Quite excitingly, on the plane from Singapore to London, one of the available meal options was designed by none other than scary super chef, Gordon Ramsay!

It was salmon with pancetta peppers, boiled potatoes and herb butter.

Gordon Ramsay's Fish

It was quite good, as far as plane food goes. The sturdy texture and strident flavour of the salmon is perfect for in-flight food, which has to withstand long storage, and quick reheating.

So now I can say that I did sample Gordon Ramsay's food on my trip to Europe. And it was included in the price of the ticket. Woo.

Monday night in Singapore was hawker food time. Wahoo! I miss this stuff so much when I'm at home! I went to Newton Circus with my mates Nat and Mark.

Lime Juice - the perfect drink for a hot day.

Here's Mark.

Fresh seafood stall

Gai laan

Gong gong

Swordfish

Pickle

Inside of Gong-gong

Hokkien Mee

The stalls...

I arrived in Singapore last Saturday at about 5:30... and 2 hours later it was margarita time! I met up with my friend Germaine at Cafe Iguana (at Riverside point, opposite Clarke Quay) for nachos and margaritas.

You can get the margaritas in all sorts of fab flavours; we had peach. As for food, it was nachos and chicken chimichangas (like burritos, served with rice). Perfect for soaking up that alcohol!

Yesterday, as I was busily potterying about the kitchen making , tuna tataki and steamed rhubarb pudding, I got a text message from my good friend Adriana, whose birthday it was that night.

Something along the lines of...

I'm so stressed out cos my work friends were told they shouldn't bring a cake which was their initial intention and now i have no cake :S

Well, it was Sarah to the rescue with a quick batch of coca-cola cupcakes. Adriana wanted cupcakes, because the club where she was having her birthday does not allow knives or forks.

So, these are exctly the same as the last time, but this time I made a double batch, and waited for the cupcakes to cool down before applying the icing. And as an interesting note, I only made a single quantity of the icing (ran out of icing sugar, you see), but it managed to cover all the cupcakes, with one carefully spread teasponful of icing per cupcake. In fact, I think it works better with slightly less icing, as the icing is quite sticky and messy. Furthermore, both cupcake and icing are sickly sweet. And any more of that sugary, sugary icing would make kids extremely hyper, or induce some sort of hallucinatory dream in adults.


24 cupcakes

I let the icing on the cupcakes set in the fridge, then packed them into a couple of ice-cream containers, and thence into a paper bag for easy transportation. All in all, it took about 1.75 hours to make the cupcakes, including the hour required to bake them (2 batches at 30 minutes each). So it was quite a time-efficient exercise, I must say.


2 boxes

And here we are at the club... eating cupcakes in a club. How novel!


in chaise lounge


cupcake in club


it's a cupcake


hitomi loves cupcakes

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADRIANA!

The shopping expedition my mother and I made to Prahran market on Thursday involved a lengthy rest at the Crabapple Bakery, which is cute and dinky cupcake heaven.

Crabapple Bakery
Shop 6
Prahran Market
9827 8116

and

Shop 7
1567 Burwood Highway
Tecoma
9754 5888

The cupcakes, of which there are many varieties, cost about $4, with a 50c surcharge for sitting down and using the fine pink china. You can also get tea in a fab silver pot with gorgeous pink teacups. I can't remember how much the tea was, but we paid $16 in total for tea for two and two cupcakes.

They also sell scones and cream, but we'll have to wait for next time to try them. Ooh, and you can buy full-sized cakes, lovely pink and blue cakestands, plates, cute giftcards, teacups, teapots and so on.

But the main event is definitely the cupcakes.

I had a lemon-blossom cupcake...


lemon blossom cupcake

...and my mum had a sticky date cupcake...


sticky date cupcake

Here are the gorgeous teacups!


teacup, teapot, milk

I was afraid the cupcakes might be dry on the inside, but indeed, they were lovely and moist...


inside of lemon blossom cupcake


inside of sticky date

Delicious!

I enjoyed the experience so much that I returned 2 days later, taking a respite from the stress of Chapel street shopping. I had a "banana split" cupcake, which was a banana/macadamia base with chocolate fudge ice-cream. DROOL!


banana split cupcake

Yesterday for lunch my parents and I went to The Brasserie by Phillipe Mouchel at Crown to celebrate my birthday.

This is one of my favourite special occasion restaurants, but I really think you don't need to save it for special occasions, especially if you go at lunch and get the 3 courses plus a side dish for $40-ish deal. Which we always do.

So, when you sit down, they give you fab bread rolls with olive oil and deliciously salty dukkah.


bread, oil, dukkah

Here are our entrées.


Mum's wagyu beef carpaccio - I think it had slivers of apple on top.

Dad had his usual escargots, which were delicious.


escargots

I had confit vegetables with a poached egg on top. I was planning on having a VERY BIG main meal, which took 40 minutes to come out, so the waitress recommended that I have a light starter so as not to be bored waiting.


confit vegetables

And onto the mains...

Dad's was duck with figs. He said it looked small on the plate, but was extremely filling.


duck

Mum had snapper!


snapper

I chose the cassoulet, which comes with a warning that "it takes 40 minutes to prepare and is very filling". It had toulouse sausage, duck, pork and lamb in it, with white beans. Wowza!


cassoulet

Here are our side dishes...


Chips - good God, I love fries!


beans


salad

Watch me work my way through that cassoulet. I did my best, but couldn't finish it.


cassoulet 2


working my way through


with apologies to phillipe mouchel

Unsurprisingly, being the greedy ho that I am, I still had room for dessert.

I had a chocolate tart with mango sorbet. The tart was very rich, very chocolatey and not sweet at all. It contrasted very well with the light and tangy mango sorbet.


chocolate tart

Mum had this fab looking frozen honey nougat terrine thang. It was gorgeous! On reflection, even though my chocolate tart was nice, I probably should have ordered this.


nougat frozen

Mmm... coffee!


coffee and petits fours

This was such a fabulous meal. I adore The Brasserie!