(Let's skip the part that they served me a 'wrong' dessert at first, which is also a crepe but nothing orang-y)

My Orange Crepe turned out to be a very "confusing-tasting" pancake-like thingy! What is the chef thinking when he serves me orange crepe with strawberry ice-cream? The two tasted so weird together!

And to make things even worse, they topped my crepe with a mixture of cheapo medicine-tasting orange and strawberry syrups. Gah! It was terrible!

If you are not sure what flavor goes best with your orange crepe, why not try something conventional... like vanilla? Even my bf, who usually don't complain bout food, said: this is so wrong!

For the price I am paying (if not mistaken RM7.50 or so), I definitely do not expect something extravagantly good. But at least serve me something decent enough to be swallowed! It's not my fault for choosing a cheap dessert because that is all you are serving there!

Eighteen Restaurant and Wine
Blk 303-01-21, Krystal Point,
Jalan Sultan Azlan Shah,
11900 Penang.

You can try the food there, in fact the food wasn't bad and the price is reasonable but please remember to skip dessert if Orange Crepe is the only thing they offer for the night. Else, you risk going home with very confusing tastebuds... :( Yes, I am still sulking!

Tralalalala....It's Sunday. Super good weather. But I had nothing to do. Not exactly nothing to do. I just don't want to do what I'm supposed to do. Whatever...

It's been months since Dixon asked me to make tiramisu. As usual, I'll take my own sweet time before I make it for him. Here it is...

Yup, my usual plastic cup again

Ingredients:

500g mascarpone cheese
3 tbs caster sugar
3 tbs thickened cream
a cup of brewed coffee with Tia Maria
some Scotch finger biscuit
a bar of chocolate
chocolate powder

The measurement are just an estimation. I've so used to making it I never bother to measure anymore.

First, beat the mascarpone cheese with caster sugar and the thickened cream. At low speed, beat until...erm...until you think it's supposed to look like the tiramisu cream. I'm bad at writing recipe. But you know...

Set aside the mixture. Crush the biscuits into big pieces. Although some people just dip it into the coffee, but I prefer to crush it and then add a little bit of the coffee, just enough to wet the biscuit but not too much until it's melted.

Layer the biscuit into a cup. And then layer the cheese mixture. Just spread how many layer as you like.

At the end, dust the top with chocolate powder. And add some chocolate flakes as garnish. You can just shread the chocolate flakes from any chocolate bar. As for me, I shreaded it from the easter egg. Too much of easter chocolate this year.

Sorry for the terrible recipe. I'm overdosed with sugar now... Getting too high. I hope you get it. But I guess most recipes are written in tedious language, so I just going to make up my own now.

My endless bad luck continued when I went to Xocolatl at Queen Victoria Market. They were closed for Easter too.

See, another door shut closed in front of my face. The first disappointment was the Little Cupcakes.

Being the demanding me, I didn't care, by hook or by cook I want my chocolate. In the end, we had to go to Koko Black at Lygon.

Is it me, or what? Chocolate cafe is growing like mushrooms in Melbourne these days - Max Brenner's, Xocolatl, Schokolade, Koko Black, and many more that I don't know.

Chris was feeling cold, so he had the Koko Black Belgian Hot Chocolate ($5.75). It was freshly brewed to a traditional Belgian recipe blend with full cream milk, cream and 60% dark Belgian chocolate. Chilli, chocolate mocha and cinnamon blends are also available in the cafe.

Meanwhile, I took the Ice Cream Martini ($8.95). You have a choice of wild strawverry, chocolate or vanilla ice cream. I choose the chocolate (duh!) because they were freshly made at the Koko Black Creative Centre.

This is how the Koko Black Creative Centre looks like.

Koko Black imported their raw chocolate from Singapore and Malaysia. Surprisingly, most chocolate producers prefer Singapore and Malaysia chocolate. Even Cadbury Chocolate Factory got their supplies from there. I guess I shall talk about the Cadbury Chocolate Factory trip next.


P/S: Koko Black is having its Choco-Late Chocolate Festival from 1-4 May. Check out their chocolate tasting, art, sculptures, demonstrations and more on the festival.


Koko Black
167, Lygon Street
Carlton
VIC Australia

We don't do link on this site to avoid other people from asking us to link their unrelated sites. To keep this site purely dedicated to sweet stuff, we've came to a conclusion never to add links on our side bar. But there are many sites that we visit often. More often than we visit this site itself. These are the sites that we love:

1. The Cupcake Bakery - The Cupcake Bakery is run by Christine Lee, who has been baking for over 10 years. You can check out her creations and order via online through her site.
2. Grandma's Dessert Recipes - Everything that has the word 'grandma' on it sounds traditional. This site provides you different traditional recipes to desserts. It is easily navigated through the sidebar. We just love the wide range of recipes on the site.
3. Cupcake Culture - You won't bother about the words on this blog. All you can see is beautiful photos everywhere. You can almost lick the screen.
4. Sweet Cuisine - This is a personal blog of a pastry chef. Sometimes we just love to know what's happening behind the kitchen before our dessert is served.
5. The Cupcakery - Everything nice under the sun can be found in this blog; from cupcakes to well-being tips.
6. Cakespy - This blog talks about everything on cakes. Cupcakes, spongecakes, cheesecakes, and whatever cakes you can find in this world. A plus point for this blog is the beautiful illustration updated every Friday.
7. Dessert First - The blogger calls herself the Pastrygirl. We love that name. You can get comprehensive recipes from the Pastrygirl and also various information about being a pastry chef.
8. Cupcake Recipes - Cupcake lovers, you must bookmark this. It's virtually important to get a good recipe on cupcakes.
9. Foodbuzz - This is a food portal where you can find everything you wanted to know about food, from restaurants to recipes to products. Join foodbuzz and get connected to other foodies.
10. *Any idea what shall I put here?

We've only got 9 of our favorite links. For the sake of completing the 10th slot, will you suggest a good food blog, particularly on dessert? It might be your blog. Who knows if it's worth our read.

Before arriving Melbourne, a friend me told me to visit Little Cupcakes at Degraves Street. So I head to Degraves Street just opposite Flinders Station.

The term Nyonya means a hybrid of Malay and Chinese descendant. On my last meal in Melbourne, Yvonne asked me what I would like to eat, and I said anything Asian. When I'm back in Tasmania, there is hardly any good Asian food around. We then went to Kopitiam at Little Bourke Street. This is the same branch of Kopitiam you can find back in Malaysia. The menu is the same.

I can't wait to go back Malaysia for a proper Cendol and Bubur Cha Cha.

The bestest place to hangout in Melbourne CBD is at Max Brenner's. I particularly love the branch at QV. While waiting for some friends to arrive, my cousin wanted some waffle to nibble.

It is much easier to write a review on dessert compared to entree and main course. Being the last to be served, the taste often stays longer than other dishes. Last week we had Greek cuisine at Mezethes, Salamanca.

Instead of typical chocolate brownies or ice cream sundae, I had Kantaifi. The dessert sounds damn funky. Is it Greek? It sounds like African words to me.

Anyway, the name doesn't describe much about the taste, isn't it? It's actually rolled baked filo pastry. The one I ordered had almonds and walnut inside. And it served with drizzled honey based syrup.

Greek dessert is a bit too sweet to my liking. They are all perfectly fine, but I guess the honey syrup is too sweet. If they are like to adventure the taste out of the traditional recipe, caramel syrup would be much better.

I'll rate this 6/10.

Mezethes Greek Taverna
Salamanca Arts Centre
Hobart 7009
Tasmania AUSTRALIA

Gourmet Traveller is arguably the best food magazine I've ever subscribed. I'm not sure if you have this magazine sold in your country, though. For over a year I've been reading this magazine and finally in this month issue... CUPCAKES ON THE FRONT PAGE!!!

That's brown sugar butterfly cupcakes with raspberry cream. It sounds really delicious.

This is rosy cupcakes with Turkist delight. Really innovative.

The sugared citrus cakes. But where are the cups? I thought cupcakes are supposed to come in the cups?

Here are the spiced honey cakes.

And finally the plum cakes.

I swear there are more cupcakes and recipes in Gourmet Traveller this month. Cupcakers grab this month issue and frame it up. They are so pretty you'll feel like licking the pages of the magazine. Mark my words, this is the best food magazine ever!

My friends were having pot luck last night and as usual, I will have to be the dessert lady. Facing variety of choices, I didn't know what to make for the dinner. So I thought I should exercise democracy in this situation, I text them and gave them a choice of chocolate mousse or vanilla berry parfait. Usually they stand in unity but not for this time. Unfortunately I had to make both chocolate mousse and the vanilla parfait. Here are the food shots.

This is the chocolate mousse which never failed to impress.

The vanilla berry parfait which cost me a fortune to make. The blueberry cost AUD 7.99/box. Raspberry AUD 8.15/box. Strawberry AUD 5.99/box and blackberry AUD 7.15/box. The berries itself cost about AUD 30 bucks!!!!!!! The most expensive dessert I've ever made!

I bought three boxes of strawberries, just in case. And the rest of the strawberries I made it into....