Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcake; Bisou

Why do good things come to an end? Why?!

Eating during the day: good thing, coming to an (albeit temporary) end with the coming of Ramadan (which will merit a wholeeee other post, because if you think I can ramble with no point or meaning in sight when I ramble about food, I assure you, I can ramble more when there is a severe lack of food. And brunch! No more brunch! I don't always wake up in time to have breakfast... or brunch, really, but the OPTION to have it: THAT is priceless. And come Monday: no more!).

Grey's Anatomy: good thing, rumoured to be coming to an end with its upcoming eighth season. If I'm going to be honest, I'd have to admit that Grey's jumped the shark around the time that Katherine Heigl was boinking the ghost of her dead but still very yummy ex-husband, but I'd rather be dramatic and mourn its tragic end. No more Cristina Yang! No more Lexie Grey! No more McSteamy!

Amy Winehouse: good singer, now passed. I have been secretly fascinated with Amy Winehouse since I first saw her: that eyeliner! Those tattoos! Those ballet slippers! And that really sexy voice. Such a sad ending.

And (I feel a little awkward segueing from a celebrity passing to a topic that's just a tiny bit more frivolous but it has to be done) Bisou's Cupcake of the Month for July: strawberry cheesecake cupcakes, my new favourite cupcakes in the world ever, coming to an end in August (duh). Why do you have to discontinue your Cupcake of the Month of July 2011, Bisou, why?! And since I'm asking rhetorical questions, why is it called strawberry cheesecake, when it's not really cheesecake?

I love everything in it. The generous dollops of strawberry, the generous swirls of cream cheese (one mustn't be stingy with strawberry dollops and cream cheese swirls, this is like the golden rule of desserts); the Digestive biscuit sprinkles, the fact that it's sweet in the middle (because of the strawberry) but rich on top (because of the cream cheese) but still light overall (because of the vanilla batter), why, why Bisou must you tease me with such perfection and then take it away just because it's no longer July? What is a month anyway, but an arbitrary collection of dates? (Wait, what? Lunar phase what? I'm ignoring you.)


So bring it on, August. A month that will lack coffee, brunches, and the inexplicably-named but magical strawberry cheesecake cupcake. I am inconsolable. In fact possibly the only thing that can console me is the onslaught of pasar ramadhans. And batik cake, if I can find it at said pasar ramadhans. And buka puasa buffets? Also the chocolate cake at the Taman Tun pasar ramadhan. I'm still inconsolable though. Really.

Eton Mess, the Apartment

Also known as dessert for the lazy sugarlover, because it's just meringue, strawberries, cream, and more meringue, slopped together with minimum effort and maximum sweetness. And because it contains almost all of my favourite dessert ingredients (sorry, chocolate; you're on the favourite dessert ingredients list but didn't make it into the Mess) and because it sent me straight into a very potent sugar shock, it is also my kind of dessert.

Though it may also be my kind of dessert because of its inherently sloppy nature that I may or may not share, because I may or may not try to be neat and organized, but recent living arrangements may have resigned me to the fact that despite my well-intentioned and best efforts I am just not; and I may or may not make messes and am terrible at housework and will, against better judgement, stuff too many clothes into too few drawers and dump my belongings wherever I feel like it and like sloppy desserts and am not ashamed. MAYBE.

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.

Strawberry Mint Parfait; the Apartment KLCC

A pretty little young mint cream biscuit strawberry tower takes a time out from her Saturday afternoon tea date with a sexy and nonchalant strawberry cooler to pose for a picture.

I wonder if there's such a thing as a fashion magazine for food. Because this picture could totally be one of the Spotted Around KL: What Desserts Are Wearing This December '08 contributions.

Fresh Cream Fruit Cake; Bakerlyn, Brunei

Strawberries and grapes and kiwis and mangoes and cream, oh my!

This cake is perfection. All angelic creaminess and blooming airiness and melt-in-your-mouth innocuous milky whiteness, punctuated with rainbow bursts of fruit flavour. In my imaginary land where this cake is the world, everything is fresh and everything is beautiful and everything is pure, there are green meadows with blue skies with fluffy clouds in it, and little fleecy lambs are prancing around singing Blake's Songs of Innocence.

I shit you not, I have dreams about this cake.

Umi, please send? Pleasepleasepleaseplease? I have traversed high and low in KL and I haven't found anything close to this cakey gloriousness.

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 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.

Strawberry Cheesecake, Creme Brulee; Oriel, Bangsar

Pbil and I tried to go out for cupcakes but apparently almost every cupcake place in KL is closed on Mondays (true story; google it if you don't believe me). Whyyy, cupcake places, whyyy? Is this a coincidence or a flagrant oversight on the part of the majority of KL cupcake producers? Because it makes no business sense to shut your store on a day during which the masses will be tired and weary, in desperate need of a sugary pick-me-up with which to gather strength to face the remaining four days of the work week.

Fortunately we found some cake anyway, though I had to resort to that tried and trusted favourite, cheesecake. Also fortunately, pbil let me eat some of his creme brulee (most probably in an effort to gain brownie points with me... get it? Did you see the dessert pun there?!).

Clearly someone reads this blog and is aware that the way to my heart (which is connected to my sister's, obvi, cause I am her favourite and she loves me soooo much) is my tummy. Well played, homie, well played.

French Toast; Cafe Soho, New York

Brunch, or, as I like to call it, brizzunch, is my favourite meal, in theory and in practice. What's not to love? Having brunch automatically means you have slept in and thus missed having breakfast, so it is reasonable to assume that if you start the day with brunch, you are having a lazy day rife with afternoon naps and mindless channel surfing; plus you are pigging out and get to have a meal that is more substantial than breakfast yet is usually just as substantial as lunch... but is bundled up into one easy package! Like two for the price of one!


Brunch is that sexy forbidden love-child of the more granola (literally and metaphorically) Breakfast and the efficient workaholic Lunch. Like I know breakfast gets all this hype and rep for being "important" and "healthy", but my contrarian nature causes me to reject authority and "what is good for me", so adjectives like "important" and "healthy" make me want to pick an argument with whatever is being described in that way. In this instance the argument would go a little something like "Umm yo B-fast? So I know you're the first meal of the day and you fill an empty stomach but other than that, what's the appeal? If I wake up at 1pm and have my first meal of the day then you automatically become Lunch so obviously you're not really very clearly defined or distinct in your personality at all, I mean pick a persona and stick to it, dammit, because if you're that fickle then I'm sorry but I refuse to take you seriously. And while we're on the topic being described as "healthy" is kinda the food equivalent of someone being described as having a "nice personality and good sense of humour". In other words, it's bland and lacking and generic and if you were a person you'd probably be that awkward self-righteous nice guy sitting in the corner being like 'but I'm good for you, why don't you want to date me'.

"And Lunch, I don't want to date you either. Any mention of you is usually preceded by the words "business" or "quick", and sometimes I'd like to force feed you a chill pill and tell you to take life easy and slow down. You are always talking about work, and right after I see you, I have to go back to work and keep doing work although you invariably make me sleepy, which, honestly, is a little torturous. Yet you do this to me, like, five days a week. Logically, all signs point to you displaying signs of sadism. Sadism = Not Hot.


"So Brunch, I still like you best of all. You're slow and easy and languid. You can be savoury or sweet, or both! At the same time (case in point: French Toast and strawberries and bananas and way too much maple syrup)! You are exciting. You keep me on my toes. You also single-handedly evoked a love letter from me, which is pretty impressive. I mean, I don't care this passionately about most HUMAN BEINGS. You, my friend, are a keeper."

XOXOXOX & see you Saturday,
FEI FEI

Passionfruit Ice Parfait in a Coconut Crepe; Mandarin Oriental

The dessert otherwise known as: Block of Solid Ice That I Was Not Able to Eat Gracefully For Every Time My Spoon Tried To Chip Away at the Ice it Would Hit the Plate With a Resounding Crack. Which is a little too long and Iman-centric to fit onto a menu, so I can understand why the Mandarin Oriental named it what they did.

Usually I inhale desserts like they're pure oxygen and I just ran a 100-metre sprint, but this parfait was just too pretentious and required too much effort to eat. Passionfruit... AND coconuts... AND the self-consciously pompous tiny portion... AND an icepicking adventure upon which one must first embark in order to even ingest it?

Oh, M.O., M.O.... no, no, no. Desserts should be soft, squishy and leisurely. If I wanted a workout and an overload of tropical exoticism I'd go jogging in the jungle.

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!

Dessert; Serendipity 3, Upper East Side, New York

I have wanted to eat at this restaurant ever since I saw it in the movie Serendipity, which was a truly shiteous product of filmmaking, but the dessert scene during which John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale share a chocolate ice cream volcano and fall in love was inspiring and simultaneously spoke to my heart and stomach (not an easy feat).

INGREDIENTS:

A pretty menu (extra points for the swirly illustrations and creative food names: they have a chicken dish called A La Garden of Allah. Piqued my interest, but I decided it was mildly blasphemous and also I was too full)


... Doled out in massive proportions (the aforementioned menu was approximately 75% of my formidable 5 foot height span... which means it was... umm... okay you can do the math)


One Ice Cream Crepe (Danny's), which was not only swimming in whipped cream and fruit sauce but somehow evoked the impression of doing so while enjoying a cold lemonade on a blistering and cloudless summer day


One Strawberry Fields Sundae (mine), a gargantuan concoction of strawberries, strawberry ice cream, cheesecake, and whipped cream, which, with the exception of the strawberry ice cream, is a combination of some of my most favourite things in the world; topped with a dash of lyrical Beatle-esque inspiration in the sundae name


Eat for an hour (cappucino optional), promptly pass out upon finding nearest available bed, and you too will dream of strawberries tap dancing on cheesecake the whole night.

Pastries; Venieros, East Village, New York

It was as though I died and went to pastry heaven. I'm not even exaggerating. I almost cried tears of happiness and sheer wonder at the beauty of all the little pastries and how cute the shop was. It took me half an hour to decide what I wanted to eat, and the waiter must have wondered if I suffered from some kind of disease that causes me to drool incessantly to the point of being unable to articulate which pastry I wanted.

Chocolate covered Cannoli and Strawberry Tart, starring in a vaguely explicit photograph

The glorious menu that I spent half an hour reading because: i) I like reading, ii) I like reading about food, and iii) the entire menu listed and described each pastry and cake.

I didn't want to leave, ever, but I was getting sleepy from all the food. Goodbye Veniero's... you will always have a special place in my heart.

Brunch; Primorivo Osterio, West Village, New York

After making the bold and completely unprovoked claim that New York houses the best food in the world, Danny fell under some pressure to prove he wasn't just talking out of his ass. And then we had brunch in the West Village and all of a sudden it DID turn out to be true because I finished (honest-to-God licked-the-plate-squeaky-clean finished) my first meal in New York.

(Danny's) Steak & Eggs

(My) Eggs Norwegian

(NO MORE/Note the lack of) Eggs Norwegian

And someone is addicted to cappucinos and won't admit it...

And someone else is addicted to desserts (Strawberry & Banana Sponge Cake) and will readily admit it because this was the most moist, succulent sponge cake I have ever had in my life.