Black Truffle Mac N Cheese – BLT Steak HK

My Dearest Readers, do you remember a few posts back I was telling you about how my family and friends in Hong Kong always ask me to buy them Tim Tams and other Aussies sweets. Something else my family ask me to bring back (I’m not sure it’s legal) is bacon and steak! Yup they will ask me to go to the butcher get them a kilo or two of bacon, wrap it up and chuck it in my suitcase. I’ve never done it myself, but my parents have done it for them and our relatives LOVE IT 😛

BLT Steak in TST

Talking about steak, I think we’re putting lucky in Australia we have really good beef so I know it’s a little strange that I decided to try out BLT Steak in HK. But it was in a good location and I’ve heard good things about the dessert there, my partner in crime that night was Margaret, perfect person to go with.

Heirloom tomatoes, watermelon, burrata, ginger sherry dressing $138HKD ($18AUD) +10% service charge

We started our meal with something light, a heirloom tomato salad with watermelon, burrata and ginger sherry dressing. All elements complimented each other quite well and the type of salad I like, but I did find the heirloom tomatoes to be a tad firm. While Margaret found the burrata not as fresh as she would’ve liked it more if it was creamier and not as watery.

Popovers with butter

BLT Steak is quite well known for their popovers, and I know they’re quite common in America, but it’s actually the first time I’ve actually been. They reminded me very much like yorkshire puddings or Chinese donuts (You Char Gwey) but they’re lighter and are hollow inside. I’m not sure if this is the right way to eat them, but I ripped it apart and spread butter over it hmmm yum!

American USDA Rib eye with bone marrow $398HD ($54AUD) +10% Service Charge

We then shared a Rib eye steak with bone marrow, apparently Margaret was telling me, it’s quite difficult to find good quality steaks in Hong Kong. Even though the steak was cooked very well, perfectly medium rare with a good chargrilled smokey flavour to it. The steak wasn’t as flavoursome or tender as we would’ve liked.

As our side we ordered the Black Truffle mac and cheese, it was served in a little cast iron pan and I could immediately smell the cheese and truffle as the waiter was walking towards our table. Instead of using macaroni pasta, they actually used penne covered in a rich creamy sauce, covered with tasty cheese and topped with a few thin slices of black truffle. Hmmm so good turns out to be my favourite savoury dish that meal 🙂

Black Truffle mac & cheese $78HKD ($11AUD) +10% Service Charge

Now moving on to desserts, the Banana spice cake with candied walnut and mascarpone sorbet caught my eye so that was the first dessert we ordered. I thought it looked quite appealing with the layers in the cake, unfortunately, it was very dry and even though the mascarpone sorbet was nice and helped add some moisture it didn’t really deliver.

Banana Spice cake with candied walnut and mascarpone sorbet $98HKD ($13.5AUD) + 10% service charge

Margaret did some research and said that this crepe souffle with passion fruit sauce was one of their signature desserts. I’ve never had any crepes like this before, it’s puffed high and fluffy and has the texture similar to a souffle omelette but instead of a savoury filling it had custard instead. It was quite nice especially the vanilla custard, yet we found it lacked a pronounce flavour and was slightly bland.

Crepe Souffle with passion fruit sauce $98HKD ($13.5AUD) + 10% service charge

I have heard mixed reviews about the BLT Steak in HK as well as their branches in America, overall, I enjoyed my meal here and find that they have some good dishes to offer, I think they would be even better if they were able to source better quality produce and work a little on their desserts ~

BLT Steak
Shop OTG62, G/F
Ocean Terminal, Harbour City
17 Canton Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
尖沙咀廣東道17號海港城海運大廈地下OTG62號舖
PH: +852 2730 350

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World’s Largest Yum Cha – Melbourne Food and Wine Festival

If you’re currently in Melbourne 🙂 You may know that the annual Melbourne Food and Wine Festival (MFWF) is on and running from the 1st to the 17th of March ~ Even though I love eating out and experiencing the Melbourne food scene, I’ve never really gone to any events and with Mr Bao working so much lately, I didn’t want to book into any events and have to drag him there ~ But I was very lucky and Libby (The Very Very Hungry Caterpillar) invited me to be her guest at the World’s Largest Outdoor Yum Cha event held by Chan’s Yum Cha at the Treasury Gardens last Saturday (2nd March).

Chan’s Yum Cha at Treasury Garden

It was the perfect day to hold this event at the Treasury Gardens wasn’t too hot but around the mid to high 20 degree and with lots of trees around to provide shade.

Apart from the rows of tables for patrons participating in the World’s Largest Outdoor Yum Cha, there were also marquees outside providing face painting for the kids, a photobooth and the The Teo Chew Association was also there to play songs using traditional Chinese instruments throughout the event. It reminded me of Chinese New Year festivals we had a couple of weeks ago in the City ~

Lion Dancing

They even organised Lion Dances to be performed throughout the yum cha ~ But to be completely honest with you…I am terrified of lion dances lol I’ve never liked them growing up as a child and use to hide behind my parents 😛 Now that I’m an adult…they are tolerable but I still DISLIKE them and prefer if they didn’t come near me hahaha

Attempting to beat the Guinness World Record

As the name of this event suggests, it was an attempt to break the Guinness World Record of the largest outdoor yum cha 🙂 The record before was 500 people, this time there were 800 tickets sold so as long as we had more than 500 people seated and eating at least 2 dim sums, we’ll beat the record! Doesn’t sound too hard 🙂

All I could see were rows and rows of tables and so many people seated at the tables! There was definitely more than 500 of us! 🙂

Doing it right 🙂

Even though this was an outdoor event with so many people, Chan’s Yum Cha was trying to do it right, with chopsticks and a tea cup for tea 🙂 There were no forks, spoons or knives in sight, so for those who weren’t good with chopsticks they’d have to practice ~ Thank gosh they have the instructions in front of us hehe

5 Course Yum Cha

It was going to be a 5 course yum cha with a variety of dim sims, dumplings, buns and dessert 🙂 Tickets to this event was $20 per person, which I thought was definitely good value considering the amount of food we were getting ~

Prawn Hargow

First course was the most traditional and popular prawn hargow ~ which I’m sure most of you would have heard of and tried. I was quite impressed with the flavour of the filling and the crunchiness from the shredded bamboo inside, however, I would’ve liked it more if the dumpling skin wasn’t as dry and sticky. But I guess this can’t be helped as the kitchen was trying to pump out dumpling for 800 people!

Sesame Prawn Toast

I haven’t had Sesame Prawn Toast for the longest time! My parents never liked it and said we should avoid ordering too much fried food when going to yum cha. But I remember we would order it for my Caucasian friends when we went to yum cha together ~ I was quite impressed with these as it was freshly fried and had a good amount of prawn paste spread over the toast, I also liked the toasted sesame flavour!

Ginger Prawn and Shiitake Dumpling

Third course was the Ginger Prawn dumpling which had a yellow wrapper, it reminded me more of a HK style wonton and even though I liked the flavours, I found them quite similar to the prawn hargow and my throat was slightly ticklish after eating it. So I suggest that there was some MSG in it 😦 I quite liked the Shiitake Dumplings though, the filling the Shiitake mushrooms and also bamboo shoots and carrots, I’m pretty sure this was the only vegetarian dumpling too 😀

BBQ Pork Bun

I’m a fan of buns 🙂 Love their steamed fluffy texture ~ These BBQ Pork Buns had a good sweet Charsiu (BBQ Pork) filling, however, Libby found it a little too sweet not me 😛 But we didn’t really like the buns itself, it had a very doughy and dense texture and kind of stuck to our teeth >_< Once again I’m not sure if it’s because of the lack of time the kitchen had to prepare these, I think they would have tasted better if they were steamed for a couple of minutes longer.

Banana Fritter with Vanilla Ice-cream

Last course and of course most important was dessert, which was Lady finger banana fritters with vanilla ice-cream. I was worried that the kitchen wouldn’t be able to fry these fritters in time and when it reached our table it would be soggy, but it was actually still quite fresh and hot when the waiter placed it on our table 🙂 It really brought back childhood memories eating this dessert, as my parents would order it for me whenever we went out for dinner ~

Overall, I thought this was a great event and WE BROKE THE RECORD 🙂 Out of the 800 tickets sold there were 726 or so people seated and had yum cha in the outdoor! WOO HOO! I’ve never helped break a guinness world record before hehe YAY! Also if you’re interested in trying you can buy Chan’s Yum Cha dumplings at large supermarkets and Costco in Melbourne ~ This isn’t the first time I’ve had Chan’s Yum Cha hehe because Mr Bao and I usually stock up on a few yum cha items and leave them in our freezer because they’re so convenient when we’re too lazy to cook dinner or go out 😛

Once again would like to thank Libby for inviting me to such a fun event ~ and hopefully  one day I’ll even break or create my own Guinness World Record 😛

Daisy@Nevertoosweet attended this event as a guest of Libby (The Very Very Hungry Caterpillar) 

Endless Fondue – Movenpick Ice Cream

Ever since I started blogging last year 🙂 my friends have been nothing but supportive ~ it’s quite cute actually, they will send me texts when baking supplies go on special at the supermarket and also update me of the latest dessert places in town. Last week I got a SMS from Ozmomo a family friend I’ve known all my life ~ she reported a new Movenpick boutique store had recently opened up in Box Hill and if I wanted to try their chocolate fondue ~ Of course I said “YES” in a heartbeat and very quickly we organised to meet up the following Monday night ~

Did you know that the first Movenpick store opened up in 1948? And it is now actually owned and run by Nestle? ~ I love reading up about a company’s history and how they have become what they are today hehe ~

I was quite  surprised that Movenpick had chosen to open another boutique store in Box Hill, given that their other store is only in Doncaster (my area) which is a 20 minute drive. I assumed that they would want to open up a store somewhere else like Chadstone another very popular area for shopping and dessert stores ~ but I’m not complaining because I find this store to be bigger, cleaner and quieter that the one at Westfield Doncaster shopping centre.

It’s not a very big store, upon walking in there are two large glass cabinets full of ice-cream for customers to choose from then ample seating on the right ~ Being a Monday night it was rather quite and we were basically the only table inside, which is good because we got to choose anywhere we wanted to sit.

Even though we knew we wanted the chocolate fondue ~ I couldn’t help but look at their wide range of desserts displayed on the screen, they had pancakes, waffles, and sundaes! But I had to control myself we are going to get the chocolate fondue instead!

So we stuck to our plan and ordered the Endless Fondue for 2 for $21.95 which had a selection of fruit, waffles and marshmallow. We were then asked to pick two scoops of ice-cream, any flavours that we wanted ~ The girl serving us was very friendly and generous asking us to try as many flavours as we wanted.

Maple Walnut ice-cream 🙂

There were simply too many flavours to choose from, hazelnut, pistachio, chocolate, and even panna cotta ~ what the Maple Walnut flavour caught my eye and have one little spoonful of it, I knew I wanted it!

Endless Fondue for 2 $21.95AUD

This is our Endless Fondue set for 2 🙂 you could also get the fondue set for 4 for $39.95 with 2 more scoops of ice-cream and I think more fruit and waffles ~ I know how easy it to to make this chocolate fondue at home, but I think there’s that sense of novelty of having someone do all the cutting and chopping for you 😛 I feel so bad…I have two chocolate fondue sets lying in my pantry but I’ve never used it before…my bad >_<

Dark Chocolate

We had the option of choosing white, milk or dark chocolate for our fondue ~ and we chose dark chocolate because I didn’t know if milk chocolate was going to be too sweet for Ozmomo and I do like the strong, rich chocolate taste dark chocolate offers 🙂 Even though the chocolate mixture itself was quite nice, I found it to be a little too thick and not as runny as I would have liked, I think it may be because the chocolate was not fully melted or they did not put enough cream.

Maple Walnut Ice-cream, marshmallows and strawberries

The fondue also comes with a range of condiments and ice-cream of course 🙂 As I mentioned before, I chose the Maple Walnut ice-cream and it was super delicious, maple syrup flavoured ice-cream with chunky walnut pieces through it ~ even though it had maple syrup I didn’t find it too sweet or rich but don’t take my word for it 😛 Cuz i’m immune to sweetness and cake hahaha I found this ice-cream to compliment the melted dark chocolate very well ~

Blackcurrant ice-cream, waffles and banana

Ozmomo decided she wanted something a little more refreshing so chose the black current flavour ~ I had a taste of it and found it to be quite tart but it was good to cleanse and refresh the palate. However, I found the waffles at the back to be quite dense, chewy and slightly stale 😦 I was a little disappointed because I’ve had the Movenpick waffles at their Doncaster store before and found them to be quite good…not sure if they give customers stale waffles for the chocolate fondue as they think customers wont be able to tell the difference after dipping it into chocolate…

My favourite strawberry drenched in chocolate 😛

My favourite would have to be dipping strawberries in to the warm decadent chocolate 🙂 I think chocolate and strawberries are a match made in heaven so perfect together hehe ~ I am now motivated to stop being lazy and dig out those chocolate fondue sets and try making it at home myself!

Overall, I enjoyed the chocolate fondue here at Movenpick, but found the name ‘Endless Fondue’ to be a little deceiving as nothing as ‘Endless’ if you wanted extra bowls of condiments you had to pay $2 per bowl and I’m pretty sure they do not refill the chocolate free of charge. I would come back here with friend as it is a nice place to come here for dessert after dinner and for approximately $10 per person, I think it is still reasonable 🙂

It was lovely to catch up with you Ozmomo and can’t wait till we do it again ~ have a safe trip to Japan and can’t wait to see photos and hear all about your trip!

PS. I’m still away with Mr Bao to Sydney and Brisbane for a couple of day 🙂 So please accept my apology for being slow at replying comments, emails, tweets and all ~

Gone Bananas – 100th Post

Dear Readers! I think I have gone bananas, because I have two yummilicous banana bread recipes to share with you today! And this post will be my 100th post! Meaning I have eaten out and baked over 100 times, sat in front of my computer over 100 times and definitely for more than 100 hours 🙂

This is a picture from my first post hahaha can you see me in the background? I didn’t know how to take photos back then 😛 Actually I’m still learning, how to take better photos hehe 🙂

Moving on to the recipes, I find that I don’t know how to do anything in moderation 😛 a couple of weeks ago, I made this delicious banana maple syrup bread, and didn’t take enough photos to blog about it, so I decided the next day I was going to go get a whole HEAP of bananas and wait for them to ripen. I came home with 2 kgs of bananas and they have been sitting next to our coffee machine…I was getting so impatient with them…they simply wont ripen…then I kind of forgot about them hahaha then a couple of days ago, when I was making my morning coffee, I saw them and they weren’t only ‘overripe’ they were close to being ‘rotten’. So I knew I had to make banana bread that night 😛

Thing is…I had too many overripe bananas, so instead of one loaf of banana bread, I made 2 loaves 🙂 Maple Syrup Banana bread and Chocolate Chip Banana Bread ~ I can’t say which one I like more, because they were both soooooo moist and yummy! I’ll let you be the judge which one you like more.

Recipe – Maple Syrup Banana Bread adapted from Taste

Yield – One loaf 

Ingredients 
125 grams, unsalted butter, softened
115 grams (1/2 cup), caster sugar
2 tablespoons (20ml AUS), maple syrup (not flavoured syrup)
2 eggs, room temperature
3 large bananas or 1 cup, mashed
105 gram (3/4 cup), plain flour
105 gram (3/4 cup) self raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Note – I know maple syrup can be quite expensive, but using the pure maple syrup from Canada will really give the bread an distinct sweetness ~ I picked my bottle up from Coles for $7 last time i was on sale and have heard that the Aldi brand maple syrup is quite good too 🙂

Method
1) Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Grease and line your loaf pan.

2) Using an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and maple syrup in a bowl until light and fluffy.
3) Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each addition until just combined.
4) Transfer butter mixture into a large bowl. Add banana. Stir with a wooden spoon until just combined. Sift flours and bicarb soda over butter mixture. Stir until just combined.
5) Spoon mixture into prepared pan. Smooth top. Bake for 45 minutes or until skewer inserted in centre of loaf comes out clean. Stand in pan for 5 miutes. Turn onto a wire rack to cool.

Voila 🙂 Serve warm or toasted and drizzle with more maple syrup! This banana bread is so moist, it’s even close to being a banana cake to me 😛 I think it’s because I added a little more mash bananas hehe ~

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread adapted from The Kitchen Is My Playground 

Yield – One loaf 

Ingredients  
3 to 4 overripe bananas (1 1/2 cup, mashed)
1/4 cup buttermilk
225 grams (1 1/2 cup) plain flour
1 teaspoon, baking soda
1/4 teaspoon, salt
118gram, unsalted butter, softened
125 grams (3/4 cups), light brown sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon, vanilla extract
3/4 cup, chocolate chips

Method
1) Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced and grease loaf pan.
2) In a small bowl, mash bananas with a fork and stir in buttermilk and set aside.
3) Place butter, in a large bowl. With an electric stand mixer or hand held mixer beat butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one and a time, beating briefly after each addition. Mix in vanilla extract.

4) Combine flour, baking soda and salt. Gently stir into butter-sugar mixture and then mashed bananas. Lastly fold chocolate chips into mixture.
5) Pour batter into loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

I’ve never made chocolate chip banana bread before and was a bit worried that it’ll taste a little weird, but it turned out really well 🙂 I used a bitter-sweet Ghirardelli chocolate chips, so it wasn’t overly sweet which was good because Mr Bao doesn’t like it really sweet 😛

Would like to say thank you to all my Readers for the willingness to read my posts and supporting me ALL THE WAY 🙂

Thank You Everyone – Nutella Banana Bundt

Dearest Readers 🙂 hope you don’t mind me doing a half personal and half recipe post today 🙂 Just really wanted to share my story with you all ~

Yup that’s the picture of my car with a very VERY flat tyre… and nope it wasn’t because I ran over a nail 😦 it is because someone living in our apartment has decided they don’t like my and not only removed the nozzle but also ‘slashed it’. So to call Roadside assistance…that was $226 and to get a brand new tyre it’s gonna cost about $150…so all up over $350 for no apparent reason *CRIES* I am sure the person did it on purpose, because they’ve left notes on my car before…telling me not to park in my own car spot 😦

Because of this ‘person’ I wasn’t able to go to work, I had to go to the police, call roadside assistance, our landlord and the body corporate of our apartment complex…it was simply one of the worse days… but THANKFULLY I am very loved and everyone help turn a bad day into a great one ~

Thank gosh Mr Bao didn’t have to work, so he was around to help me fix the car and took me out for hot chocolate at one of my favourite places Koko Black

And for lunch he made me chorizo pasta for lunch ~ so simple yet delicious and hehe so many friends asked for the recipe ~

QQ made a homemade Malaysian dinner sooooooooooooooooooo comforting! And lol I’m addicted to her sambal chilli sauce

Kirk made Heston’s Chocolate Gateau cake ~ it was surprisingly easy to make and I LOVE the pop rocks inside the short bread cake base hehe I’m going to try and make it this weekend if everything goes according to plan hehe and once I succeed I will be blogging about it ~

Last but not least all the supportive messages I received on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram I read every single one of them and they all made me feel better ~ Thank you!

You all helped take the sorrow away and make me smile again! YAY!

Nutella Banan Bundt Cake

Now moving onto the recipe ~ I was very lucky the other day and received a parcel from Impact Food 🙂 I was so excited and rushed out to the post office during my lunch break to find that they sent me a wonderful 2 in 1 spring form bundt tin! It couldn’t be a better gift! I’ve been meaning to get a bundt time, but haven’t gotten around to getting one and because I have heard of stories where you need to grease the tin really well and it might be hard to remove the cake from the tin.

That’s why this bundt tin is really good because once it’s cooked you can release the buckle and it’s much easier to get the cake out ~ I was super excited about using it! But there was one problem… I’ve never owned a bundt tin so had no idea what cake to bake or what would work and what wouldn’t work lol so I did some blog reading and found myself at The Food Librarian blog and she is definitely the bundt cake queen! She has soooo many bundt cake recipes 🙂 I wanted to try so many recipes, but realized I wont have time to go shopping this week, so I needed a recipe that I could make with all the ingredients at home ~

Two tone 🙂

That’s when I decided on the Nutella Banan Bundt cake 1) I have over ripe bananas at home 2) I LOVE Nutella (who doesn’t) and 3) It was easy 😛  I even did it the easy way and just used cup measurements, because usually I like weighing everything to make it more accurate ~

Recipe – Nutella Banana Bundt Cake adapted from The Food Librarian
Ingredients
2 cups (300grams) plain flour
3/4 teaspoon bi-carb soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (225 grams) caster sugar
1/4 cup (55 grams) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (3 -4 depending on size)
2 eggs
1/3 plain yoghurt or non-fat Greek Yoghurt
1/2 cup Nutella (I used a little more)

Method
1) Turn oven on to 175°C/350°F. Spray or brush butter over bundt tin and grease well.
2) Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Stir with a whisk to combine.
3) Place Nutella into a medium bowl and beat with a spoon until soft, do not heat or put in microwave.
4) Cream butter and sugar in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment or electric hand mixer until light and fluffy ( about 5 minutes)
5) Lightly beat the eggs and slowly add to the creamed butter and sugar.
6) Add mashed bananas and yoghurt. Beat until well blended.
7) At low speed, add the flour mixture until just combined or mix with a wooden spoon.
8) Scoop out 1 cup of the batter and fold into Nutella
9) Swirl batter together with a knife to create a marble effect.
10) Place in oven and bake for about 50 minutes until toothpick comes out clean, varies depending on your oven
11) Cool for 15 minutes and then invert onto wire rack to cool completely.
12) Sprinkle icing sugar over the cake

Sorry I didn’t have the time to take photos of making this cake step-by-step but it is quite easy to make ~ only thing is I don’t think I had enough bananas because as you can see the two tones, I found the pale banana cake bit to be a little dense and dry 😦 while the chocolately Nutella was so moist and heavenly. Next time I make this ~  I’m definitely going to add more bananas or some more yoghurt 😀

Served warm with BIG scoop of Nutella ~

Overall, my experience making a bundt cake was quite enjoyable, now I’m looking forward to making a really moist coconut cake without it sinking in the middle ~ Thank you Impact Food!

Disclaimer – Daisy@Nevertoosweet received the Bundt tin as a gift from Impact Food, however, was not paid to write this recipe or review