it just feels more hygienic since I don't have to handle a card that's been passed between hundreds of hands.

That's just a minor quibble though, so let's go explore the food that's on offer!


Starting with the drinks, there's a selection of juices and fruity teas, and some 'western' soft drinks. The darling and I are delighted that there's our favorite soda - Bundaberg Ginger Beer (which is from Australia ... so ... not strictly 'Western').




Special mention to the grill station where you've got choices of sausages, rib-eye steaks and lamb chops - the meats here are grilled surprisingly well. We asked for our lamb chops medium and they arrived perfectly cooked, nice and tender, and delicious!





The cream pasta also needs a special mention - but only to warn you to stay away. It tasted as if the chef stirred cream into pasta and then forgot any other condiments.

Overall, we come away pretty satisfied. Marché does suffer a little from that problem common to most buffets - too many varieties resulting in food that is solid but not outstanding. Prices are quite reasonable, though, and it's a nice, lively and cheerful place (if a tad bit noisy). Come early if you want to avoid needing to queue behind a few dozen people, and also do note that they don't seat partial tables - everyone needs to turn up before they'll let you in.

Marché has two outlets in Singapore. To get to the VivoCity outlet take the city's MRT to the Harbourfront station.

Is this Product good?::: Instant Chicken Curry Sauce / Prencah Kari Ayam Segera! ***Must try*** Mak Nyonya

Offtopic: We are now on Twitter, so Follow Us on Twitter to get first-hand updates whenever we ... update!

At times when you're overseas and want have some good Asia Food or you wanna stir up a few delicious and sophisticated dish to impress your family and guest. Lazy to go through all the trouble shopping, preparing all the fine ingredients needed for this dish?

Here is a plan from me. I'll love to start sharing and introducing all of you to some of the instant cooking products that can be purchased in supermarkets close to you!
Would give you advice to "Stay Away" or "Go For It!"

With these available in the market... **Anyone can cook** :)

Today introduction will be the Mak Nyonya Brand -- Instant Chicken Curry Sauce / Prencah Kari Ayam Segera! Must try~~~~~~

Check out the results!



All you need is just to purchase these ingredients behind the package, adding what else you love to have in your Chicken Curry.

Follow the instructions behind and you will never go wrong! Serve with warm rice. Just this one dish will make a perfect meal.

Dear & me love and enjoy the thickness of the curry and the aromatic flavors. It had me going for a second serving of rice and dear THREE servings in total!

Don't worry if there is any leftovers!
Take it to the boil, let it sit to cool.
Store it in the fridge for the next day consumption or freezer for longer shelve life.

Don't feel like rice again? There is another alternative way. Is to have Curry Noodles. Boil 1 hard boil egg for each serving. It's just a perfect curry for either your choice.



I'll be sharing my personal chicken curry recipe soon!

Look out on the shelves at your nearest supermarket for Mak Nyonya Brand -- Instant Chicken Curry Sauce / Prencah Kari Ayam Segera!



Click here for our blog page Cooking Classes for more recipes. Hope you will be inspired~

Chili, Nachos and Mexican Wings - Muchos Mexican Bar & Restaurant!

Offtopic: We are now on Twitter, so Follow Us on Twitter to get first-hand updates whenever we ... update!

First Mexican Restaurant review! *celebratory drum roll* ... we're at Muchos Mexican Bar & Restaurant, one of the many eateries/watering holes along the Clarke Quay makan area. Most people sit outside beside the water, but we prefer the indoors where there's air-conditioning and no second hand smoke :)


We place our orders, and the moment the food comes we realize we've made a mistake - the appetizers are huge and can qualify for a full meal in themselves. Starting with the Beef Nachos (SGD17.90), a sinful concoction of corn chips slathered with beef, guacamole, cheese, salsa and sliced jalapeños. Heavenly.


The Mexican Fried Chicken Wings (SGD14.90) are perhaps a bit more ordinary. They're still pretty good, but don't really taste particularly Mexican.


Our only main course of the night was the Chilli Con Carne (SGD18.90) - served with a choice of nachos or rice, which turns out to be great! Tasty chunky marinated meat with just the right proportion of beans - miles better than the wannabe chilli that you'd get at Wendy's or Carl's Jr (yes that's not a very fair comparison).


After drinks and taxes, SGD73.80 for two people is pretty reasonable for the amount of food that we got. While we haven't tried other places around the area to know how Muchos stacks up against them, on this one meal we would certainly come back!

Exotic Gourmet brewed coffees at the Coffee Club!

Offtopic: We are now on Twitter, so Follow Us on Twitter to get first-hand updates whenever we ... update!

You wouldn't be surprised if I told you coffee was one of the most widely-consumed beverages in the world. In fact, over 7 million tons of the stuff is produced annually. If you're like me, though, your knowledge of the varieties of coffee stops at knowing the differences between an espresso and a cappucinno. There are joints where you can dabble into way more detail than that - and today we're trying one of the mass market varieties - The Coffee Club!


Naturally, coffee takes center stage here, with blends available from all over the world such as Colombian Supremo, Kenyan AA and Aged Sumatra Mandheling. I go for a cup of the Jamaican Blue Mountain, which is a whopping SGD11.50. It smells wonderful, and being freshly brewed, has none of the bitterness of a coffee that's been sitting in the pot all day.

The darling's Toffee Coffee Blend at SGD6.80 is a disappointment in comparison - it tastes more like a vanilla/toffee drink with just a hint of coffee.


The Coffee Club also has a pretty wide variety of food on offer as well, so we stomached-up and ordered some of their specialties:




We found all the dishes uniformly disappointing, although it is pretty cheap at around SGD15.00 for main courses. Lots of complaints - dry beef, dry mashed potatoes, tasteless un-marinated, chicken wings, etc. For a restaurant chain of this size it's pretty amazing how poor the food is.

Add in to that the faux pas of getting the appetizers (the chicken wings) served after we'd already finished our mains, and it ends up being a pretty poor meal overall.

The Coffee Club has almost 30 locations throughout Singapore - check out their website for the full list. I'd recommend dropping by if you'd like to sample different brews from around the world, but definitely give the food a miss.

Sandwiches Exploration IV ::: Bacon, Grilled Ham, Hash Browns, Egg, Salad Sandwich

Offtopic: We are now on Twitter, so Follow Us on Twitter to get first-hand updates whenever we ... update!

Been a while since I stack up my own sandwich! Here is another magical combination for a sandwich. This time around I've stack up my sandwich @ the hotel breakfast buffet.



All you need :::
2 sliced of lightly toasted White Bread
3 pieces of Bacon
3 half Grilled Ham
1 Sunny Side-Up Egg
1 Hash Brown
Some mixed Salad Vegetable top with a little White Salad Sauce

First, visit the toast session grab & lightly toast my White Bread, then head around and stack. However, you may notice that actually my Hash Brown, Salad, Top White Bread is set aside. There is a reason!

I in love with SCS Salted Butter, stack up the Hash Browns, Place the Salad.... then on the top bread i actually spread it with 1mm thick of butter...yummsss~!!!!!!!

It's seriously heavenly to start off the day.

This it how it looks when you slice it up in half! See the Sunny Side Up Yolk leaking out when the sandwich is dragged apart... ^^



Click here for our blog page Breakfast, Desserts, & Snacks Ideas for more recipes. Hope you will be inspired~

Yahoo! and IMASTravel page: Seven things you Must do in Mauritius

Offtopic: We are now on Twitter, so Follow Us on Twitter to get first-hand updates whenever we ... update!

Check out my latest post on the IMAS Travel on Yahoo! Malaysia page - it's about the seven things you can't miss if you ever find yourself on holiday or honeymoon in Mauritius!


Click here for the main page. If you liked the write-up do leave a comment!

New York Desserts that aren't actually from New York - NYDC Cafe!

Offtopic: We are now on Twitter, so Follow Us on Twitter to get first-hand updates whenever we ... update!

Asians love to eat. Doesn't matter if it's at a roadside hawker stall, or an upmarket fine dining place with fancy terms such as amuse bouche or carpaccio - good food is as important to us as clothing and shelter over our heads. And in the "restaurant" category, Singapore is probably the country that most embodies the concept of 'live to eat.' I mean, where else in the world can you find a 5-story shopping mall where more than two-thirds of the shops are makan places?

And even after a heavy dinner, there's a myriad of places to go and get your sweet tooth on - one of them being nydc (New York Dessert Cafe) - a home grown (educated guess) restaurant/cafe with six locations in Singapore.


Ahem :) ... the darling and I are in the Holland V outlet for dessert, so no comments on the food that's also available on the menu. Instead, we share a Solid Gold ($10.50) which is Goldmine cheesecake with double chocolate chip ice cream, warm chocolate fudge sauce and crushed chocolate chips. Too much chocolate? Never!


I'm always amazed at people who drink coffee at nights. How can you sleep after taking all that caffeine? No problems for us tonight though, we're going caffeine free with a Chocolate Milk Elephanccino (SGD7.30). Like its name suggests, it's hot chocolate milk with a huge mound of cream and some marshmallows. Nice, warm and comforting, although it does taste exactly like milk (rather than hot chocolate).


Came away pretty satisfied - we'll definitely come back again to try the food items on the menu as well to see if it's worth dinner'ing here before desserts!

NYDC has six outlets - Holland V, Wheelock Place, Bugis Junction, Velocity @ Novena Square, Tampines 1 and Bedok Point. Check out their website for full address details.

Big Tree Lin Kee (大树头连记) Steam Fish Head in Taman Connaught

Offtopic: We are now on Twitter, so Follow Us on Twitter to get first-hand updates whenever we ... update!

Happy very belated Mother's Day! Two of our families took my grandma out for a (grand) mother's day luncheon a couple weeks ago - to a pretty famous restaurant in Taman Connaught - Big Tree Lin Kee (大树头连记) Steam Fish Head Restaurant! It's named big tree because, well, because it's under a big tree :)


Without further ado ... on to the food! Starting off with the coconut chicken soup. These soups are made with chicken and herbs, and the entire coconut is stuffed into the steamer/boiler so there's a coconutty aftertaste.


As the restaurant is well known for its' fish head, we have three varieties! Assam, ginger and black bean kicap. My favorite by far was the black bean kicap one. Assam was OK, but I didn't like the ginger one. Cos I just simply don't like ginger overall.




We also had some yong tau foo, which was mediocre overall except for the plain white tau foo (which was just plain bad).


Green beans fried with roasted pork. This one was decently tasty.


Ham yu fah lam pou - Claypot meat with salted meat ... only ordinary.


Deep fried tofu ... these were of the 'seafood' variety - i.e. not really tofu, so I'm not sure why it's named as such.


Overall, other than the fish heads which were fresh and pretty well cooked, the rest of the dishes were mostly average. Factor in the price and it's a pretty good draw though - all that food and we ended up paying something like RM17 per person.


The restaurant is in Taman Connaught, near the old UCSI campus. You have to go through some side alleys / back streets to get there that aren't on the map though, so I've just circled the estimated location.

Canelé Pâtisserie Chocolaterie ~*~ LOVELY ~*~ Mont Blanc & Le Royale

Offtopic: We are now on Twitter, so Follow Us on Twitter to get first-hand updates whenever we ... update!

Tumbling across an amazing Pâtisserie. By the look of the Pâtisserie displays you will not know which one to choose as all their choices are tempting. Since it was just dear, me & Domo, we came down to these 2 selection.

Surprising Domo who have been waiting in the room without food.
Domo peeping into the beautiful box with 2 lovely selection from Canelé!


Domo can't resist and have already taken up a fork and wants to attack!!!
His facial expression definitely fits the unbelievable irresistible looks.


Here are the 2 selection we made which we didn't regret every bite into them.


On the Right, the one as beautiful as a Red Rose. It's name is Le Royale, SGD7.94. It's "Chocolate mousse 66% layered with hazelnut feullitine, almond success and chocolate genoise with rum." as describe in their Canelé website The blend of textures and flavours, is a 100% love by us. The chocolate sponge soft texture with a hint of rum. The smooth textures and luxurious taste of dark chocolate, followed by the crunchy hazelnut feullitine fragrant spikes the flavor. All combine, leads both of us going "yummmmmmmmmmmmmmm............."

On the Left is Mont Blanc, SGD6.54. This is for chestnut lovers out there! I have come across this interesting and fabulous flavor. It has a soft chestnut pureé that revolves around a 2 layer core of light cream and spongy chestnut cream, on top of a classic French Tart.

Packaging also plays an important marketing role, it shows the standards and also reflects why you pay more to have something good. Check out their take away box & bag! I'm giving it a 10/10!


These 2 selection that we have tried & review here has set Canelé Pâtisserie Chocolaterie at a very sophisticated Pâtisserie place in Singapore for us. Will we be able to find a better place for Pâtisserie? But, we'll definitely go back to try the rest on display and share. Hopefully we can resist without ordering back the same! >.< We visited here: Raffles City Shopping Centre
252 North Bridge Road,
#B1-46/47.
Singapore 179103
Telephone : (65) 6334-7377
Facsimile : (65) 6334-7977
Opening Hours:
10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily

check out their website for more locations!

Korean BBQ in Holland V - Hansang Korean Charcoal Barbecue

Harlow from Singapore! And specifically, from that expat & yuppie hang-out area, Holland V. Absolutely no relation to anything Dutch. But anyways, we had a hankering for some charcoal bbq'ed meaty goodness, so we headed over to Hansang Korean Charcoal Barbecue Restaurant for our fix!

What sets Hansang apart from all the other Korean BBQ places we've been at are the choices of 'higher-end' meat available on offer - if your wallet's up for it, there's black angus and wagyu beef on the menu.


We're can't shake the sgd/myr exchange rate off the back of our minds though so we settle for an order of Sam Gyub Sal (pork belly meat, SGD25.00) and an order of Kurobuta Loin (Black Berkshire pig loin, SGD35.00).


Drinks - Roasted Barley (SGD1.50) and Yuja Tea (SGD4.20) with the side dishes that are ubiquitous (big word power) at any Korean BBQ meal.


Dinner turned out to be very satisfying - the pork was fresh and nice. We thought it was a bit odd that the waiter started off the grilling of the meat and then just disappeared without saying anything - leaving us to flip and cook the pork. I suppose on the bright side you're able to control how well done you like your food.

We also thought that the restaurant was a bit kiam siap overall. For almost $40/pax, no free flow roasted barley, or even cold water? And not to mention the uber mini-sized side dishes, each one finished in two chopstick grabs and have to ask for refills.

Hansang is in Holland V, at the moment it's not accesible by MRT, so you'll have to either use the Route Planner to find out which bus to ride. Or just take a cab!