CINNAMUFFINS

Each time Christmas comes around (well, almost), the day before our church's Christmas service is reserved for last minute present wrapping and baking up some goodies for our friends in church. In the past we've baked different chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies with icing, cupcakes, and other yummy stuff. Last year (or last week), with the baker sibling away on a New York holiday, I asked for my mum's help in whipping up some cinnamon rolls! 

Cinnamon rolls are my favourite. I don't enjoy eating cake, and so once told my sister that on my birthday I only want either ice cream cake, cheesecake, or a whole pan of freshly baked cinnamon rolls. I'm still waiting for that one. Haha Yeah but we've never baked cinnamon rolls in our house, because mum doesn't like to work with yeast (it indeed smells funky), so this was like our do or die first try. Which I think turned out pretty well! I'm not too sure because my dad said it was really dry, but some lovely friends from church told me they were really good. Hmmm maybe it deserves a second try some other time.

If you want to try it for yourself, I followed this recipe from Elyssa of Elywrites. She's a long time family friend, and although she doesn't post as much anymore, I was in love with her beautiful food styling/photography when I first came across it, and I've been checking back. So I thought it was a good time to try out one of her recipes! 

We did do one thing differently though, and that was instead of baking them in a dish, we baked them in muffin trays to get little cinnamuffins! This was an idea I came across on Bakerella's cinnamon roll post. Of course, her's turned out more cute than mine. Haha

We sat them in red and green muffin cups, placed them into cellophane bags and tied them up with red and green twist ties. Tis the season where tacky festive colours are acceptable, so I didn't hold back!

I think I need to whip up a second batch so that I can enjoy some of it myself. I only managed to taste half of one, which is not satisfying enough in any way. Haha But after this round of baking, I'm really thinking about other goodies I can try to bake. I have my mind set on chocolate tarts and scones, but lets see how it goes!

Eunice

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6 IDEAS FOR A THEMED FOOD PARTY

Just recently, my friends and I had a Burg-Off session where we had a competition to see who could make the best burgers. Since then I have been daydreaming about other ideas for gatherings that use food as the main excuse. Hahaha So especially since the holidays are coming and there will be time for reunions and meet ups, here are six ideas to get you brainstorming!

Bread and Soup Party

Get each of your friends to bring a small pot of their favourite soup, whether home-made or store bought. Look up bread pairings for their soups in advance and buy the bread for dipping, unless, of course, you are conveniently also a skilled bread baker. Toast them up and serve them warm! But if you really want to one-up and impress your friends, skip sliced bread and give them bread bowls to ladle their soup into! You could do this alongside a spread of salad, sandwiches, or other dishes, but I'm thinking that soup and bread is probably be pretty filling, unless your friends are super big eaters and don't see how soup can be described as filling.

Pancake Parlour

I'm crazy about pancakes so this has always been something I want to do. You will need to set up a few griddles, or small pans on portable stoves (you will need quite a few depending on the number of people!). Prepare pancake batter (I love store bought White Wings pancake flour, but you could totally make yours from scratch!) and also, a large array of toppings. Its go big or go home, so don't stinge on this. For ideas, heres a list of 102 toppings you can prepare. I've always imagined this to be more of a breakfast party, and what an awesome way to start the day that would be. Although, most of the afternoon would probably be spent on sleeping off the food coma after inhaling a crazy amount of pancakes.

Something Cheesy Party

Throw a party with one rule: all your guests have to bring a dish with 'cheese' in its name. Like mac & cheese, cheesecake, broccoli cheese soup, cheese fondue, and whatever else you can come up with. Good luck finding a drink with 'cheese' in its name thats gonna sit well with your friends, although if theres one element that isn't made out of cheese, this should be it. This is not a menu for the faint-hearted. And the lactose intolerant. 

Gyoza Making Party

I've always thought this would be a such a fantastic and yummy idea. Prepare the pork and gyoza wrappers (or make your own), along with other fillings, sauces and tools, and invite your friends over for a night of learning the art of pleating dumplings. Either learn and practice it in advance so you can transfer your skills to your friends, make them sit through a how-to youtube video, or you can always take them on an excursion before party day to stand at the viewing window of one of those Chinese restaurants that let you look at their chefs working on dumplings (just kidding, don't do that). The only concern I have is the great number of gyoza you will have to fry in a pan of hot oil. Take precautions!

Fancy Instant Noodles Competition
Now admit it. You have that favourite brand of packet instant noodles you turn to for meals when you get lazy, and sometimes even crave to eat. I know I do. Get your friends to bring their favourite instant noodles, with any additional ingredients or food items they want to serve it with (e.g. pork slices, gyoza, wonton, beef rendang, eggs, cheese, anything basically). Here's the catch though, they have to make enough to have small portions for each person, and serve it up with fancy restaurant-worthy plating. You can do this in such a way that each person takes turns to cook and serve immediately so that each dish is consumed hot, or you could set up portable stoves so that everyone cooks within the same time limit! Hand out score cards to each of your friends to score each dish for taste, plating, creativity and service if you want to, and find a winner at the end of the night! You can turn to The Ramen Rater's annual top 10 instant noodles list shown with food toppings for ideas!

Ice Cream Extravaganza

Its basically an ice cream party with a buffet of toppings. You can either go fancy and get one of those chilled marble slates to go all marble slab creamery with mixing in the ice cream toppings, or you can achieve a similar effect by putting some of the chosen toppings into the tub before scooping, so the toppings will be within the scoop! Use plain flavoured ice cream (lots of it!) like vanilla and chocolate so that the toppings steal the spotlight. You can consult this insane list if you need ideas. Or you could go nuts with tons of weird, non-typical toppings that could come out both great and terrible! And maybe after that everyone can take a vote on the best and worst flavours.

Can you think of more? :) Eunice

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OMAKASE BURGER

Jo, Wayne and I have been talking about Omakase Burger for quite some time so we were quite excited to finally get to try it on Sunday. We tried to manage our expectations though, because we've only been seeing the awesome photos of the place on Instagram and don't really know how good it is. But Joash decided that since he's about to be confined in army for three weeks, we should just go for it.


All of us are curious why a restaurant with a Japanese name is famous for its American burgers, and has American posters for wall decor. But then again, thats not the main point. The food is!

Turns out the burgers are pretty good! Although we all agreed that there wasn't anything that special about them, we did agree that they were delicious. 


I ordered the Deluxe Cheeseburger ($15.90), which is their signature cheeseburger but topped with grilled onions and mushrooms. Onions AND mushrooms. I love. It was really delish. The rest of my friends had the Omakase Cheeseburger and the Bacon Cheeseburger. Oh, and when you order your burgers they will ask you how you would like your beef patties. High class fast food. Haha


Cheese fries (Large, $6.90).


Truffle Fries (Large, $7.90).

I will say that I find the prices pretty high for burgers and fries though. The burgers themselves are $13.90 - $17.50. And the meal deal isn't that price friendly either. You basically choose our burger + side + drink and they'll take $1.90 off the combo. If you see the prices for the sides and drinks, thats still pretty expensive! But, for a one-off, I guess thats alright, taking into consideration that I have no doubts about the quality of the food! 

Omakase is really close to Pasarbella too, so if you're there to check out Pasarbella, you might want to check out Omakase too!

Eunice

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SYDNEY WRAP-UP

I'm finally down to my last Sydney post! PHEW. I can hear all your sighs of relieve from here, lower down your volume! Haha It has taken me 24 posts and two months to get to here, so I can't wait to close this chapter.

In the (almost) two weeks that we were there, we had a main activity each day for most of the days, the epic-est one of all being the Harbour Bridge Climb, which I still can't believe we made a sudden decision to do on the second day. But there were also days in which every one was asleep until we realized we only had about 4 hours of daylight left and we hadn't even gotten out of bed. Hahaha I really dislike the short days of winter. And sometimes the weather. Jo and I were not prepared for it to be that cold, but then again the cold was really nice sometimes, and you don't sweat in the cold, so thats a plus.

We were also taken to eat tons of great food. Here are some other food stops we had during the trip:


Gen has been raving about Messina for the longest time so she took us there for what is supposed to be the best gelato in Australia, and it was really good! We tried The Maltser, Lemon Meringue Pie, Nonno Carlo, Pandan, Have A Gay Old Time, and Salted Caramel with White Choc Chip. I really love The Maltser for obvious reasons, and surprisingly the salted caramel one! Because they really aren't stingy with the white chocolate. They don't give you small white choc chips mind you, they give you white choc chunks! It was so so good.


We also tried Pancakes At The Rocks, which was surprisingly my only pancake meal there, considering how I love pancakes. Didn't think it was that fantastic though! Which I guess was what Gen and Jo tried to warn me about so I didn't get my hopes up. Haha


Gen also took us to have cheap and good sushi at Takumi in Market City Shopping Centre! With her student discount, everything on the menu was $2.50 each. That's really cheap for really good sushi such as the raw and grilled scallop ones or the grilled prawn sushi or even a soft shell crab dish where they serve you the whole small crab. Yum... Now I really want scallop sashimi after looking at this picture. Haha

Almost every night was supermarket night for us because the supermarkets in Australia are simply awesomeeee~ Chocolate gets SO cheap there. I guess its a good thing I don't live there then, can you imagine the temptation? And all the $2 packets of Snickers Pods and $3 bags of Smiths Thai Sweet Chilli Chips... Yup, its good that I don't live there. Haha Maaaan...

Shopping wasn't that great in Sydney. Things were expensive and Singapore has almost the same shops, so we didn't really shop much. Even on the day we allocated to shop at the outlet mall, because it turned out that most of the mall was under renovation. Bummer! I think it also happens to be the season when the clothes aren't great (winter season) so I hardly saw anything I really liked. I did score a few items though, but most of my money went to buying food. And I guess that says a lot. Haha

We also did one other thing that has been missing from my life since I was a kid. We played Bumper Cars at the Market City arcade!! That was fun, although it only served as more evidence for the 'you will probably suck at driving' voice in my head. Hahaha


I will also miss the loveliest beach that gets a well-deserved second mention.

Sydney was good to me. It let me spend quality time with friends, let me meet new people, gave me the freedom of exploration, provided me with all the good food I wanted, forced me walk long distances, pampered me with cool weather and blue skies, pushed me to leave the house and take in all that fresh air. I sure do miss it.

Thank you Sydney! Thank you Gen. Without you, this trip might not even have been possible. And even if it was possible, it wouldn't have been that great without you showing us around and putting up with us staying at your house. :)

Eunice

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RYO'S NOODLES, CROWS NEST

My favourite ramen in Singapore has got to be Ippudo at Mandarin Gallery, and guess what! They have an Ippudo in one of the food courts in Sydney. Jaw drop. But anyway, Gen didn't take us to have that since we have it in Singapore. She took us to Ryo's Noodles in Crows Nest to try out their famous ramen! 


Its a small little shop with an incredibly yellow interior. My Olympus Pen struggles with indoor and night white balance so this made it go crazy and all my pictures are overly warm. Excuse me for that! Back to the shop. Its really cute. I like all the handwritten pieces of paper covering all the walls that show each item of the menu. It has a really warm environment. Both warm as in homey and warm as in warm. You can almost hear our happy sighs as we stepped out of the cold winter night and into this warm little store. Ahhhh.


I think Gen ordered the ramen in sour salt flavoured soup with fried prawn balls and veges. I think. Hahaha


Ramen in miso-flavoured soup!


Ramen in soy sauce flavoured soup with roast pork, nori, egg, and shallots. This was #1 in the Top 5 list, so its no surprise that I chose that. I'm a boring safe choice maker. Hahaha But still it was definitely hearty and satisfying!


Doesn't this picture make you want to have some Gyoza right now? Haha

It was good, but I don't miss this as much because I know I still have Ippudo here. But there are some things unique to Sydney and I'm totally craving for them. Like their chocolate tarts, snickers pie, thai fried chicken etc. Ugh! Hahaha 

Eunice

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FOOD AT NEWTOWN

Time for a food tour at Newtown! Okay, its only two places, but two really yummy places that Gen took us to. The first is The Pie Tin! It is an artisan pie bakery and cafe that will leave you plastered onto their glass display cabinet drooling for more. I mean, look at all those sweet pies!!


And all their savoury pies too!


So because I'm quite the Maltesers Lover, we went for the Malteser pie. The thick layer of light and airy chocolate mousse has Maltesers on it, and in it too, if you're lucky. It was such a cheap thrill to com across Maltesers in the mousse. Right under that lays a chocolate fudge layer that is my favourite part of the pie besides the hidden maltesers. The chocolately tart shell was yummy too. I had a really hard time deciding between this and the Snickers pie, and although this was really good, I really really want to try the Snickers pie now. Whoever is out there, would you be a dear and Fedex a slice over here?


I think, and correct me if I'm wrong Gen or Jo, that we had the beef brisket slow roasted with hickory smoke and field mushrooms pie. I honestly don't remember, I'm just going with which one looks like it in the savoury display. Hahaha See, this is the problem with blogging about something months after it happens. Sigh. But what I can say about the savoury pie is that the crust is really important to me, and this one was pretty good!


Gen then took us to Thai La-Ong for thai food! Everything on the lunch specials menu is 7 bucks there and all three dishes we ordered were simply fantastic.


Pad Si-Ew. Seems like this is the must order dish at all Thai restaurants for us. Hahaha


Chicken Green Curry with rice! 


Fried chicken!!!! Honestly one of the best I've ever tasted! I was even contemplating ordering the dish again just for the chicken but because all dishes came with rice, I didn't. Such a wasteeee I have this epic craving now. Hahaha

Did that make you hungry? Because my stomach is really growling right now. Time to go and get some lunch!

Eunice

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FOOD AT SURRY HILLS

Gen took us on a mini food tour of her favourite food places at Surry Hills and first stop was Reuben Hills! I really love the industrial warehouse feel of the interior, with the wood, bricks, clean lines, fluorescent lights and textured surfaces. The abundant natural lighting streaming in from their open 'garage door' at the back also makes me think: 'whats not to love?'

Dirty Bird. Gen was talking about this burger so much before we even got there that it was hard to even take a second look at the other items on the menu. Hahaha Spiced grilled chicken between fluffy brioche with salsa, cheese, pickles and chipotle aioli. Looks good? Tastes good. Mmmm


Chorizo Grits with baked corn tortilla chips, queso fresco, beans & avocado. I took that off the menu so I'm not sure what queso franco is. Although this dish just reminded me of nachos with a lot of dip. Meaty, beany, avocadoy dip. I do like the crunchy tortilla chips, although slightly burned and soggy for the parts that are touching the dip. 


No coffee for me, but heres my friends with theirs. <3 The coffee at Reuben Hills is supposed to be pretty good, but I wouldn't know. ;)


Gen then took us down the road for what she calls, her favourite churros. We end up at this cute mexican restaurant that hits you with a splash of colour, called El Loco. It was opened by Dan Hong, who I remember was introduced on Masterchef Australia as Dan Hong from Ms G's. Ooooh there can only be good stuff coming out of here.


The fun deco really brings out the Mexican vibe. I love all the piñatas hanging from the ceiling, and their every-colour-possible stools.


Excelsior Hot Dog, Grilled pork Frankfurt served on a soft bun with pickled jalepenos, pico ge gallo, mayonnaise and cheese. Look at the heap of grated cheese!!! It was really satisfying.


Churros. These cinnamon sugared fried dough were served straight for the fryer, with a side of either a chocolate or caramel dipping sauce, both of which we got cause Gen said we should try them. The caramel definitely wins the round though! The chocolate dip tasted more like bitter chocolate syrup, and less like melted chocolate.



Gen certainly spoiled us on this trip. How are we supposed to forget all of this fantabulous food?! We were so lucky we had her to take us around. We had good food for almost every meal during our two week stay. We took another food tour in a different neighbourhood on our second last day so thats coming up soon! Mmmm

Eunice

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