Thursday, January 13, 2011

I've Moved..

Hey everyone! I've got a huge news to share, I've always been happy with blogspot and it's all so easy and comfortable. I have to say that I love using it to write my blog posts. I was so sad when I knew that my quota for uploaded photos was full. And so, I've decided to get my own website. After a few days of huge web construction, it's up and ready to go now! May I present you with my website, www.melthefoodaddict.com ! Next post will be my Tassie trip Part 2. Please come and visit me! Thanks peeps!

Lots of love, 
Mel

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Tasmania Visit..

Woohoo! Jen and I went to Tassie for 4 days before New Year's and I had a superb trip, full-on photographing time there. Since my friend in Tassie knows that I'm a foodie, he had done a great job in finding some nice food for me to try out. But our schedule was kind of tight for the 4 days there, and we did camping for 2 nights, with no bathroom facilities on the first night on Bruny Island. Well you'll get the rough idea on our nature trip. Don't get me wrong, I did have a superb time enjoying the nature life around Tassie land. We were having hot pot inside our tent on the first night with the rain and cold weather. That was an awesome meal! We did miss out a few nice places that we wanted to try out, well I guess there's more reason for us to head back there again.

According to my friend, this is the best place for curry scallop pie. It's at Ross Village Bakery. It's on the way from Launceston to Hobart. It's a must stop place when you're driving pass that small town.

Nice weather to chill out at the outside of the cafe.

After touched down in Launceston for around one hour later, voila! I was having curry scallop pie for my breakfast, matched that with a cup of coffee. Ohh-la-la!  I was in the heaven. I love scallop to start with and the pastry was awesome.

Look at the creamy and fragrant creamed curry with perfectly cooked scallops in the pie. My heart just melted. mmm..

After arriving in Hobart to pick up another friend, we headed to Mako for lunch. I just got to know that Mures which is just opposite of Mako, is famous in Hobart! Didn't try that, so that's one reason for me to go back to Tassie. Trying to find some excuses to convince myself to go back to visit. :P

It's a small restaurant inside, just nice to stay easy and comfortable after all the travelling. We went straight to start our road trip ever since we've landed.

Look at those oysters! Time to have some feast. It wasn't the best fresh oysters I've tried so far, but I was happy with it. *slurps*

My friend ordered the prawn and scallops skewers with salad and chips.


Jen and I ordered the fish platter to share with all. There's fried fish of day, calamari, scallops, crumbed prawn cutlets, crab sticks, chips and salad. Fresh seafood and love the bread crumbed fish. On that night, it was hot pot! We had heaps of food, meatballs, fishballs, wontons, vermicelli, and eggs. It was yummy and comforting, considering that it was cold and raining. Thanks to our tour guide!

Up early to start out our next day's agenda, I was totally salivating when I saw all the pastries and pies at The Richmond Bakery. I was so greedy that I wanted to try them all. 

I was having a tough time to decide. Look at them! They look absolutely gorgeous.

Fresh breads for sale as well.

Well I ended up ordering a chicken camembert pie and a lemon tart while Jen was being greedy too and had curry scallop pie with black forest cake.

The chicken camembert pie was delicious. I'm a huge fan of pastries!

The mouth-watering black forest cake. It was nice and chocolatey with the cream and cherries. 

Lemon tart has the intense tangy lemon flavour with nice crumbly pastry crust. 

The insight of the curry scallop pie, oh yes! We did compare with the ones in Ross Village and I still think that the one in Ross Village was better, just my personal preference I guess.

What a nice place to relax and have a cup of coffee with a pie. Love every bits of it! 

This is an elephant themed cafe, Mount Elephant Pancakes Cafe at Elephant Pass Rd, Gray. It was nice to have some nice and warm food there, we were travelling in the car all day. When it comes to dessert, I got all excited and happy. There were quite a few little things of elephant around the cafe.

The berries pancake was full of ingredients inside, with strawberries, blueberries and raspberries which is in season at the moment. The pancake was thin, it felt like a crepe.

Chicken and mushroom pancake. 

In fact, I forgot what pancake is that. Well don't you think the pancakes looked like elephant nose? Cute isn't it? The pancakes are about $16 each. It's something like Pancake on The Rocks. 

Hope you enjoyed yourself reading this. I had an awesome time in Tassie and I have more to share, will leave that to another post. Have a great weekend peeps!

Monday, January 3, 2011

Chocolate Sponge Cake with Chocolate and Strawberries..

Happy New Year to all. I had a great time catching up with friends, bbq session at the park, the crazy boxing day sale and next, I went to visit Tassie and had a blast there. Anyway here's a mini chocolate cake that I've baked for the christmas season. Remember that I've mentioned before that I had made the Masterchef's black forest cake? Well I definately needed to practise on more sponge cake and hence, I've made chocolate sponge cake with chocolate and strawberries.



I've googled for the recipe and found it at Best Recipes and I've actually halved the portion to half as I was making a mini version. The cake was soft and fluffy, love it with the melting chocolate and strawberries. Yum!

Ingredients:
2 eggs, separated
1/4 cup of caster sugar which I further reduced that to around 60g
1 teaspoon of maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate soda
1/4 cup of cornflour
1/2 tablespoon of plain flour
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees fan forced
2. Grease 2 mini cake tins
3. Place egg whites in electric mixer bowl and beat until soft peak form
4. Combine caster sugar and bicarbonate soda and gradually add it into the egg whites while still mixing
5. Add egg yolks and beat together
6. Add maple syrup and briefly combined
7. Stir the dry ingredients and add them into the wet mixture, fold in gently
8. Pour the mixture into the cake tins and bake for 20-25 minutes
9. After getting out from the oven, let it cool for at least 5 minutes before taking the cake out of the tin
10. Lightly whip around 60g of thickened cream and place it in the middle of two cakes with some strawberries. Double boiled 100g of chocolate with some butter and pour it on top of the cake. Decorate it as you wish. For presentation purposes, I've dusted some icing sugar on top. Pretty right? :)

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Happy New Year..

Welcome 2011! I have to say that I've been through alot in 2010, it was an exciting year with lots of new things and hope that there's many more this year. I've been writing here for a year with a total of 106 posts, time really flies. Hope that I'll get to try more food this year and you'll get to read more. Enjoy life and have a great year. Take care and thanks for all the supports from my readers, fellow bloggers and my dearest friends. Love you all and happy new year! A sneak peak of my Tassie trip. xoxo



Thursday, December 23, 2010

Merry Xmas..

Look at our own christmas present that we've got for ourselves in the kitchen. Weee.. it's KitchenAid mixer and we've also bought the ice-cream mixer for it as well! Lots of heavy duty baking and ice-cream making is coming up! Stay tuned! :D



A Lego advertisement that I saw in Town Hall station. How cute is that? Have you done your last minute christmas shopping? Last few hours more to catch up. Merry Christmas everyone!

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Four Ate Five..

The best thing about Surry Hills, you'll get to have nice breakfast in one of the cafes around that area. I love trying out new places for nice hot brekky. When a friend from Melb came over to visit, we went to try out Four Ate Five. Lazy weekend, great company with nice weather and a long queue to get a table. 

Small and cosy cafe to enjoy your breakfast and a cup of coffee.

Mmmm.. thick hot chocolate, it was really good! Thick, creamy, chocolatey and slightly bitter. Just the way I like it.

 For Jen, he tried the barramundi burger with homemade chips. The fish was so fresh and nicely grilled. I love the chips. Can't help it to sneak more from his plate.

I had the three cheeses meetballs with rockets and sourdough toast. Strong flavours, bit of tomato soury taste with the meatballs and love the combination with the rockets. 

My friend had spinach omelette on the specials that day. Very healthy choice for a morning breakfast. Light and fluffy omelette with full on ingredients. We all agreed that the bread was really good. Yum! It was definately jam packed during the morning weekends. But it's definately a place to hunt for some good food and coffee. 

Ratings: 8/10
Address: 485 Crown Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Zhu Mama Taiwanese Restaurant..

There's a bit of Taiwan fever among my friends at the moment. I've been looking at different sorts of yummylicious taiwanese food photos lately. Well there's one taiwanese shop at Chinatown called Zhu Mama that I went to try out with sissy. We've only ordered for some snacks, so I'm definately going back again to check out on other items.


Sis had the vermicelli soup, it tasted bit different from the ones that I've tried before. Nevertheless, it was really nice, warm and comforting soup to have.

I've also ordered the warm soya bean drink. 

And also xiao long bao. The moment you bite into the bun, the soup inside the bun just flowed out gradually. The skin was fairly thicker than usual. Would have been better if it's thinner and smoother.  Very looking forward to go Taiwan to have a feast! Anyways I'm getting hungry now.

Ratings: 6/10
Address: Shop1-4, 86-88 Dixon Street, Sydney NSW 2000