Who will win!?!?

To make your own you need:

• Jelly mix
• Cake mix and the relevant ingredients
• Custard (doublethick is the best!)
• Strawberries or other berries

I picked strawberry to go with the theme.

Put it in the fridge to set.

Make your cake according to the instructions and bake it.

Wait for everything to be set and cooked. The cake should be cool to the touch before you begin putting it together.

Chop up some strawberries as decoration and put your own spin on it.

To decorate like James’ monstrosity awesome creation start with a layer of jelly then a circle of cake then custard. Keep doing this until you get to the top. Finish with custard and add berries with a strawberry topper.

Delicious, I guess… if you like that kind of thing…

Now if you want to make Violet’s Super McAwesome version start with strawberry slices around the edge of the cup.

Fill the middle with custard.

Cut up some cake and add that then some jelly cubes. Continue layering the ingredients.

Finish the top with some pink sprinkles, jelly cubes and a strawberry heart.

Taadaaaaa!

Enjoy your delicious creation and try not to spend the rest of the night arguing over who’s is better. Realistically there’s no argument because clearly the winner is James Violet James Violet.

Which would you make? The Epic cup or the Cute Heart?

Now get creative and show me your version!

The very famous RRCherrypie does instructional videos if you want to see some, they are totally addictive!

This is the contents of the box, you have to cut open the plastic package because it has instructions as well as places to measure your pieces.

One by one you empty the packets into the corresponding plastic area, add water, stir and leave to set.

These parts were the egg and tuna topping.

I was kind of crap at making the nori wrapping XD It’s like trying to roll out bubble gum!

Totally serious business!

But in the end it does really look like sushi! And it even comes with soy sauce.

Both mine and Kim’s panda bento suffered slightly from user fail but it was a really fun way to spend time! The sushi was all grape flavoured but other kits vary.

You can get them on Amazon, ebay and a lot of other online stores, just google Kracie or Poppin Cookin kits. Hope you guys enjoyed as much as we did!

All you need to do is melt chocolate, pour in, stick in the fridge then eat :D

I decided to try making some strawberry chocolate which turned out to be delicious! I melted the white chocolate in the microwave the added a little strawberry Nesquik powder.

After stirring well it turned pink.

It was a little lumpy but more stirring fixed that.

The end result was very cute and so yummy!

They were great to eat on their own but now I want to make a bunch and use them to decorate things! Next stop, adorable cheesecakes :D

Violet: Did you remeber to stretch first?

Me: Stretch? What am I, a woman!?!

Violet: You get no sympathy. And you get to make me dinner.

I sometimes manage to actually run every now and then, and when I do I try my best to eat right, but I still love baking. So before I bake anything this conversation takes place:

Me: Are people actually going to eat these if I make them or am I going to end up eating all of them again?

Everybody else: Oh sure, we’ll eat them, sound delicious.

*Jimmy makes cupcakes*

Me: Cupcakes are ready!

*half a week later*

Me: Nobody is eating any cupcakes!!!!

Violet: Oh yeah, I’ll have one tomorrow

Me: Liar!

Cupcakes: Pssst, Jimmy, eat me and my buddies!

Me: You go to hell cupcakes!!! You go to hell and die in a fire!!

Cupcakes: But we’re delicious!

Me: Oh. Ok.

Violet: Who ate all the cupcakes!?!?!

Mrs. Skeleton: I can make a pie!

Everyone: NO THANK YOU!!!!

And now we come full circle. I needed something that I could bake, would taste delicious but would still be healthy-ish if/when I end up eating them all. These donuts only have something like 300KJ each and since the daily recommended kj intake is around 8500, you can eat 28 of these bad boys a day!!!

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 3/4 cup low-fat buttermilk at room temperature (I can never find buttermilk so I use regular milk with a little bit of lemon juice, but mix them separately so the milk doesn’t curdle.)
• 2 eggs at room temperature
• 50g of room temp butter (if you are really eating healthy then you can sub this with 2 tbsp apple sauce or light margarine)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup blueberries

Combine all your dry ingredients in a sifter and…sift them?

Just make sure that they all mix together well.

add all the wet ingredients except for the lemon juice

Give everything a good stir, THEN stir in a few quick splashes of lemon juice

At this point I poured some of the mixture into a lightly greased donut pan because Violet likes plain donuts, but I like blueberries, so I made 6 plain and 6 blueberry. I have also made mixed berry and mixed berry with cream cheese which was really nice.

Finding a donut pan can be difficult, we luckily came across this one at K-Mart for $9, but if you can’t find one try looking for a mini Bundt Cake pan, they are a little more common since you don’t usually bake donuts.

Never having made donuts before, I had no idea how much batter to put in each little thingy. As it turns out filling it to the brim was too much and mine came out as some kind of donut-cupcake hybrid that I called cupnuts. Because that sounds hilarious.

On the other side they look normal-ish. Really it’s a brilliant system because since the middle has a divit but not a hole you can put a filling like custard or jam or something there!

Unfortunately I forgot to take any photos of the icing process, but here’s the recipe!

• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tbsp whole milk
• A little cream cheese if you like, but again that’s going to add to the Kj count =(
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Dip the donuts into the mixture and rotate as you pull it out to get a smooth finish, then decorate with your favorite toppings!

These ones look a little…deflated. That’s because I forgot to add butter I think. I forgot to add something somewhere along the way and they came out really chewy.

These are great for parties where you can set up a make-your-own donut bar!

I’m so awesome at this being healthy thing. What do you guys think?

Then we put the create-a-jelly mix into a big bowl, poured in 200ml cup of boiling water and stirred until it dissolved

After about 5 minutes the tea was ready too!

We poured the tea into the create-a-jelly and whisked. Whisk like the wind!!! Oh, but also not too much because you don’t want bubbles in your jelly! James is always over zealous with his whisking.

It made enough for two of our heart shaped silicon cake pans which are about an inch deep and the size of my hand spread out. If those aren’t scientific enough measurements for you then you’re at the wrong blog… ;)

It was about this point that I made the mistake of reading the tea box out loud. Apparently you can EAT the tea bits after brewing because they are actual pieces of peaches and berries ets. James thought it would be a brilliant idea to add the tea to the jelly. I wasn’t so keen on the idea so I didn’t let him touch mine. It did actually look very pretty though, the kind of thing I imagine would be lovely at a tea party.

Into the fridge they went for a few hours until set.

We haven’t quite mastered getting the jelly out of the molds yet. It’s a long debate between the two of us as to the best way to get jelly out in one piece. All suggestions welcome! It might not look very pretty but it tasted delicious! James thought  the peach bits were really nice in the jelly, but he actually hates tea so he picked out the leaves. I didn’t like the solid bits but I have really weird things about textures. The plain one was really yummy though!

Ignore that and look at it in the mold again :D

There you have it! If you’re looking for a deicious way to keep cool in the summer or for a fancy way to jazz up a triffle, Peach Melba Tea from The Oriental Tea House! I’m not going to stop here though, now I know it works I’m going to try other teas, I think blueberry would be so good!

This recipe is REALLY easy. All you need is:

• A bottle of coke
• A bottle of BBQ sauce
• A little less than a kilo of pork shoulder or 2 racks of pork ribs
• Your favorite seasoning (optional)
• 8 hours of your life you dont mind spending wishing for a time machine

According to Violet this recipe is even easier if you have a ruggedly handsome chef to do the cooking for you.

I prefer to make this recipe with pork ribs because I think ribs are just the best things ever. I would marry ribs. And have little rib babies. I would then take us on a family vacation and “accidentally” crash the plane on a deserted island and proceed to eat my wife and babies to survive and then be very sad. Not because I just ate the love of my life, but because I no longer had any ribs. Buy me some ribs.

Anyway, pork shoulder is much cheaper and to be honest it tastes about the same, shoulder is just a little harder to work with because:

a. It’s not as tender a cut of meat

and

b. You have to cut the fat off

 Once the fat is off you can do a few things with it

1. Throw it away.
2. Cover it in salt and make pork crackling.
3. Put it on a spike as a warning to other pork fats that you are not a merciful ruler.
4. Slap strangers across the face with it and yell “you’ve been pork-fatted!”

I only endorse two of those, but I’ll let you guess which ones. Cut the remaining pork up into pieces that fit in the bowl and pour in your favorite BBQ sauce. Measurements don’t have to be precise at all here. to be honest I have no idea how much BBQ sauce I poured in, but it was pretty much a 1:1 ratio with the coke I added later. The pork pieces dont have to be tiny either, but smaller pieces will break down easier. 2″ x 3″ strips should be more than fine.

Pour in the coke. I like to use vanilla coke, but it’s up to you. The coke just helps break down the enzymes in the meat and by the end it doesn’t really taste much like coke at all anyway. I have also been thinking of making this with orange fanta sometime for sort of a beef a l’orange kind of thing but the other members of the house seem to think that’s weird.

Just add enough so that it fills up to the brim

If you want, add your favorite spices. This recipe still comes out great without them, especially if you buy a really nice BBQ sauce, but I LUUUUUUVVVVV this meat rub. It’s from www.SouthernBBQSauce.com and makes EVERYTHING taste better.

 Toss it with your hands so that everything is well covered…

… look like a smug butthead…

… and pop it in the oven!

It’s going to be in there at just over 100 Celsius (212 Fahrenheit) ((373.15 Kelvin)) for 6 hours. Well in total it’s going to be about 8 hours, so start this in the afternoon unless you like to have dinner at 4 am. If you are lucky enough to have a slow cooker then pop it in that instead. Also, if your oven is measured in kelvin then you may want to consider buying a new one…

 This is the most painful part because if you’re in an apartment like us then there is no way that you can escape the delicious smell coming from your oven. You will smell it everywhere and no matter what you eat, you will be wishing it was Coca-Cola pulled pork. Go ahead and give it a stir after 3 hours.

6 hours later…tadaa!!!

At this point pour it through a strainer. The bowl will be HOT. Too hot to just quickly try and grab it out of the oven and pop on the bench in bare hands because you can do it reallyreallyreally fast usually? You better believe it…

mmmm yummy.

You should be left with a bunch of meat pieces, so grab two forks and start just pulling everything apart. The pork pieces I cut up were pretty big so this time it was a little bit harder, but still worked. The first time I did this I used ribs and just cut the racks in two so they fit in the pot and at this point they just fell apart. It was awesome and delicious but make sure you get all the bones!!!!

Pour most of the sauce back into your bowl so that the meat floats a little. The more you pour back in, the longer you have to wait for it to reduce so the sauce thickens up a bit and doesn’t just run all over the place. Pop it back into the oven with the lid off at 150 Celsius, 356 Fahrenheit, 453.15 Kelvin (seriously, get a new oven) for an hour or two, but keep an eye on the sauce. If it’s too runny then crank the heat up a bit and if it’s too thick, add a bit more sauce. At this point it’s up to you how you like it.

After an hour and a half mine looks like this and I am too hungry to wait anymore!

Violet likes hers served on rice with sour cream and pickles. Everything melts together in a big gooey mess.

 I like mine on buttery toasted buns with sour cream, mozzarella cheese and pickles. Okay, so it’s not the healthiest of meals, but maybe you could make yours with coke zero?

Pulled pork is awesome and if you’re lookin’ to fancy up a BBQ, this is definitely the way to go! That’s all for now, but as they say in Louisiana (according to wikipedia anyway) Fisça da Geda ywum ywum doun bayeou!

Sometimes it’s easier said than done without getting them everywhere XD

Camwhore with the instructions.

Add chocolate to the mold.

Put chocolate into the pocky part before you stick into the pocky this way it gets completely encased.

Pocky next.

Then more chocolate.

Scrape off any extra… or alternatively don’t add too much in the first place.

Stick them into the fridge until completely set.

My first lot pretty much sucked because they broke as I took them out of the molds. At this point if yours don’t suck you can add more decorations.

My second batch was much cuter.

Of course it was a super hot day so after about 10 seconds they melted back into chocolate goo and I ate them with a spoon XD

Awesomely fun way to spend an afternoon especially if you can make them with a friend!

Now if you want to see good cooking look at what this handsome guy who seems to live in my kitchen has made lately…

Delicious paella, soooo good. I only tried this for the first time recently but it’s so yummy!

Sausage bread and he even baked the bread from scratch!

And green tea loaves of bread too with cream cheese inside. *drool*

Did you eat anything delicious this week?

Dump in around 4 tablespoons of sugar.

Mix it all together until everything is wet.

Line the muffin tray with pastry. I was in a hurry so I went for a messier… more rustic look XD

Spoon in the strawberry mixture.

Add a pastry top.

Fold in the edges and press them with a fork. Don’t forget to poke some holes in the top too!

Bake for around 20 minutes at 180 degrees C or until the tops are all golden and delicious looking.

Trust me, they’re so delicious you won’t even have time to take a photo of the finished project because SOMEONE will eat them all while watching Game of Thrones… ok yes it was me but they were soooo good *_* Go make and eat now, I command you!

Add a spoon of tomato paste and one of pesto.

Mix together, add a lot of parmesan and mozzarella if you like a lot of cheese (I do!).

Add optional veges, I like fresh mushrooms or just those cheap frozen cubed veges.

Quit screwing around in the kitchen and get back to work while you eat lunch ;D The total time spent in the kitchen (not including pasta cooking time because I am generally back at the computer during that) is maybe 5 minutes.

It doesn’t look particularly appetising and it’s definitely not presented very well but it tastes good and it’ll get you through until dinner haha!

For something more visually appealing, here’s some packet mix pudding that I made last month. It looks good and I didn’t think it tasted half bad but James thought it was the worst thing in the world and spit most of it back into the sink. Clearly I need to stick to baking pies and macarons!

I’m completely obsessed with watching videos of those Japanese DIY  gummy sweets though, they look like SO much fun to make and if importing wasn’t so insanely expensive I would totally get a bunch of them to experiment with! I need to find a Japanese grocer near here so I can start hunting for them at reasonable prices ^_^ If you haven’t seen the videos you totally need to, just check out RRCheriePie’s Channel. I wasted too much time watching them on the weekend… I probably should have spent that time making better pasta ;)

• 2 Timtams
• Blueberries
• Strawberries
• Thickened cream (heavy cream/whatever the type of cream you generally eat with cake is called in your country, something with at least 35%+ fat)
• Sprinkles
• Fruitcake (not really needed but I had some spare to use up)

Now I see a lot of people making these fancy looking desserts in fancy looking wine glasses etc. I love how pretty they look but I also hate eating out of them because it’s hard to get the last bits out and the ones we have are small compared to regular glasses so I say screw prettiness, go with the biggest cup you have >:D

Left: Very pretty. Right: Realistic of how much I want to eat chocolate.

So this is the simplest concept ever: layering!

Stick a spoon full of fruitcake in the glass and pour a spoon of cream on it. If you’re not using fruitcake you can substitute with regular sponge cake or more chocolate biscuits.

Add some blueberries and chopped strawberries.

Roughly chop the Timtams and add some.

More cream!

Continue layering deliciousness until you get to the top.

Lastly add the sprinkles and enjoy!

eat while watching crappy movies or playing video games.

Took around 5 min to make and as the cream melts into the Timtams it forms the most delicious mush in the universe. *craving again*

Food Friday is as healthy as ever ;) Next week I’m going to share my budget recipes, money is tight here at the moment so we’ve been cooking frugally. Sometimes the best comfort food recipes are the cheapest! ^_^

I know you’re supposed to have turkey on Thanksgiving but it’s so expensive here (like $60 for a bird) so we opted for the much cheaper pre-prepared Woolworths chicken for $9. We did have turkey but more on that later!

Does anyone know why scones are called biscuits in the US? I have the feeling there would be some awesomely epic misunderstandings if I visited and asked for a biscuit and was presented with a scone instead of a cookie XD I’m confused just thinking about it. Also the idea of eating scones with savory food squicks me out, scones should be served only with jam, cream, butter and a good cup of tea :D

My delicious dinner:

Of course I couldn’t resist trying a nugget in a biscuit while dipping it all in mashed potato, I did skip the barbecue sauce though ;) A slice of dessert if you get the reference haha! It really tasted horrible XD

I stuck mostly to the mashed potatoes and asparagus, so yummy!

Now dessert which is all I really care about hahaha! James making his dessert:

And its…………………. TURKEY BALLS!

Basically they are chocolate truffle balls with tails and a chocolate peanut for a head! Zomg so delicious!

We also had James’ version of my apple pie! Now that it’s coming into Summer I want to marathon Pushing Daisies again and bake a lot of pies… this can only end well right?

So yay for Thanksgiving! If you live in the US what do you guys do for it? Any special American foods I should try next year? We had pumpkin pie last year and it was so very not for me but I loved trying it anyway! If you celebrated I hope you had an awesome time!!

They do the BEST ice tea too, I always get strawberries and cream and it’s perfect for hot days.

Vanessa and Nikki being generally adorable.

The prices here are on the higher side of things but the atmosphere is nice so I would come here for a business lunch or if I had to take my parents out ^_^

Salt and pepper squid that was delicious!

Vanessa and I both have a love for vegetables, I couldn’t help but take this photo of her showing her true colours ;)

All in all it was a delicious dinner. Next time I’ll know to skip yum cha and go straight for the delicious tea and menu items!

On the way home James and I felt like something sweet so we stopped in at Harakuju Crepes… which is basically as the name indicates: Harajuku style crepes.

They do all the standards like strawberries and cream etc but they also do specialty crepes like cheesecake… which is literally a slice of cheesecake wrapped in the crepe with whipped cream, strawberries and sauce XD They also do savory versions but I’ve not tried any yet.

I tried out the new green tea flavour and it was very yummy. Best flavour ever: green tea crepe with strawberries, icecream and chocolate sauce inside. Very yummy dessert!

The last of my food related adventures for today was trying the new schnitzel place which just opened in the Melbourne Central food court.

I am a big fan of parmigana so I was very excited, probably slightly sadly so ;)

Schnitz kind of reminded me of Grill’d but for schnitzel. The prices were similar too, I went for the Swiss Schnitz roll which is a “Schnitzel of your choice plus Swiss cheese, avocado, semi-dried tomato, baby spinach & sweet chilli mayo.” That in a small combo with chips and a drink was $16.40 so more expensive than most of the other food court shops.

Overall I actually liked the chips better than I did the schnitzel roll. There was nothing particularly bad about it but it didn’t stand out as being awesome either so I can’t imagine myself craving it again enough to spend the money. I do still want to try their parmagana though!

The chips were actually really good though, they were seasoned with something yummy and they tasted almost like honey. Odd flavour to begin with but quite addictive!

So those were my food adventures for this week! Have you guys had anything good to eat this week? Anywhere you think I should try out? I’ve been eating out way too much lately, I’m guessing the next few weeks will be back to budget pasta at home to make up for it haha!

Whip it with an electric beater until it starts getting fluffy and the butter gets a little lighter.

Add in the egg…

And the food colouring…

Whip it again and until it’s fairly fluffy.

The recipe here differs depending on who you are…

If you are James then: take forever finding a clean bowl and sift all the flours together making sure to mix thoroughly. Add it to the cookie mixture and mix until it forms a dough.

If you are Violet: get bored looking for a clean bowl and start dumping the flours into the current bowl, sifting is for suckers and people who don’t want to get some crafting done tonight too! Finally dig out a sifter half way through because of the look James is giving you. Sift it all into the bowl and mix until it forms a dough.

Stick the bowl into the fridge for 20 min to cool, when you get it out again it should be easy to roll into small balls and put on a baking papered tray. I used the 20min to go to the 7/11 and procure chocolate, but you should use yours for preheating your oven t0 180 degrees Celsius :D

It probably wasn’t actually 20min because my dough was still fairly soft. I was impatient to finish and sit down after having walked most of the day so I ignored the instructions :D

Aaaanyway poke your thumb into the middle of them so it forms a little well for the jam.

Then spoon in some jam! This is my favorite one, it’s strawberry and rose petal.

I decorated mine with some of those little sugar balls that I can never remember the name of.

Finally, stick them in the oven for 15minutes or until they look cooked. Interestingly enough it wasn’t the lack of precise measuring that killed my cookies… it was my being distracted by watching Xmen First Class and forgetting they were in the oven hahaha!

So mine were a little crispier than usual but still very delicious!! Be careful if you put in too much jam they will boil over. Also be VERY careful when you take them out because the jam will be liquidy and very hot so don’t burn yourself!

Still very yummy but I’ve decided to leave these to James and perhaps retitle this section from Food Friday to “Violet Sucks At Baking… Mostly Out Of Laziness And Lack Of Allocating Enough Time”. Catchy yes? I can totally make a Violet Sucks At Baking icon ;)

If you’re curious, they did actually taste the same as James’ version just a little browner ;)

So meeting up with Celeste was a good excuse to try it out XD

The idea is you get a cup…

Fill it with whatever flavors you like, I tried green tea, taro and chocolate.

They had 6 flavors total to choose from: plain, chocolate, raspberry, mango, taro, green tea.

Then you add as many toppings as you want.

And take it to the counter to be weighed and paid for.

Between the three of us I think we tried all the flavours other than plain and they were really good. This was my first time trying taro yoghurt and it was surprisingly yummy. I’ve only had taro pancakes before and they were terrible so I was surprised how much I actually liked this.

The prices are about average for frozen yoghurt here with all of ours being around the $7 mark. You get more for your money though because you get to decide how many toppings you want and can mix flavours. Unlimited mochi? Yes please hahaha!

There was a good range of toppings both sweet things and healthier fruit options.

The yoghurt itself was yummy and quite flavoured without having the sourness that some frozen yoghurts get.

I will definitely be going back sometime soon :D I’m really glad to live somewhere with so many yummy food choices!

So yes, if you’re ever near QV and in the mood for some frozen yoghurt check out Tutti Frutti ^_^ Do you guys like frozen yoghurt? What are your favorite flavours? I’m liking green tea with chocolate and mochi for toppings at the moment. Have any of you ever tried to make it at home? I’ve always wanted to so I’ll have to think about stealing borrowing Celeste’s icecream maker XD

Have a great weekend!

• Chocolate block
• Icing powder
• Water
• Peppermint essence
• Sprinkles
• Mini marshmallows
• Food colouring
• Freezer bag

Now you need to cut a piece of chocolate to use as the canvas. If you’re like me you probably cheaped out and bought the home brand chocolate so don’t expect too much quality-wise ;)

Decide how much chocolate you will use based on how much you love the person you’re giving it to. I’m giving mine to James… this much?

Hell no I’m not giving away that much chocolate! Realistic:

I love him but I also love chocolate! Unrepentant!

Pour the icing into a corner of the freezer bag.

Snip a tiny corner off so it becomes a make shift piping bag… or you could just use a real one.

Now pipe on a pretty design :D I wrote “James” and drew a heart… unfortunately I was a little over ambitious with the S so it looks more like “Jimmy”…

…then it melted a bit so it looked more like Jsmnay.

I piped around the outside too as a border.

While the icing is still wet add sprinkles all over it.

And brush off any extras.

He loves little marshmallows so using some more icing like glue I made a border of them.

Taadaa…

And because it already looked pretty hilarious I added some more icing on top. I’m deleting all of the inappropriate comments James keeps trying to add in here about what it really looks like.

So stick it in the fridge to set and add a cute bag!

Present for you!

Taaadaaaa! I love you Jsmnay! Even if sometimes I’m not sure why…

-_-’

So I’m sure if you were better at baking/decorating you would be able to draw something actually cute on there! And hopefully the person you give yours to won’t be silly enough to try and eat the cute bag. Happy Food Friday!

• White fabric for the poufy bit
• Shirred/smocked fabric for the stretchy thing or stiff fabric to use as the band
• Needle, thread scissors
• Ability to not spend a long time looking at your awesome new hat in the mirror

So what did I do? Measured around my head and cut that much of the smocking.

Needle and thread at the ready, I stitched up the sides to make it into a band. I also trimmed the top a bit so it looked more like a frill not a skirt.

To make the top poufy bit I cut out a big square piece of white fabric, the bigger the square the bigger the pouf. If you wanted to be correct it’s probably better to use a circle but I’m not going to lie: laziness was prevailing on my couch at the time.

Use the needle and thread to gather all around the edges of the white.

Pull it tight so it’s fits the stretchy band.

Turn the band inside out and stitch the pouf to the inside. You could finish everything off with machine stitching, overlocking etc but again… laziness because this is just a prop and I’m not a real chef XD

So you should have something along these lines. Haha I forgot to remove the tag from the inside >_<

Flip it the right way around and you’ve got yourself quite the spiffy hat there! Super girly and it matches my awesome apron too :D

With a cute outfit now I have more motivation to bake!

Stay tuned tomorrow for the super cute cafe I visited!

• 1 packet of marshmallows
• 1 block of chocolate
• Some butter, around a tablespoon
• Microwave proof container

You can use margarine or real butter, I didn’t want to waste the expensive margarine so I used cheap block butter.

• Jug
• Caster sugar (I use about half a cup for this size jug because James likes it really sweet)
• Kettle
• Loose leaf tea
• Tea strainer-dunking-thingy-that-I-can’t-remember-the-name-of
• Tongs

Fill up your kettle and boil it.

Make sure to store tea in an air tight container so it lasts longer.

For the size jug I’m using I needed two of the tea dunking things with around 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of tea in each.

You shouldn’t fill them too full otherwise the tea won’t have room to move around and you won’t get a full flavour.

Once the kettle boils add the plungers and the water to the jug.

You should be able to see the colour change very soon, use your tongs to give everything a stir.

Now herein lies a very important lesson… when you go to refill your glass jug with new tea after it’s been in the fridge for days don’t pour boiling water straight into it! Glass (especially crappy glass from a $2 store) can’t take sudden temperature changes and will crack. Then you will have super hot water all over your bench which is very irritating to clean up and also then you have to have an internal debate on whether it’s worth it to catch a tram all the way to the junk store and replace the jug to continue with the tutorial… it’s not pretty, it looks something like this in fact!

So after deciding you are too lazy to go buy a replacement jug and digging around under your bench to find a smaller one and remaking it all up to this point… leave everything to cool for around 10 minutes.

Then it’s time to add in your sugar. We like a huge amount of sugar (like probably 1/4 of a cup for the big glass jug above or 1/8th of a cup for the small pyrex one below) but the first time you make this I would suggest measuring and adding a bit at a time until you’ve got a flavour you like. Ours tastes kind of like un-set jelly XD

Now stir it all together so the sugar dissolves and remove the tea strainers. Leave it out on the bench for a couple of hours until it’s room temperature then pop in the fridge over night. The next day you will have some pretty delicious tea ready and waiting to go :D

Do you guys have a favorite flavour of tea? I love strawberries and cream for the ice tea and at the moment my favorite hot tea is good old English Breakfast :D

And our finished macaron trees… Yummy looking right?

Celeste and Kev made beef bourguignon (sp??) and stroganoff. They even hand made the pasta… omg it was so yummy! Seriously this was one of the best dinners I have ever had!

There was a little bit of this during the night…

But it was mostly this…

SMILE KITTY!

Getting to play with such fluffy kitties was a novelty for me, so damn fluffy!

We also had scotch eggs which were yummy!

Here I am putting together one of the trees, James did one and I did the other. *cough* guess who’s looked better!

Pistachio and green tea, Raspberry and white chocolate and Bueno flavors this time!

James making his tree:

Taste test? Why thank you!

Desert was also fantastic with opera cake! So delicious :D

Gangsta kitty is gangsta.

The kitchen was full of delicious chaos!

The tea was delicious and free flowing. It’s nice to meet other people who love tea as much as me! Celeste has over 40 different kinds of tea in her cabinet!! *40*

And lastly I will leave you with this. Because I can.

With these sort of things reading he instructions is very important. Even more so when they are written in Japanese!

You should fill the little molds with some water so the clay doesn’t stick to it!

Add some clay to each side…

Squish the sides together

Pull the extra off and you’ve got a piece for your sushi!

Use something pointy to wedge the clay out.

No matter how realistic they look don’t eat them!!!

It felt like it was a million degrees out in the sun today so James and I kept cool with ice green tea with honey and mint and a lemon slushie thing. Yum!

After we explored for a while we managed to find the stall.

Cute right? I loved the little Eiffel Tower and the gigantic tree of macarons ^_^

I decided to be cautious and try a large Raspberry one for $3.50 so I could see if I liked them

Here is a nice close up…

And the insides…

So the verdict? OMG YUMMY!

The shell was crispy and the insides were gooey. It tasted very fresh and packed with raspberry flavor. The man and woman who were running the store were lovely and chatty, they were both French and super bubbly and friendly!

In fact I enjoyed it so much that I went back…

And bought 6 small ones ($2 each) in each flavor! They had sold out of caramel and pistachio so I got raspberry, chocolate, coconut, lavender, lemon and an orange one which had chocolate filling like a Jaffa.

They started out like this…

And very soon turned into this… I have to say that the only reason I didn’t take a bite out the raspberry one is because I took it home for James’ Mum to try!

James tried the coconut one and loved it and Oh and James got a German hotdog thingy which he greatly enjoyed…

So my final thought is that macarons are freaking awesome and I’m going to be visiting the Twist ‘n Roll bakery next time I’m over in Rocklea! If you are in Brisbane, you can see all the locations here.
Looking at their website I’ve just found out Twist n Roll Bakery deliver, oh this is going to be so bad for my bank balance!!