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Posts Tagged ‘pastries’

La Maison Angelina (Tearoom)

August 3rd, 2013

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It’s the weekend again! And since it’s the weekend, I thought I would write about one of my favourite topics, having Afternoon Tea! Actually I had this a couple of months back when I was in Paris.

The Angelina Tearooms are famed in France, having been established way back in 1903. Apparently, Austrian confectioner Antoine Rumpelmayer established Angelina and named it after his daughter-in-law. It soon became a must-visit venue for the Parisian aristocracy. Proust, Coco Chanel and all the greatest French fashion designers used to visit Angelina. With such an illustrious history, how can I not visit Angelina? If I had just brought along my laptop, I might just be able to squeeze out a novel just like Proust!

One of the first things that attracts you when you arrive at Angelina is the eye-popping dessert display. And of course, one must not forget the famous hot chocolate!

Chocolate eclairs drizzled with caramel and berry tarts with marshmallows and an Angelina white chocolate piece!

It’s actually not any more expensive than the pastries you can get in Singapore. Perhaps it was the good Euro to Sing dollar exchange rate, but I really don’t think Paris / France is as expensive as everyone says.

Almond meringue biscuit, unctuous vanilla mousse, raspberry confit, strawberry marshmallows

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Posted in Country Guide - France, Travel

Tags: Afternoon tea, Angelina Tearoom, Around the World with 365days2play, cakes, europe, France, Honeymoon, hot chocolate, Paris, pastries, Travel, Versailles, What to do in France

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Dean and Deluca

November 18th, 2012

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Dean & Deluca, I finally made it there last week, after the maddening crowd had died down. Only waited 5 minutes for my seat, and by the time i finished, at least 1/4 of the seats were empty. This was 3.30pm btw.

I love looking at their display case. So many pretty cakes and breads calling out to me. I tried to remain very focussed, and ordered my chocolate croissant and latte. I’ve been consuming far too many chocolate croissants in the last 2 months, all in the name of research! I’m trying to find out where the best croissant can be found in Singapore. Truth be told, a lot of those I tried are all good. They are all different in their own way, some are very flaky, some are very butter, some are more dense yet somehow still good!

Nice shapely croissants. Did you know that a lot of the pastries sold at Dean & Deluca are not made in-house but sourced from other purveyors like Maison Kayser and Baker & Cook? It’s interesting that they do so, because most brands want to create their own in-house goods. That they don’t have their own products can be both a good and bad thing. The benefit is that you get to order products from a few bakeries and sample them all in one location. The bad thing is, freshness can be an issue especially if the deliveries are not done everyday.

It’s not often you find a scone with savoury ingredients in it. I only saw this after I’d ordered my croissant or else I would have ordered the cheddar scallion scone!

The flat white was so so only. Definitely not the 3rd wave coffee standard. And look at the latte art, or the non-existence of it. The croissant was not bad. It didn’t taste freshly made, and was a little stiff, but nevertheless it was still nice, in part thanks to the chocolate inside it.

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Posted in 1.4 Cafes

Tags: Breads, Cafes, coffee, croissants, Dean & Deluca, desserts, flat white, olive oil, orchard central, Orchard Road, pastries, Scones, Truffles

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The Bakery at Maxims Genting Hotel

September 3rd, 2012

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One of the places I liked hanging out at during my stay at Genting Resorts World was at The Bakery. I love peppering my holiday trips with visits to cafes and bakeries and the trip to Genting was no different of course. Of all the cafes that I visited or walked past, The Bakery at Maxims Genting looked the most cosy and inviting. It also had a huge array of mouth watering looking cakes and pastries, so I actually visited The Bakery a total of THREE times in my 3D2N stay. Beat that!

Of course, the FREE WIFI was another huge reason. There was no WIFI in my First World Hotel so I made sure to stop by The Bakery for my daily dose of Internet, Whatsapp.Twitter and Facebook.

My glass of latte. It’s necessary especially after a late night at the casino…

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Posted in Country Guide - Malaysia, Travel

Tags: Cafes, cakes, Genting, Genting Resorts World, latte, malaysia, media invites, pastries

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Triple Chiffon Cake weekend

November 21st, 2011

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I have been in a baking mood ever since I returned from Norway. I have this desperate desire to replicate the lovely croissants I had there, but you know croissants, they aren’t exactly the easiest things to make. I did try once, half-heartedly with numerous short cuts and obtained croissant-shaped stones as a result.

I am heartened to know that 2 French bakeries are opening in Singapore very soon. One is Paul Bakery and the other is Maison Kayser. Maison Kayser is to open by end of November 2011 at the new Scotts Square, while Paul Bakery is slated to open by Christmas 2011 and is located on the 3rd floor of Takashimaya, where the old Coffee Club used to be. It seems like just when I am craving so badly for these French/Danish pastries, out pops all these European bakeries. BreadTalk will have to pull something out of its sleeves if it wants to keep its market share!

Anyway, not being able to bake croissants (for now) doesn’t stop me from baking something else. I was perusing one of my favourite baking blogs and I decided to bake this Earl Grey Chiffon Cake. It turned out pretty okay considering that this is my 1st Chiffon cake. The Earl Grey taste was faint, the cake wasn’t sweet enough, but the texture was light and airy, which is what a Chiffon cake ought to be. There were splotches of white, which meant that I hadn’t incorporated the egg whites in properly. It’s always a difficult decision between wanting to be as as quick as possible so as not to over-deflate the egg whites, and yet having to thoroughly mix them so that there are no detectable clumps of egg white in the cake.

Flush with “success”, I decided to bake a 2nd cake, a Milo Chiffon cake! I got bolder and made some tweaks to the recipe even though everyone knows that for baked goods, recipes have to be followed to a T. I know that, but I just CAN’T! Anyway, I paid the price for omitting the baking powder and putting in more Milo powder than called for. The cake had a distinctive Milo taste, but was denser than the Earl Grey Chiffon cake. In fact, it kind of had the texture of kueh.

The perfectionist in me said, TRY AGAIN. So I did. I baked a Third cake. An Orange and Chocolate Chiffon cake. I dutifully included the Baking Powder again and I whipped the egg whites stiffer than the 2nd try. I even added chocolate chips into the batter although I had this feeling that they would sink to the bottom. True enough, the cake emerged with a chocolaty bottom. Because of that, it was sticky and I had a hard time scraping the cake out of the baking tin. Texture-wise, it was also light and airy, but somewhat crumbly. I have no idea why it is so and I can only think of baking it longer the next time. I liked the taste of this cake the most, and if given the time I would even make an orange syrup to go with it. Ah well, next week then.

Now what do I do with all those cakes???

Posted in Food, Recipes and Cooking / Baking Tips

Tags: baking, cakes, chiffon cake, croissants, danish pastries, egg white, french pastries, milo, orange, pastries, Recipes and Cooking/Baking Tips

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Danishes in Denmark

October 25th, 2011

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Hello everyone! I’m now in Copenhagen! This city feels so much more city like as compared to Oslo. The buildings here remind me of London and Paris. The prices here are much better too. Food is almost half the cost of what it was in Oslo. Can you imagine how much I have been suffering in Norway when it comes to eating out? I hate having to pay S$40 for a burger at some TGI Fridays kind of place where there’s no guarantee that the food will taste excellent. I’ve had to be very strategic about my meals when I was in Oslo, and now I feel like I’ve been let out of jail. For the next 4 days, I can buy what I see and eat what I like, instantly! The only idiotic thing is that coffee is still expensive. It’s the same price as in Oslo, which is like at least S$8 for a latte. ‘

But one thing that Norway did to me is to introduce me to really tasty croissants. My croissant eating repertoire isn’t all that great, but seriously, the best croissants I have eaten in a long time was at my breakfast restaurant Egon in Oslo. The best thing about waking up every morning is that I got to head to the buffet breakfast and have my fill of chocolate croissants. They taste SO GOOD! They aren’t the “airy” kind you find in Singapore where you bite into a large croissant and it flattens into a tiny one. These croissants have body, while remaining flaky, and they aren’t dense. (Special note for my mother: No i didn’t just eat croissants. I ate lots of beetroot, cucumber, organic muesli and oats as well)

I’ll have to see what this new hotel has in store for breakfast tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, enjoy the pictures of the droolsome Danishes. And no, I don’t mean the men.