My Weekly Adventures: Kickstarter Rewards, Wedding and Halloween Marathon Kickoff!!

We’re back with another weekly adventures!

I’m sorry that its taken me a little longer than usual to get back.  To be fair, I did say that this would take 3 weeks instead of the normal 2, at the very least.  I really wanted to be back, you know. Like, there are things happening and I’m not just forcing up some updates for nothing.  Although, last time I really did want to get the updates and announcements out.  I’m starting to think weekly adventures are a good way to get it through. So, when it does say updates and/or announcements, this will be where I’ll do it! 🙂

Back to business, what has been going on, you ask? Well, lets see what little adventures I’ve been in the last few weeks. Let’s go!

1) Kickstarter Rewards coming in!

Kosmos -TV series was funded on December 2014.  I had signed up for the exclusive of the Episode 1 and a limited edition personalized frame from the show signed by one of the cast or crew.  Finally, after a few months, I got it in the mail.

Plus, the show is for free viewing on Youtube up to Episode 4 now. You can check it out below:

Kiss Me, Kill Me was funded on November 2014.  A part of the reward came to me in the form of a Virtual Premiere.  I almost didn’t make it but I managed to give the movie one viewing before the link expired.  No regrets at all! Here’s the trailer:

While it has a strong LGBT focus, the story of this thriller is great and the acting is rather good as well.  Consider me rather impressed.  I’ll be posting up an actual review when I get the actual movie with the final reward which I had backed for a DVD copy.

$5 Drawings by Dada was successfully funded in September 2015.  I used to go to college with Dada and she’s always been an extremely creative person.  While I didn’t have money to back a higher tier, I still loved the random work of art I received on 7 x 10 inch paper using color pencils (I chose the medium).  It was beautiful. I just need to figure out a way to frame it up or somethin and decorate my walls.  You can check out her work on Instagram @dada16808

2) I’m Married!!!

On October 11th, 2015 (the past Sunday), I got married! I know I’ve been ranting about the crazy wedding plans but trying to kind of not be too overbearing about it but things worked out fine.  There was some hiccups but with the help of some amazing friends, everyone played out really well! Everyone had a great time and I saw so many wonderful friends and family that I haven’t seen in ages and connected with others that I never knew really well but did more afterwards. I did debate doing a huge post on it but we’ll see.  For now, here are few wedding pics of decors and dresses and all that fun stuff 🙂

Cake and Cupcakes were done by Montreal Cake Guy.  Despite being hurt the day before he had to deliver the order, he still managed to get it all done and we found a way to accommodate and got one of my best friends’ boyfriend to go pick it up for me the morning of.

On a side note, I had to doll up for the wedding.  Thanks goes out to the lovely  Groupon deal for the mani-pedi from Beauty Box in Brossard.  And hair goes out to Coiffure Spa Portobello

3) Announcement: Halloween Marathon Starts TODAY!!!

I know I’ve been hinting at Halloween with Netflix A-Z having two movies and a book review of Ranger Martin.  It was an effort to keep with the theme but now that the wedding is done and I’ve had a few days to recuperate from that one very crazy but memorable day, I’m ready to get back on track here! We’re kicking off  the Halloween Marathon officially!! Later today, you’ll be getting the first review for our highlight series, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Have fun and enjoy! My line-up for filler horror movies have been changing and its probably just going to be absolutely spontaneous save for one recommendation but its happening! Have lots of fun! Enjoy this half of October full of horror reviews! 🙂

On a side note, you all know things don’t quite return to normal until the New Year with NaNoWriMo in November and Christmas related posts in Christmas.  Netflix A-Z will return in November however but everything else will be just a mixed bag of backlogged posts that I’m accumulating right now.

—> No upcoming posts this time around! You all know whats up for the next two weeks! Halloween and all that jazz!

To wrap it all up, here’s a little music to get us all relaxed and feeling all warm, happy and bubbly in a 360 video!

Happy Wednesday, my lovelies!
Have an awesome day!! 🙂 

Begorrathon 2015: Irish Apple Cake

Welcome to another little entry for Begorrathon in celebration of Ireland month over at The Fluff is Raging and 746 Books.

As you may have realized, I’m a little rusty on everything Irish.  The only think I know is St. Patty’s Day and that is today 😉 And that a ton of people like to go to the Irish pubs here and drink. Well, I’m not going to drink tonight since I do have work tomorrow but last night I did manage to make a little desserts.  Pinterest called it an Irish Apple Cake so I’m going to assume its traditional to some sense and that it works for this 😉 I’m thinking of making an actual main dish this weekend, just because its really kicked up some cooking and baking juices that I desperately have been needing.

IRISH APPLE CAKE

Serves: 12

Fresh out of the oven

The crumbly texture and abundance of apples

You can find the recipe here: http://thekitchenmccabe.com/2014/03/07/irish-apple-cake-with-custard-sauce/

The original cake is supposed to be in a cake pan but last night, my cake pan vanished.  Nowhere to be seen.  Maybe I moved it to my own home.  So I took the what I think is called the Angel food cake pan.  Still, it did the job, right? It did have a little accident as I tried to put it on a plate and broke apart but all is well, still edible 🙂

As usual, there are few changes:

• Flour: gluten-free flour
• Ground cloves replaced with allspice
• 3 (instead of 4) Granny Smith apples: probably because I didn’t chop them into small enough pieces
• Milk: Cashew milk (trying this new one from Earth’s Own)
• Omitted custard sauce (we’re not huge fans and I need someone to actually eat the cake)

Irish Apple Cake works extremely well with gluten-free flour.  If you haven’t used GF flour before, its a lot drier than all-purpose and thats why making fruity cakes work really well.  Maybe not exactly dried fruits but I mean, fresh fruits.  This one was so abundant with apples that it actually kept the flavor well.  I’m going to admit that the Robin Hood Gluten-Free Flour I’m using now and that whole beetroot base is definitely an acquired taste (I’m still working on acquiring it).  Which comes to my point that because this one had so many apples, it didn’t have as much floury taste and that worked to its favor.  I also love the crumbly texture and its even more so because its with the drier GF flour.

There’s a whole lot to love about this Irish Apple Cake.  I’m guess if I cut the apples into smaller pieces, I’d have 4 apples and it would work out even better. Although a little more time consuming because you need to cut the butter into little pieces (maybe because I don’t have those fancy tools).  It could also use with a little less sugar.  Maybe half cup would do if you don’t like baked goods too sweet. Pretty much, this recipe is relatively easy to make.  Just budget some time in to cut in the butter and peeling and chopping the apples, everything else is straight forward.  Believe me on one thing, when the house smells like this apple cake, all the prep work is worth it 🙂

Any other recipes to suggest? What fresh fruits do you like in baked goods?

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Meyer Lemon Coffee Cake

Last weekend, one of my good friends dropped by and gave me some meyer lemons.  If you don’t know what they look like, think of a mandarin orange shaped in a lemon.  I’ve never actually seen it before, or maybe I have but I never paid attention to it.  Still, I had to figure out what to do with it.  Apparently, after looking through a lot of recipes, meyer lemons has certain pros and that includes its thin rind and lower acidity.  I like that 🙂

After some searching on Pinterest, it was a decision between this coffee cake recipe to meyer lemon madeleines.  Only deal was I’d have to dig out my madeleine pan which is already packed away for the move and I was going to dig through that.  Well, maybe I will on the weekend, since I gave me the desire to try out making madeleines which looked so much easier than this. Coffee cakes are time consuming, my friends.

Fresh out of the oven!

Here is the link to Martha Stewart’s recipe that I used (with a few modifications as usual):  http://www.marthastewart.com/344357/meyer-lemon-coffee-cake

You can sort of see it here but there is layer of lemon slices right under the streusel.  There should have been a middle layer of lemons but as I only had 4 lemons to work with and after experimenting cutting the first one, it pretty much turned into more juice than salvageable lemon, I only had 3 when the recipe asked for 5, so sacrifices had to be made.

This recipe is so time consuming.  The preparation work is endless.  Thank goodness I had a movie playing in the background for noise because I didn’t really get much of what was going on.  If you click through to the recipe, you’ll notice that there is multiple phases for this coffee cake. Maybe its time we check out the modifications at the same time.

The first step is the streusel and I had to make modifications because I didn’t have brown sugar or more like, mine got squished in the cupboard that it turned into rock hard brown sugar, so I had the “genius” idea of using powdered sugar.  Probably shouldn’t have done that.  At least after the baking session, it looked light brown and not white.  I’m already relieved.

Second step goes to the lemons and the simmering.  I’m not a pro at simmering but it was alright, I laid them out on the parchment paper to drain the water a bit while I went off to mix the final cake batter, our last step before putting it in the oven.  There aren’t a lot of modifications here.  The one thing was that I used 1 teaspoon of salt instead of 1.5.  Also, I omitted the sour cream (lactose-intolerance) but seeing as the mixture was too dense, I mixed in a bit of water, maybe half a cup or so and it helped quite a bit.

I’m sure you’re all waiting for me to finally get to the point and tell you after all the modifications whether it would be good.  First things first, my house smelled delicious at 1:20am EST when this came out of the oven.  Oh my goodness, it smelled awesome and you know what? I may have had batter issues but with the few modifications, it still turned out pretty good. Not too sweet, because I didn’t use all the streusel topping (remember I used powder sugar instead) but also, not dry either.

Coffee cakes may be a pain to make but it was fun also. Plus, the end result makes it so worth it 🙂

What type/flavor coffee cake do you like? Do you know any other recipes for meyer lemons? 

Also, Spring is just around the corner (in a month or so).  What baked goods do you like to eat during spring.St Patrick’s/Easter? So many special days/events around the corner! I can’t wait to leave this cold behind and surrounded by warmth 🙂

Mini Crumb Cakes!

Good news is that that I finally managed to find time to bake! YAY!  I was planning on keeping it Halloween or fall-themed at the very least.  It was running a bit late so this small and quick recipe for Mini Crumb Cakes seemed like the logical choice.  Plus, it doesn’t make too many, meaning I can get around to a more appropriate and fancy recipe this weekend 🙂

Lets take a look at those Mini Crumb Cakes, shall we?

Mini Crumb Cakes

I got this recipe from my relatively newer cookbook Betty Crocker The Big Book of Cupcakes.  Its super simple and takes about 10 minutes to put together and another 30 minutes in the oven. A quick fresh out of the oven snack if you ever feel like having something sweet.

Makes 6 mini cakes

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup butter (or margarine), softened

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tbsp powdered sugar

Fresh out of the oven!

How to Make it:

1) Heat oven to 350F. Place paper baking cup in each of 6 regular size muffin cups.  In a large bowl, stir together flour, brown sugar and butter with spoon until crumbly. Reserve 1/3 cup mixture for topping.

2) Stir egg, milk, baking powder and cinnamon into remaining crumbly mixture until well mixed.  Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.  Sprinkle reserved crumbly mixture over batter

3) Bake 20 to 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.  Cool 5 minutes.  Remove cakes from pan; place on cooling rack.  Before serving, sprinkle warm cakes with powdered sugar.  Serve warm or cooled.

 

These turned out to be really awesome.  It smelled amazing and it was super easy to make.  Also, the texture was very good especially with the streusel-like topping.  Its like a coffee cake streusel cupcake.  There wasn’t need for many modifications.  I did replace the milk with almond milk.  Also, I couldn’t find my powdered sugar so I didn’t sprinkle any extra sugar on the top.  It was already sweet enough for me, so I don’t really think its necessary.

Inside the Mini Crumb Cake

I had a tasting even though it was really late at night.  The texture was moist and mixed with the texture of the initial bite of the streusel topping, it had gave it a little crunch as well.  Very awesome recipe! You should try it out.  It does only make 6 mini cakes so you might want to double the recipe accordingly if you plan on making it for more company.

Happy Tuesday everyone! 🙂

 

 

Super Sweet Blogging Award..Take 2!!

Having a partially baking blog, its always nice to get this Super Sweet Blogging Awards! Huge THANK YOU to DJ Matticus from The Matticus Kingdom for giving me this a few weeks ago.  Sorry for the late reply…I’ve been kind of in a funk…I’m out now! For the most part at least! Its taken two weeks to sort out the mess in my brain.  Happy stuff though! I have never been more proud to accept this award because last week, I did make some awesome Hamburger Cupcakes! Thats about the most creative I have EVER been, granted I was following instructions 😉

The star here is DJ Matticus! If you haven’t visited his blog, well, you’d better head on over.  I have the link right up there on top with his name.  He has an ongoing story that he posts up chapters every week. He writes witty and fun posts and he’s just totally awesome in general!

These are the rules for accepting the award:

1-Answer the 10 random questions or those of your own choosing.
2-Nominate 10 other bloggers for the Award and link their blog sites.
3-Notify the bloggers of their awards.
4-Ask the award winners to answer the 10 questions when they accept their Award.

10 Random Questions

1.  Do you think it’s weird that the Breakfast Club ate lunch rather than breakfast?

Now, we have a Breakfast Club too and I go there for brunch..maybe thats what they were having 🙂

2.  If you had Breakfast at Tiffany’s would you order the eggs or the diamonds?

I’m not really into diamonds but how about some other gems?

3.  Have you watched the movie Layercake?  Thoughts on that experience?

There is a movie called Layercake? I’m not sure I ever want to have that experience….

4.  If you boarded the Pineapple Express, which stop would you get off at?

Wherever James Franco and Seth Rogen get off, I guess.  What is Pineapple Express? haha!

5.  Do you prefer American Pie over pies from other countries?  What is your favorite?

Any pie but American Pie…Life of Pi sounds remarkably better from the looks of it.  I can deal with tigers..we’re buddies! Or how about Minny’s pie in The Help? My fave to watch being consumed but I wouldn’t personally.

6.  If the forecast for the day was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, would you stay inside?

Hell no! I’d be out there with a huge bowl (maybe bucket) and my fork and knife…okay, okay, my chopsticks 😉

7.  Do you slather Space Jam on your toast in the mornings?  Or do you prefer something else?

No Space Jam..not much into eating basketballs.  Some simple peanut butter would do! 🙂

8.  Have you ever had to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

I hope not! Although, with the right arrangement, that could be fun, to a certain extent…

9.  Do you drink a glass of warm Milk before bed?

Sorry, lactose-intolerant! Skip!

10.  Have you ever had a Chicken Run away from you before?

 Usually I’m the one running away from them! Although, there was once when I was 2? My dad bought me a bunch of little chicks for Easter and they all grew up to roosters…guess what happened to them afterwards…

 

I’m still amazed at how he managed to stick movie titles in all those questions! How do I match up to that…can I just reuse them? Fine, fine, I won’t be lazy 😉

Lets get those nominations out first! DJ Matticus nominated 10 so I’ll follow his lead 😉

 

Serenity Sometimes

More Sprinkles

Scrummy Yummy

Mandy <3s Food

the Goodie Plate

Papaya Pieces

Thistle and  Maize

The Kat & the Falling Leaves

Life is Short. Eat hard!

at350degrees

 

Check them all out! Amazing blogs with wonderful recipes of meals or sweet delicious desserts!:)

Now for my questions to the nominees!

Which one do you like more:

1) Muffins or Croissants?

2) Cake or pie?

3) Chocolate, vanilla or marble?

4) Butter or margarine?

5) Almonds or hazelnuts?

6) Dark, Milk, or White Chocolate?

7) Frosting or defrosted?

8) Coffee, tea, milk to go with your desserts?

9) Pancakes or waffles?

10) Final question: Cooking or baking?

 

Easy, right? Just have to make a choice! If you don’t want to play along thats alright as well! Just wanted to show how much I appreciated all of your blogs!

 

Have a fun, sweet and fantastic weekend! 🙂

 

If you’re in Quebec, lets all wish this province a happy birthday! Although, Montreal is kind of looking mighty bad right now (if you’ve heard about it you’d understand)…Still! Its the provincial birthday and I get a day off on Monday! Its all the better reason to celebrate! 🙂 Plus, we’re getting some crazy hot and humid weather this weekend!

Blueberry Streusel Coffee Cake!

This week, I wanted to switch it up a bit and seeing as blueberries were on special, I went ahead and bought some.  I adore coffee cakes and I’ve had my eye on this recipe to make a Blueberry Streusel Coffee Cake for a while.

Blueberry Streusel Coffee Cake

 

Like most of my recipes, I found this from Looneyspoons Collection.  Don’t worry, I will be doing something else from other books.  Its just this one has super high success rates (even when I replace and modify).  This one is called A Bundt in the Oven.

Here is the recipe:

Makes 16 servings

Ingredients:

Streusel Topping:

1/4 cup chopped pecans

3 tbsp all purpose flour

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp butter, melted

Cake:

2 cups Bisquick baking mix

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3/4 cup lemon-flavored yogurt

2 eggs

1/3 cup 1% milk

1/4 cup high quality vegetable oil

2 tsp grated lemon zest

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups fresh blueberries

Fresh out of the oven!

1) Preheat oven to 350F.  Spray a bundt cake pan with cooking spray and dust lightly with flour.  Set aside.

2) To prepare streusel topping, combine all streusel ingredients in a small bowl and mix well using a fork.  Set aside.

3) Combine baking mix, flour, sugar and cinnamon in a large bowl.  In a medium bowl, whisk together yogurt, eggs, milk, oil, lemon zest and vanilla.  Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix just until dry ingredients are moistened.  Batter will be thick.  Gently fold in blueberries.

4) Spoon batter evenly into prepared cake pan.  Sprinkle streusel topping evenly over batter.  Bake for 40-45 minutes.  Cool cake in pan on a wire rack.  Loosen edges using a knife and carefully transfer cake into a serving plate.

Would you like a slice of Blueberry Explosion? 😉

This recipe was relatively straightforward and thats pretty much why I love baking any forms of cakes.  Its just a hassle to pour the batter evenly into the cake pan, but luckily I have a fantastic assistant (my boyfriend) who helps me out.  Lets look at the ingredients that I’ve modified:

– For the topping, I didn’t use pecans but almonds with some bits of hazelnut

– I removed lemon-flavored yogurt and grated lemon zest because the first I can’t eat and the second I ran out

– Replaced 1% milk with unsweetened vanilla almond milk

These little modifications didn’t change much for the recipe, I don’t think.  The coffee cake was very delicious.  It wasn’t too sweet and on top of that, there was a crazy amount of blueberries in comparison to the batter so it kept it very moist and fruity.  Every bite was so addictive.  I ended up cutting another small slice to eat 🙂

If you are into coffee cakes and especially blueberries, you have to give this one a shot. Its light, moist and fruity yumminess! 🙂

Have an awesome Thursday everyone! Keep it up! One more day to go this week then its long weekend (in Canada)!

 

Happy Mother’s Day: Oops! There It Is! Chocolate Cake

Cute name, right? This is the actual title of this recipe that I did for yesterday’s early visit to my boyfriend’s place to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day.  Along with dessert, I bought her some nice yellow and pink bouquet 🙂

I don’t usually make a lot of desserts completely chocolate unless its for special occasions.  After developing some sensitivity to chocolate, it not always my first choice because then I don’t get to join in the fun but I realized that sometimes baking is really about seeing how happy others are when they like what I make! Whats a better time than making people I care about something they’d love, right?

Here’s how this came out:

Doesn’t it look delicious? When I was mixing this, it started smelling so chocolatey and awesome.  Imagine what happened while it was baking then when it came out? 😉

The recipe is from Looneyspoons Collection from Janet and Greta Podelski.

Makes 12 servings

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar

2 eggs

3 tbsp high quality vegetable oil

1 cup light (5%) sour cream

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp almond extract

1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Right out of the oven 🙂

1) Preheat oven to 350F. Spray an 8×8 inch baking pan with cooking spray and set aside.

2) In a small bowl, mix together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.

3) In a medium bowl, beat together brown sugar, eggs, and oil using an electric mixer on medium speed.  Add sour cream, vanilla and almond extract.  Beat on low speed until well blended.

4) Gradually add flour mixture to sour cream mixture, beating on medium speed.  Fold in chocolate chips.

5) Spread batter evenly in prepared pan.  Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.  Remove from oven and let cool in pan for 15 minutes.  Cut into 12 squares.  For maximum moistness, store at room temperature in an airtight container.

Its a pretty simple cake to make and if you follow their ingredients, it should be quite healthy.  I followed it for the most part.  However I removed the almond extract and sour cream and replaced it with 1/2 cup almond milk.  Also, I used white chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet because I ran out of the latter.

Still, the moistness was right on.  My boyfriend and his parents thought it was delicious 🙂 That always makes me happy! I didn’t try it so I can’t comment much on that. It did smell extremely yummy!

It was definitely a success and its worth a try! Especially worthy for Mother’s Day (or probably any day)

Have an awesome Mother’s Day!!!

Happy Mother’s Day

Coconut Cloud Cake!

Doesn’t that sound delicious? Apparently, last night at my boyfriend’s mom’s birthday gathering with the family, it was a huge hit! Everyone told me how much they liked it and for the first time, one of them even asked for the recipe.  Another reason why I need to post it up PRONTO! 🙂 But seeing everyone enjoy it makes me happy because its why I do it!

Before I get ahead of myself, I was asking with another recipe, what to make for Easter and Marilyn @ MKG-Memories-Keepsakes-Gifts told me that sour cream coconut cake is a must.  I can’t eat sour cream, so I found myself a coconut cake with everything that I could eat. Awesome suggestion Marilyn!

This was found here: http://www.marthastewart.com/349949/coconut-cloud-cake

This cake could get complicated to make and my forewarning is that in general its not complicated however, it does take several steps and before putting this frosting, you need to wait for the cake to cool down for an hour.

The texture of the cake was pretty nice and fluffy.  Everyone described it as “light”.  I’d say thats a good word for it.  The frosting was very delicious.  I actually like it being made with egg whites. It gives it a little nice texture different from whip cream.  I haven’t had whip cream in such a long time, it hard for me to actually describe it. I did like it a lot though.  The taste was very good. If it was something I’d make regularly, I might decrease the sugar just a tad.

There was a good amount of modifications that I made.  For one, I didn’t have cake flour so I used all-purpose flour.  Superfine sugar was replaced by granulated sugar.  All cream of tartar was removed.  You will notice if you click through to see Martha Stewart‘s cake that hers has a little frosting center.  However, due to time constraints, I had to skip that step, instead I covered the exterior with frosting and then added a bit more coconut on the top.

I think it went pretty well. It looks pretty decent and the taste was totally awesome! My boyfriend said he felt like it was a slice of heaven 🙂

Any other Easter baking traditions to share? I’ll probably be baking on Wednesday night again 🙂

Food Review: Casa Victoria Fine Dining

On Saturday night, we headed over to Casa Victoria as a big group to join into the 25th anniversary and chinese new year party for a company that we help out over the past 10+  years (depending on who we are talking about).  For me, its been around 10 years.  I don’t remember exactly when I started but its been pretty fun. Casa Victoria has a Victorian theme going on in their banquet halls.  With beautiful lights and golden drapes and decorations on the walls, it radiated elegance.  The atmosphere was beautiful, the group was awesome and its the first time we’ve come in contact with the main office in Toronto so it was pretty fun.

This is a food review so I’m going straight to our huge meal that we had. We had a cocktail in the beginning with some appetizers and drinks.

I’m a lover of Barbecue pork and especially when in a pastry, the fluffy crust that melts in my mouth when done well.  This one was done to perfection.  It was so scrumptious, not too sweet or salty and the texture was awesome. I’ve never had bite size pie shells filled with eel and man, were these awesome.  I’m not a huge fan of eel but this one really impressed me a lot.

After a bit of chitchat and waiting for everyone to settle into their spots, we had some speeches and some games in between the course and even had a raffle and lots of gifts.  It was super fun. The first dish to come is a very well-known Chinese meat platter…

Chinese Meat Platter

Stir Fried Jumbo Shrimp and Scallop

Braised Dried Oyster and Pork Hock

Braised Winter Melon Soup with Conpoy and Sweet Corn

Pan Fried Beef Filet with Garlic Sauce

A little cut in this because I realized that I forgot to take the picture of Crispy Fried Chicken.  It was super delicious but somehow I didn’t do it.  Up to now, I can’t say anything else about the food because it was super good.  I’ll give more of a review at the end..We’re about halfway 😉

Stir Fried Sole Filet with Vegetable served on Crispy Bone

Wok Fried Lobster with Maggi Sauce

Searfood Fried Rice with Garlic

Braised E-fu Noodle

Red Bean Sweet Soup

Anniversary Cake

Le Petite Fleur with Almond cookies, Glutinous Rice Balls

Man, that was a huge meal, right? It was awesomeness.  There were a few that were on the salty side but thats because I’m used to eating my mom’s cooking and its all healthy and minimal salt.  The meats were all done to perfection, desserts were right on.  The most memorable was the crust of the Jumbo Shrimps and Scallops.  Usually its called the Bird’s Nest and that was done so different from the other restaurants I’ve eaten at.  Another one was the fish and the Crispy Bone.  I was very tasty although I gave a part of my portion away because I was so full and I wanted to try the other food.

Fantastic meal and wonderful party with a bunch of awesome people.  It was a great night!

The next morning, the boss of this company invited everyone back to the restaurant to eat early morning dim sum. I didn’t take any pictures because I wasn’t fully awake from sleeping late watching Chopped.  But take my word for it, it was super awesome.  If you live in Toronto or visit there, go to Casa Victoria. You won’t regret it 🙂

What do you think about the meal?

Copabanana Cake!

Originally, the dessert request was for some banana nut bread.  The counter is full of very ripe bananas so it had to be done.  But in the absence of a good banana nut bread recipe, I decided to make some delicious banana cake! Whose in for that?

I got this wonderful recipe from my Looneyspoons Collections called exactly that: Copabanana Cake.  This is a super easy recipe, originally made with chocolate chips, but I replaced it with chopped almonds.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1/4 cup butter, at room temperature

1 cup mashed ripe banana

1/2 cup light sour cream

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips (in my case, chopped almonds)

1) Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a 9×13 inch baking pan with cooking spray and set aside.

2) In a medium bowl, combine both flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Set aside.

3) In a large bowl, beat together sugar, eggs and butter on medium speed of electric mixer.  Add bananas, sour cream and vanilla.  Beat again until smooth.

4) Gradually, add flour mixture to banana mixture, beating after each addition.  Batter will be thick.  Fold in almonds (or chocolate chips).

5) Spoon batter in prepared pan and spread and evenly using a spatula.  Bake for 25 to 28 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.  Cool completely on a wire rack.  Cut into 16 pieces and store in an airtight container.

This is a pretty straightforward recipe.  I didn’t have to change much of the recipe. The only ingredient that I did take out was sour cream.  I can’t eat that so I didn’t even bother to replace it with anything like water, which I usually would do.  However, it didn’t affect it much.  The taste of this cake is really good and the texture is exactly right, not too moist and not too dry. Exactly how I like it! I’m sure you would too!

What’s your favorite banana dessert? Cake, Ice cream, muffins, cupcakes..etc? The choices are unlimited!