Tummy Adventures

Hello all! I am finally in Berlin, but amidst all the hustle and bustle of settling in, I'm really missing home, so I decided to put together this listicle as a form of reminiscence on the experiences the past few months in Singapore. I'm a huge fan of incorporating local flavours (e.g. Kueh kuehs) into bakes, and these are a few of the bakeries/ cafes in Singapore that I think have done a fantastic job of fusing these flavours with western style bakes! So let's get started. 

Okada is located at One KM which is nearest to Tanjong Pagar MRT, and it's just a really ulu kind of mall with nobody around (especially during office hours) but I kinda like that because nowadays all the trendy food places are packed with people wanting to get their next Instagram post (present company guilty). Maybe it's the introvert in me but I get pretty sick of being surrounded by people sometimes and it's cool to find a cafe where you can pretty much sit down for hours with a book and a coffee and not worry about being considerate and giving your table to the next customer, or whether you'll be chased out or not. Not that I've done it, but I imagine that would be entirely possible. Their coffee is really good, and a huge plus point for me, comes with whipped cream! They specialise in chestnut desserts, which I absolutely love. The Mont Blanc was probably my favourite, because it comes with intense flourishes of chestnut puree and is just so....chestnutty! I love it.
This is one of their signatures, the chestnut swiss roll. It's pretty good, the chestnut flavour is not as intense but the cake is very nicely done, good texture, fluffiness is on point and not too sweet.
Wasn't sure what else to get so we got a reliable old matcha cake! I've never really had a pairing of grapes with matcha before, but it's pretty good.
Final verdict: Desserts: 4/5, Ambience: 3.5/5 (good if you're sick of overcrowded cafes, but as it's in a mall there's not much of a view), Coffee: 4/5, Service: 4/5 (no complaints here, they were sufficiently attentive and polite but you know, as it is with most places in Singapore, not the most outstanding either). I believe they have a high tea set that looks pretty worthwhile too, might try it out next time!

Tons of people were at the cafe so we had to wait in the lobby.
Mixed fries! It was supposed to be sweet potato fries, truffle fries and yam fries but apparently they were out of yam fries so we had to settle for just more of the other two. This bowl is HUGE so I'd recommend sharing among 4 people. Way too much for just the two of us. The fries weren't bad, but I thought the sweet potato fries were cut way too thick. The seasoning was fine, but because the fries were so thickly cut the fries weren't quite as crisp as I would have liked. The truffle fries were fine, although I kind of suspect the fries are just frozen fries that have been seasoned well, because the cut of the regular fries is so inconsistent with that of the sweet potato fries.
Taro Cheesecake. I'd say pass on this. The taro sauce was really good, but the cheesecake itself wasn't spectacular and the biscuit base was way too thick. Tastes pretty generic, like the Hershey's cheesecake slices that they sell at Burger King.
And lastly the star of the show, the Taro Waffles! We had ours with Earl Grey ice cream and it went SO well with the taro flavour. The waffles are infused with taro, which make for a dense, chewy waffle instead of a very light and crisp one, but I really liked that sort of texture, and I loved how it gave an intense taro flavour to every bite. It's served with dollops of pureed taro (heaven!), taro sauce (yum) and blueberries (why? Personal bias, I hate blueberries). My verdict? Come for the waffles, if nothing else, because it's worth it, especially if you're a huge taro lover like my mom. It's not just Instagram-worthy, but genuinely delicious!

Hello! I have a huge backlog of pictures to post but I have been incredibly lazy (and also having a tiny bit of a social life) , but since it's the weekend I thought some baking photos would be a good post to put up since maybe someone will be inspired to bake this weekend with the extra time off! Anyway, everyone loves ham and cheese bread; it's a crowd pleaser and it's super easy to bake! The plaits give it a little bit of an extra special sumthin' sumthin' to please the eyes so you can show off to your colleagues/classmates/friends again on Monday. ;p

 I had some extra dough left over (because I didn't buy enough ham and cheese to make another loaf) so I just made plain little buns with them. I adapted this recipe from the Taste of Home website (link here) but the loaves look 100x better here because I was pretty clumsy with the braiding.
I didn't really feel like posting the recipe because the one on the website is much more comprehensive and I took a lot of shortcuts (no dill or mustard). The only thing that I added to this recipe was that I added some dried rosemary (about two tsps) and sprinkled some cheese five minutes before the bread would have been totally done. Anyway, hope you guys are inspired to make something this week, and even if you're not hope you go out to try something nice to eat! Okay back to my crochet work now byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

 Now, on to the bad news. I generally don't like to complain about food but I was really quite disappointed , plus I my friends requested that I give a scathingly honest review, so, here goes. Headed to Haha Thai at Ngee Ann City with some of my friends for dinner before drinks last Wednesday because I had wanted to try their desserts. I just couldn't resist the thought of a Thai Tea flavoured lava cake. Unfortunately, I was pretty let down by their savoury menu. It's not that any of the food is bad, but the portions were so small, I was beginning to wonder if I had accidentally wandered into a fine dining restaurant, because that would have been the only place I could have accepted microcuisine. Scroll down for prices.
 Salted Egg Yolk Squid. I believe this was about $16. Even from a macro perspective you can tell there's barely anything in there.
 Haha Fried Rice. You can choose three flavours, of which we got pineapple,tom yum and olive. Each portion doesn't even begin to approximate a normal small bowl of rice. This was about 10 or 11 bucks?
 Crispy omelette. One of the better dishes, but still expensive. Can't remember how much it was but def over 10 bucks.
 Pandan Chicken ($6) and Green Curry Chicken. Don't be fooled by the pandan, the chicken pieces are minuscule. Literally, you can finish it in one bite. You don't even need to open your mouth too wide. Green Curry was okay, not great.
The dessert I came for! Thai Milk Tea Lava Cake, served with a side of coconut ice cream. This was pretty good, although the tea taste is a bit overpowered by the coconut ice cream. The inside was a really yummy condensed milk filling. The price though? $10. I know. Scary. All in all, I paid about $20++, including a drink (they don't serve tap water and charge for wet napkins used) and I barely took a bite of every dish. The food isn't bad, the service was friendly, but the prices and the portions are ridiculous for what it actually is. It's not mindblowing food that I can't find anywhere else in Singapore, so why should anyone have to pay that much when there are very much cheaper options elsewhere? I understand that the higher prices and smaller portions are probably due to the move from Lavender to Ngee Ann City which, I presume, has sky high rents, and I really would love to support a local restaurant in Orchard Road, but the quality has to match the price. Either up the game, or move back to Lavender, cuz I ain't loving it as it is now.

 The combination of flavours is unusual, but it works! The olive oil and orange juice make for an incredibly moist and scrumptious crumb, while the rosemary adds a unique and unexpected, herby flavour to the cake to complement the tartness of the orange, and permeated throughout by dark chocolate chunks, which I had obtained at a flea market in Barcelona. If you're ever in Barcelona, do check out the small little flea market by the Santa Maria del Pi! It happens every Sunday I believe, and you might find a little stall selling artisanal chocolates; their dark chocolate with sea salt is divine! They also have some other flavours that piqued my interest but that I, ultimately, did not get, like the dark chocolate with peppers, or dried rosebuds.
 It's not the prettiest cake there was, but I quite like how rustic and homely it is, with the orange sugar glaze and the fresh, sliced oranges on top. It's a very simple recipe, and didn't take me more than 10 minutes to whip together! I adapted the recipe from Oliviers & Co, so the recipe is in imperial units rather than metric, like I'm used to, but it wasn't a problem since I had brought my measuring cups.

Ingredients:

• 2.5 cups of self-raising flour
• 1.5 cups of orange juice
• 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil
• 3 eggs
• 0.5 tsp of salt
• 1.5 cups of white caster sugar
• Zest of an orange
• One and a half sliced oranges as a topping
• Powdered sugar + little bit of orange juice for the glaze
  

...in a good way. Had a really great dinner with Shu the other day at Sin Lee Foods (although I felt it was a little expensive) and then the most indulgent dessert experience at Mad about Sucre (which I thought was VERY expensive), but more on that later! First, dinner. Sin Lee Foods is located in quite a quaint location, amongst some nondescript HDB blocks in Tiong Bahru.

 I was really excited when I saw that they had Sweet Potato Fries with Salted Egg Sauce on the menu, because it combines two of my favourite flavours in the world, but this dish turned out to be a bit of a let down. The Sweet Potato Fries were honestly, not the best I've had. They were cold, and a little bit soggy, and I suspect it had been sitting on the counter for a while, whilst the egg sauce was great in flavour but unfortunately too thick for my liking, much too thick to complement the fries well and all in all, created a dessert in my mouth because it was just so dry. Shu wasn't a fan of the flavours, although I thought they could have worked well if only the texture of the fries and the sauce could have been improved. Sweet potato fries were $12.90 I believe, although the portion was, like the chicken and waffle, sizeable. If you're keen on trying this place out, I recommend sharing, else your bill could turn out pretty steep!
 Headed to Mad about Sucre near Outram Park MRT station for dessert! I've been seeing this place pop up all over my Instagram account and everything looked amazing so I HAD to try it out for myself. The Coco Citron is not only ethereally beautiful, with the gorgeous, sparkling sugar crystals interspersed amongst the fluffy, white coconut mousse, it's also refreshingly delicious. It has a very delicate, nuanced flavour, with just a whiff of tanginess from the lemon tart that pulls this whle dish together. Definitely my favourite dessert there, although for those who are into heavier, intense flavours, you might want to skip this and go straight to the next dessert.
The San Domingue is a schooling in how chocolate desserts should be done. Our server advised us to set aside the curious box on top of the sphere, crack it in half so the rum oozes out, then dig into the sphere to obtain chocolate, biscuit base and the caramelised plaintains within, on your fork, run that through the rum and eat them all together. Interestingly enough, the chocolate is supposedly made with hardly any sugar at all (as is the Coco Citron, all their cakes are made with about 40-60% less sugar than their original recipes), but was surprisingly sweet on its own. Not the kind of sickly, Cadbury milk chocolate sweet, but just a subtle sweetness. Note: their ingredients are apparently organic, fair trade and single origin. Almost sounds too good to be true.

Another aspect I loved at Mad about Sucre was the service and concept. First of all, all their desserts are paired with a specific tea that really does complement the dessert it's served with superbly. Secondly, the friendly servers take the time to explain the concept behind every dish, and list out the ingredients that are in both the tea and the desserts (they also have a server who does the explanations in Mandarin, as I overheard another server explaining the concept to the table behind us). Note that the price of the teas aren't included in the price of the desserts however! Each dessert is approximately $12.90 (I know, my wallet cries in pain), and each pot of tea is about $7 and for both the desserts Shu and I paid a total of about $40++ buckaroonies. A trip here will definitely burn a hole in your pocket, but after all, it's meant to be an indulgence and a treat, not an everyday, essential part of your diet. Despite the exorbitant price tag (the desserts are in fact quite small, just a note since you can't gauge size that well on these photos), I'd say this place is definitely worth a visit. Mad about Sucre has everything to rival Michelin-starred Patisseries in Europe; taste, artistry and elegance, and for that reason, I'm madly in love with it.