Bounty Cake; Acme Bar & Coffee

First day at work fasting. I think I'm doing okay so far. I went to Bijou during lunch just to look at their cupcakes but I was the model of restraint (I mean, other than the fact that I went to press my nose against the glass at a cupcake shop during fasting month) and I didn't buy any. And I've been trying to stay hydrated so religiously that I drink water constantly after breaking fast, and as a result have to wake up to pee like five times during the night (so maybe will tone down the hydration thing. I'm pretty sure any benefit I get from drinking so much is being erased by lack of sleep).

In memory of lunchtime desserts, I present you with the Bounty cake from Acme Bar and Coffee.

I hate coconuts, don't eat or drink any coconut derivatives, and don't eat Bounty chocolate bars. But I love this cake. I know this doesn't make sense, but when weighing out whether to stay true to the logical principle that if I don't like coconut stuff, then I wouldn't like this cake, against Bounty cake's mutiple layers of sponge cake and cream and chocolate and coconut shavings: the cake prevailed, and logic failed. 

This is the gastronomical equivalent of when you totally have a type and you meet someone/a cake who/that is totally not your type but then you end up marrying them/eating it. So the moral of the story is do not restricted by your types; true happiness could be lying at the bottom of that food you totally hate and in that hipster bar you refuse to set foot into because you're not a hipster! (Examples are for purely illustrative reasons and have nothing to do with my life at all.)

The blogger no longer has a guy type but still hates coconuts. I mean if she WANTED to ingest something slimy and milky, she could just eat jello and drink milk.

Coffee & Cupcake; Wondermilk

One of my most guilty of guilty pleasures, up there on the list along with my moth-to-a-flame must-keep-watching-the-carwreck fascination with the vapid "reality" television show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians (as well as its spawn-like spin-offs Khloe & Lamar, and Kourtney & Kim Take New York... why do I know the names?! The shame!); uninspired romantic comedies with formulaic plots that I WILL scoff at aloud although my heart is secretly warmed by the notion of True Love occurring between the beautiful people on the TV screen, no matter how recycled that Love is; and eating feta cheese out of the jar, is... reading while eating.

Sounds innocuous enough? Doesn't seem like something I should get my panties in a guilty twist about? Sadly, my parents tried so hard during my childhood and teenagehood to break this habit of mine that now, although I am a grown twenty-something-year-old adult, I still feel guilty when I read while I eat. (Please note that although I am now an adult, I am, of course, still entitled to blame my idiosyncrasies on my parents. They fuck you up, your mum and dad... although I take artistic liberty here; I'm not really fucked up: I just like Philip Larkin and I have weird relationships with books and fizzy drinks because of my parents' food rules.)

My parents would plead and scold and beg (in vain, all in vain) for me to just STOP. READING. AT THE. DINNER TABLE. Antisocial, who cares; unfortunate side-effects Remnants Of Food In Books and Condensation From Drinking Glasses On Back Cover, bring it on. I was a really mature, obedient little first child (as in, I didn't even have an angst-y I-hate-my-parents phase kind of obedient), and reading at the dinner table was probably my only form of rebellion.

And now that I'm an adult... I can eat-and-read whenever I want! I also have some truly historic food stains in most of my favourite books from my childhood, but that is neither here nor there. Goosey is never appalled at my antisocial behaviour, mostly because he loves me and love means never pointing out that your partner has flecks of chicken in their Terry Pratchett, but also partly because he has an iPad, which is sort of like a book, only much more expensive and with better graphics, and which he plays with when I'm too busy reading and eating to talk to him.

I forgot what the point of this post was. I think I wanted to say that I had brunch at Wondermilk yesterday while reading The Marriage Plot and the combination of food, coffee, a big fat novel, and it being Sunday afternoon was almost too delicious to bear. DELICIOUS.

Thoughts on Ramadhan, and an Eclair

Ladies and gentledudes, it is Ramadhan again. Holy month, refrain from food, drink, vices and excesses etc, we all know the drill.

Despite the constant stomach pains, cavernous-sounding tummy rumbles (I don't know how my tummy makes those noises, it sounds like I'm hiding away the Grand Canyon in my abdomen; though I suppose I should be thankful that at least it doesn't LOOK like I'm hiding the Grand Canyon in there), puasa breath (other people's, obviously. I do not have puasa breath. And if you doubt me I can open my mouth in front of your nose and prove it to you), waking up for sahur (forcing one to answer that age-old question... Sleep or eat?), trying to keep my potty mouth (I swear like a sailor) and temper (I WILL tell you to fuck off and die if you are a misogynist who makes noises at me when I walk past you, even if it's Ramadhan, because I am not a object for you hoot at and YOU have zero manners and very probably a tiny dick) in check, pre-buka crankiness (though for some, this is due more to lack of nicotine than food; I'm not going to point any fingers at anyone but I DO know of a goose who is EXTREMELY guilty of this and who REALLY needs to conquer his nicotine addiction and at least TRY to be cheerful right before buka...), constant whingeing and moaning (see this entire paragraph)... I quite enjoy Ramadhan.

I like testing myself, and I get a perverse sense of pleasure from the pains! of STARVATION! because I am a masochist.

I like appreciating my food more than usual, because I can be quite a glutton and Goosey is always prompting me to think of the starving children in Africa when I can't finish my meals, and with Ramadhan, I get to BE a starving child, except not in Africa, and not really a child. Or a very over-grown one.

Most of all, I like feeling that feeling of camaraderie with my fellow Muslim peeps, because, sadly or not, I don't feel any sort of camaraderie with any of the societal groups that most people seem to identify with -- national, religious or ethnic. Don't feel it, don't fit in, don't identify, and in the case of ethnicity and race, don't even subscribe to the idea of it. So even though it's only a fleeting camaraderie, because I don't get particularly more religious in any other way other than just fasting, I feel quite united with the rest of the Muslim world via my stomach. Which makes my stomach feel warm and fuzzy for a month, even though its empty for most of it.

And now, photograph of random eclair I was craving so much I had dribble coming out of my mouth while I was carrying it home (yes, I am a sexy beast). Two hours to go until breaking fast, COME ON!

Birthday Cakes; Nando's, KLCC, & Sultan Lounge, Mandarin Oriental

WELL. It turns out I have been discovered. Found out. The popo are onto me. The pigs are on the scent! Big Brother is watching, and he doesn't like what he sees. The office network has blocked blogspot. This cannot be a coincidence. I've been sneakily and stealthily posting regularly since I started working here and now all of a sudden it is blocked and I know it's because of me. Dammit. I even tried posting on Samson the BlackBerry but he doesn't support the uploading of pictures. I will find a way to perservere though. Oh yes. I will.

More birthday cakes even though it is no longer my birthday. Cakes taste so much better when they are: i) surprises, ii) set on fire by way of candles, iii) eaten right after you make a birthday wish, and iv) accompanied by the sweet (figuratively) and not-so-sweet (melodically and musically) sounds of people you know singing to you.

Chocolate cake with ice cream from Nando's--thank you colleagues! I was totally not anticipating a cake so this came as a surprise to my stomach. My stomach and I had not budgeted for dessert, and so I couldn't finish all of it.

Chocolate mousse cake with strawberries, gooseberries and mulberries--thank you boss! I really want to rave about this cake because it was PERFECTION but since it was a surprise (and it WAS, because I got this four days after my actual birthday) no one will tell me where it came from. Or what it's called. Or whose idea it was!

But it was gorgeous and perfect and the mousse was just the right texture to melt in your mouth and the chocolate rice krispies at the bottom added just the right something extra to the creamy moussiness and I love love love loved it.

Does cake get better as one celebrates older birthdays? Because I can't ever remember being spoiled with three different kinds of cake before. This makes a very strong case for looking forward to turning 25.

Dark Chocolate Cheesecake; Palate Palette

Good things come in small packages:

Vanilla bean cheesecake and dark chocolate topping


Wondermilk cupcakes (portions of a Generous Stranger Birthday Boy's birthday cupcakecake: he wanted to share the love, and no one says no to birthday cake and spreading of love, so we obliged. Happy birthday and gratitude to YOU, stranger boy!)


Other good things that also come in small packages:
Tiffany blue boxes
Breathmints
Espresso shots
Lollipops
Babies

The fervour with which I believe in this adage may have something to do with the fact that I am five foot nothing. MAYBE. Just saying.

Chocolates Cakes; Delicious, Coffee Bean

Just realized, when looking through my pictures over the last month, that I have been ingesting an abundance of chocolate desserts. Maybe my stomach was trying to convey to me, via appetite preferences (ie the only way my stomach communicates with me... other than ferocious growling soliloquies during weekday afternoons that I pointedly ignore because no, Stomach, I will not feed you post-lunch and pre-dinner; the Body in which you reside is supposed to be doing work then, not eating at random hours) its gut feeling (pun intended) that Obama was going to become the first black* president of the United States.

Good on you, tummy. To celebrate your fortune telling abilities we shall consume more chocolate! I realize this whole post may sound and seem horribly racist. It's not. Obama won, I'm happy about said win, and also I like chocolate.

Chocolate Banana Cake from Delicious. And it WAS. It was thick and creamy and banana-flavoured and fudgey all at the same time.

Royal Chocolate Cake, Coffee Bean. Light and airy, with unexpected and secret crunchy layer of the chocolate cereal variety. I approve. I like finding textural surprises in my mouth.

* - Biracial, technically. If the dude keeps insisting that he identifies as black, which he does, I will respect his wishes and refer to him as black. But, Mr. President-Elect, I feel compelled to point out anyway that you are biracial. Assuming, of course, that race is even really anything but an arbitrary social construct and remnant of some archaic divide-and-rule alienate-the-Other power play as well as an internal manifestation of the human being's need to collate, collect, group and label ourselves and others for easy identification and simplistic understanding, which I totally think it is.

But I digress. Besides (back to the biracial topic), in order to correctly predict a biracial presidential win, my stomach should have gotten cravings for... what? Oreos? Marble cake? White and dark chocolate layered cake? Bounty chocolate bars? Evidently my cravings have not reached that level of sophistication.

Chocolate Mousse; The Apartment

Still craving chocolate.


And perhaps because it's been raining consistently tropical monsoon style every day for the past few weeks, am now also coming down with a cold. Actually it's either that I'm nursing the beginnings of a cold, or that my new perfume is making me sneeze uncontrollably, triggering emergency nasal mucus production. If it's the latter my nose will just have to soldier through. I smell like a hyperfeminine magical walking rosebush and I love it.

Warm Chocolate Chip Cookie with Hot Fudge Sauce and Vanilla Ice Cream; Bijou, Mont Kiara

Well girls and boys, it is that time of the month where I crave cupcakes and kisses and chocolate and ice cream floats. Okay fine, I crave all this every DAY of the month, but I know when it’s THAT time of the month (does anyone else think that combining uppercase letters and euphemisms is sort of like a schizophrenic literary technique: Pay attention to what I am saying! Wait, don’t pay attention to the fact that I am talking about something gross and unsavoury! But pay attention to the screaming uppercase disguise of this gross thing!) when I suddenly find myself irascibly argumentative and completely intolerant of stupidity, inadequate customer service, and, my personal PMS pet peeve: people who think they know everything when clearly they do not, or if they DO know that thing, then they should realize that I know it too, and how dare they imply that I didn’t know whatever they were pointing out to me, regardless of the fact that they probably thought they were being helpful and harmless by pointing it out? (“Hey Iman, the KLCI is below 900 points.” “YES. I KNOW. PLEASE STOP INFORMING ME OF BASIC KNOWLEDGE TO WHICH I HAVE ACCESS AND INSTEAD DUNK YOUR HEAD IN COFFEE”).

Basically, anyone who either talks slow or thinks slow grates on my nerves like manicured nails on a blackboard right about now. I feel like I need to quarantine myself from people with an IQ below a certain level. I am so mean. It's completely irrational. Most of the time I am a warm, bright ray of sunshine. Right now I am a ray of blinding sarcasm and razor-sharp-will-make-you-bleed contention.


Chocolate makes me feel better though... so I am posting this picture of dessert that was the SHIZZLE. All my favourite things--Haagen Dazs ice cream (albeit vanilla), warm chocolate fudge, chocolate chip cookies, cappuccinos-- literally served on a platter and ready to be ingested so they could come together in a hari-raya-fireworks-type explosion of the chocolate variety in my mouth. THE SHIZZLE.

Chocolate Fudge Cake; The Daily Grind

Because I've been neglecting my poor little pink blogspot baby for too long, I now have a backlog of photos to post and a yawning hole in the part of my brain that retains restaurant and food information. Hari Raya, Brunei, my family, a global financial meltdown and a goose have been preoccupying me of late. Also since I sold Hermes the iPhone (I miss you intensely but sadly our very touching relationship--see what I did there?!--was just not meant to be) I've been dependent on other people's cameras, which makes picture taking both inconvenient and inconsistent.

Yes, yes, excuses are for wimps and the faint-hearted. But you know what's NOT for the faint-hearted (unsuccessful segue but hey YOU try it)? Giant slices of chocolate fudge cake.

I loveeee monster cakes that figuratively attempt to devour you at the same time that you are literally attempting devour them; I loveeee the challenge. Also please be mollified by this peace offering; I really am trying to update more.

Chocolate Souffle & English Cream Puffs; Theobroma Chocolate Lounge, Pavilion KL

A vocabulary lesson for the edification of Theobroma Chocolate Lounge
(If I sound vitriolic and thus pedantic and patronizing, I apologize. It's because I AM.)

What Theobroma is guilty of committing:

(the fallacy of) misnomer \mis-NO-muhr\, noun
Any misnaming of a person or thing; also, a wrong or inapplicable name or designation.

Words that Theobroma is evidently ignorant/sadly mistaken about, which is somewhat disturbing seeing as it is not only supposed to be a highly specialized dessert place, but is also an restaurant chain originating from an English-speaking country:

souffle (dessert) \SOO-fley, soo-FLEY\, noun
A light, airy baked dish made fluffy with beaten egg whites combined with egg yolks and other ingredients, typically lemon or chocolate. Will "fall" after 20-30 minutes so should be served and eaten quickly.
Derived from the French verb souffle which means "to blow up" or puff up--which is what happens to this combination of custard and egg whites.

profiterole \pro-fit-er-OLE\, noun
A small hollow choux pastry that is typically filled with cream and covered with chocolate.

Desserts that Theobroma misnamed:

i) Chocolate Souffle with strawberries


ii) English Cream Puffs with chocolate and strawberries


What The Desserts Really Were, To Anyone With Half a Brain Or Access to Google, Which Clearly Excludes the Theobroma Management:

i) A rock hard, carved slab of chocolate, which is fine if you really feel like satisfying your craving for a chocolate brick but NOT FINE when you order a souffle! Come on, Theobroma! What is this? You can't tag fancy French names onto desserts that are pretty much the complete antithesis of what you're describing just because they sound pretentious and chocolate lounge-y! What are you, the Restaurant of Opposites and Irony?!


ii) Profiteroles. This one was just redundant. Profiteroles = tiny cream puffs with melted chocolate drizzled over them. Therefore in the interests of efficiency, economy and accuracy in general, I'm proposing a novel idea: call a spade a spade and english cream puffs with melted chocolate on them profiteroles. Revolutionary and ingenious, I know. Please try not to fall off your chair in shock.


I was too huffy to enjoy the chocolate "souffle" but in spite of that I LOVED the "cream puffs with chocolate". Even though they were tiny and you only get four and it was sort of like eating a mistaken identity. I really, really didn't want to share, but goosey kept repeating that he'd only help me eat dessert if I insisted (obviously, in hopes that I would insist). Luckily I am a generous and kind person and insisted, albeit reluctantly (also he once gave me a lot of shit after I said I wasn't going to share my Cheezels and then couldn't finish them and had to ask him to help finish them; I wasn't about to risk a repeat of that). Also X Files sucks balls, please don't watch it.

Dessert Buffet; Ritz-Carlton, Singapore

The following post is why one should not ever give me access to buffets with generous dessert spreads. I do not have a large enough appetite to eat both savoury AND sweet foods, so when given the choice between something savoury and substantial and something sweet and completely unhealthy, I will of course choose the latter.

Thus I literally stuffed myself to bursting point and seriously almost fell into a weird hybrid of a sugar rush-food coma after lunch. This was not good considering I was sitting right next to my boss in the post-lunch meetings and the only reason I was in Singapore was to attend work conferences, and not, as my stomach had managed to make me forget, to eat like a heifer.

White Chocolate Cake with Raspberries

Blueberry & Chocolate Pudding

Chocolate & Pineapple Cake (sounds like an intriguing combination, but turned out to be neither intriguing nor tasty)

Classic Cheesecake (with a crumbly cookie base: MY FAVOURITE KIND OF CHEESECAKE BASE and one that is surprisingly difficult to find)

Raspberry, Strawberry, Blueberry Berry Cake

Espresso Ice Cream
Vanilla Creme Brulee
Raspberry Pudding

Lemon Meringue Pie
Caramelized Pear
Raspberry Sorbet (I made Mr. Ice Cream Scooper pick out all the raspberry fruit chunks to put in my scoops of ice cream. It ended up taking him ten minutes to put the above concoction together. I'm sorry, Mr. Ice Cream Scooper)

Bread & Butter Pudding (absolute FILTH. Seriously. I couldn't eat more than two bites. How the hell does a six star hotel mess up a bread and butter pudding, by definition the most rudimentary of all puddings? For shame, Ritz Carlton, for shame)

Lemon Pudding with Meringue Topping

I have no idea what this is but seeing as it was on the dessert bar and my mission of the day was to clean out the entire dessert selection, I ate it anyway. Is that disturbing? Yes, more than slightly. Is that surprising? No, not at all.

Chocolate Moist; Alexis, Bangsar

Was not moist. At all. In fact, should have been called Chocolate Dry-and-Crumbles-In-Your-Mouth instead.

I am ashamed to admit I enjoyed it anyway, because you can pretty much drip hot melted chocolate over anything and I will instantly and automatically become a fan. An even better idea would have been to not bake the cake at ALL (seeing as the highlight of the dessert was actually the melted chocolate, it wouldn't have been a huge loss) and leave it as batter. Then the whole THING would be a veritable soup of Chocolate Moist and the decision to become aqueous would be the cake's way of rebelling against its previously deceptive "moist"-but-in-actuality-dry-as-sandpaper form by going the extreme in the other direction. I realize that salmonella is an unpleasant disease and one should not make a habit of eating raw eggs, sugar and cocoa powder, but I blame this perverse addiction on my former maid, who was either unaware of salmonella or was trying to poison me because I would smack her butt fifty times a day for fun. Whenever she made cake she'd ply my sisters and me with cake batter. Also she would make us fight for it. In retrospect this behaviour seems very suspect. I probably didn't notice it at the time because I was too busy licking bowls of cake batter.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip; Häagen Dazs Bukit Bintang

Had one of those weeks where you wake up at 5.45am every day and arrive home at 10pm almost every day and have your appetite sucked away from your stomach by the devilish creature known as Grand Lord Torturer Herr Stress (occupation: Right Hand Man of Satan), and subsist primarily on three coffees per day, each piled to the brim with an abundance of caffeine and sugar. And also potato chips (not in the coffee, obviously... though that IS an idea...). Lots of them, but only in the evening, because although your office thoughtfully started a snack food box at your petition, it is to be opened after 6pm only (silly fascist dictator dietician of a company). So I had one of THOSE weeks; you know how it is.

Then karma happened, and I got my reward for being diligent all week (I am aware it's only Thursday, but it's been a long four days):


CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM, MOFOS! Häagen Dazs finally restocked my flavour! Maybe the sad faces I made at the sales people the day they didn't have Chocolate Chocolate Chip touched their ice cream filled hearts and moved them to restock it asap. Maybe it was the sheer intensity of my desire to have not only chocolate ice cream, but also similarly flavoured chips in said ice cream, that magically brought the ice cream into the store. Maybe the shipment was due to come in anyway and had nothing to do with me? Yeah now I'm just talking crazy, it clearly wasn't the last reason.

Going to attempt to nap with my eyes open now/run off for Coffee #2 of the day.

Cesc Fabregas is Devil's Food Cake

In honour of the close of Euro 2008 and tonight's hopefully epic Spain-Germany final...

The last food resemblance I will be revealing (for the foreseeable future/until the '08/'09 English Premier League season starts; try not to miss these comparisons too much), and the antithesis to Germany's angel cake:

My man Francesc Fabregas, and his culinary doppelganger, Devil's Food Cake.

Angel food cake vs. devil's food cake? I know, I know; it's like I do this on purpose. But that's the way the cookie crumbles (pat on the back for you if you saw what I did there), and I don't make this stuff up, I just highlight what is glaringly obvious to someone who has constantly has cake on the brain.

In my opinion (and blog), Devil's food cake trumps angel cake. In life (and football)... check the results of the Euro final.

VIVA ESPANA!

Angelo's, Little Italy, New York

The Italians know how to make their desserts (they also know how to make their steaks, which is the reason we are conspicuously missing pictures of the dinner that preceded the dessert. I was too hungry to even try to take a picture)...


(My) Chocolate mousse

(Danny's) Cannoli

Forgot the name of the restaurant; Murray Hill, New York

Possibly the freshest dinner I have ever had in my life: greek thin crust pizza and chocolate brownies. The pizza was so fresh I could practically taste the plants the banana peppers were picked off from, and the... goat (?) that the feta cheese came from; and the brownies smelled so freshly baked that I didn't want to share until Danny rightly pointed out that I couldn't finish my pizza so how could I expect to finish my dessert... TEN OUT OF TEN on the freshness scale/a good start to New York.

Noir; Starbucks

Refused to patronize Dome and consume yet more lardy, soggy, rage-inducing "cake", so dragged the d-a-double-d-y to Starbucks.

Starbucks KLCC needs a wider cake selection. Seriously. Coffee Bean is kicking your double-fish-tailed ass.

Strawberry Chocolate Pavlova; Delicious

Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake; Palate Palette

Chocolate Sponge & Cheese Cake; San Francisco Coffee