Strawberry Love 🍓❤️🍓❤️

I just love love strawberry! Especially when it is in season in the summer and nothing can get better than a classic British strawberry and cream dessert! 😋

When I visited the Silver Darling in Aberdeen earlier in the week, I was very inspired by its strawberry tasting platter, so I decided to do my take on it last night. This strawberry dessert platter was composed of a strawberry & mint sorbet, eggless meringue (made from aquafaba), strawberry shortbread (coloured and filled with dried strawberries), strawberry jelly cubes, fresh strawberry coulis, whipped cream, and last but not least, a strawberry-mint vodka cocktail shot! 🍸😉

We might have gotten a little carried away on the alcohol! 😂

Day 2 in Vienna: The Earth is Round and so is Vienna

Guten Tag here from Vienna! After a less than ideal night of sleep (due to a combination of my jet leg and the hotness of the hotel room 😓), it was rise and shine, and ready to go for a day of sightseeing!

Breakfast buffet in the hotel – I am always amused by the amount of cheese available whenever I visit an European country 🧀🧀🧀

Hoping to recover from our bumpy ride yesterday, we devised a plan to visit all our interested points of attractions for the day with our first destination set to be Schönbrunn Palace – the summer residence to the royal family in Austria (which to me, it’s almost like an Austrian equivalent of the Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh 😂). I searched up the location and noticed it was within very close walking distance from the hotel. But only upon arrival do we realised that I misspelt it as “Schönborn Palace” and in fact the actual Schönbrunn Palace was much further away from we were! 🤦‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️ (MISTAKE NUMBER 1! ❌ )

Back on the underground, we went for the 24 hours daily train ticket (costing only €8) and finally arrived at Schönbrunn Palace after the minor delay. The place was just like one from a fairytale! ❤️❤️ We went with the grand tour around the palace, and I would love to show you the inside of it, but unfortunately the place bans any videoing or photography. One of my favourite places was the beautiful grand ballroom – imagine hosting a party in there! 🎉 🎉🎊🎊🎊 One could dream lol! 😂

360 degree view!

Lost in the majestical feel of this garden 🧚🏻‍♂️🧚‍♀️

For lunch, we then decided to head to Kim Kocht, a Korean fusion restaurant run by a celebrity chef featured on MasterChef Korea- a place I was much looking forward to going to. We then headed to Währinger Straße-Volksoper station, but thought we ended up at the wrong station due to a different location show on the maps app. 🤷‍♂️ We then changed a different train to Schwedenplatz to the said location, but then found out that the place is permanently closed! 😱😱 (Turned out we were at the correct station where the current restaurant is, but the maps app did not update about the closure of the old address! – Still I should have checked the address on the website first. MISTAKE NUMBER 2! ❌ 🤦‍♂️) In the end, we settled at Hard Rock Café nearby and filled up on a larger platter and rehydrated from all the walking.

We then continued onwards with our sightseeing, visiting the beautiful St. Stephen’s Cathedral and Mozarthaus before returning to the hotel for a short rest.

Mozarthaus (again no video or photography allowed inside unfortunately)

After feeling refreshed from my brief nap, we headed out again to the evening. Our destination for dinner was the futuristic Rollercoaster Restaurant inside a quiet fairground. In here, foods are ordered on an iPad and then delivered to the customers through a rollercoaster track! 🚄🚄 (Behold the future of food delivery! 😂👏👏) It was actually a bit noisy and scary when the food landed, plus the food was rather average (my friend got a burnt burger and I received some undercooked pasta…😐) However, I am sure the gimmick will be one to enjoy, especially with family and children.

Very futuristic!

BANG! Here comes your food! 💨

And finally to end the night, we visited Onyx Bar just opposite St. Stephen Cathedral. The night view of the cathedral was amazing and so were the cocktails! 😉🍸🥂🍹

Great nightview from the bar! 🌃

After the cocktails, my head is now truly spinning round lol! 😵

It’s Almost Christmas! 🎊🎊

Three more days and counting! Time really does fly before you know it! 😆 And at last I am so happy that my holiday has begun!

I took this Sunday to fulfil a promise I made with a friend. Last week, I was supposed to bring her a mojito cake for a viewing party of the Strictly final, but I was down with a cold and was pretty much bed-bound for the weekend. 🤒 But never too late to make up for lost time, right? 😁 So today I brought her a mojito snow angel cake to make up for it haha! 😇 The cake was composed a lime sponge soaked with a mojito syrup and covered with a lime and mint icing with some shots of rum! 🍸 (Try not to get drunk lol) It was then finished with a white fondant and some tempered chocolate work plus a few small touches for decorations. ❤️

Are you naughty or nice this Christmas? 😉

Journey Across the Waters

As a Brit who has never travelled across the pond, my obsession from watching MasteChef US has always caused me to crave for rustic American food, especially Southern cuisine. A while ago, I came across a blog on the traditional biscuits and gravy, and that made me wonder if these old American comfort classics could also be found in London.

After a quick google search, I found the Fat Bear – a superb Southern-style American restaurant tucked away in a small alley near Blackfriars station. The place isn’t very big itself but this adds to its homey atmosphere alongside the comfort food they serve. I was sat on the bar table, giving me full view of the wide range of drinks they had available. Since it was Friday, why not start the evening with a little cocktail? 😉

For starters, I ordered deviled eggs and the classic gumbo. The eggs were so enjoyable with their creamy texture, and the spices in the gumbo were a perfect stimulation to my appetite for the rest of the evening.

The main was the one I was most looking forward to, given it was my craving for biscuits and gravy that drove me here in the first place. This buttermilk biscuit chicken sandwich literally composed all of the most beloved things in American cuisine in one single dish- buttery biscuits; crispy fried chicken; and a rich, creamy sausage gravy. It was the king of all comfort foods.

The other thing that I really enjoyed this evening was the friendly atmosphere between the staff and the customers. The waitresses were very friendly and welcoming, and the owner who was bartending at the table had very kindly offered me a free sample of their treasured whisky. (It was super strong!) I was sat next to two other customers at the bar. It turned out one of them was a friend of the owners and the other was visiting from the State. I was pleasantly surprised when we struck up a conversation and they even offered to share a piece of their cornbread with me. We all chatted like a group of old friends with the owners, bonding over food, that I forgot that we were just mere strangers who happened to cross paths this very night. But what I did feel was the warmth of humanity that brought me smiling from ear to ear. It almost felt too soon that I needed to say goodbyes to these people.

Feeling fuzzy from the warmth (and the alcohols 😂), I decided to take a walk along River Thames, stumbling across various spots along the waters to walk off the calories. Despite being nine in the evening, the outside was still bright like early afternoon.

After a brief walk along South Bank, I came upon one of my favourite frozen yogurt spot. It won’t be like me not to stop for a short dessert break, right?

Let the weekend begins! 😁

Listening To the Sounds of Music, Eating My Favourite Things

One of my favourite things about summer is being able to spend time outdoor and living every moments under the sun. Truth be told, I always can’t help but feel nervous about the fickle nature of British weather. However, the weather couldn’t have been more perfect for my plans today.

On this Saturday, my friends and I decided to visit the Junction 2 Festival in Boston Manor Park. It was my first time going to a festival, so I didn’t quite know what to expect besides dancing to loud music and mangling among drunk people. Unlike a night club though, being outside under the sun felt much more open and relaxed. The park itself is a large space with woodlands. As we navigated around the venue, walking underneath trees and brushing past bushes, it almost felt like an exploring adventure.

While I expected the alcohol supply here would be plentiful (😂), I was pleasantly by the presence of food trucks supplying hot food in the venue. After hours of dancing and drinking, what could be better than to have something to soak up the alcohol?

I went for a British duck burger with pork stuffing and bacon jam. Despite its lack of colours, the burger more than made up for that in flavours. The gaminess of the duck meat paired very well with the richness of the stuffing and the strong, savoury flavours of the bacon jam. A British classic with a modern twist! It would surely be enjoyed by any meat lovers.

It would be unlike me not to finish the meal on a sweet note. This limoncello sorbet was so refreshing that it was the perfect sweet, cold treat under the sun. The best way to have a cocktail is to have in its ice form!

The British summer sky was always deceiving, and before we knew it we stayed in the festival well into the evening. (Not going to lie my feet was sore from all the dancing and walking we did haha!) Exhausted, I somehow managed to hop onto the wrong underground line on my way home. So, I ended up taking a bit of a detour and also had my late dinner inside a gastro pub at the changing stop.

What are you all up to this weekend? Hope you will be having fun no matter what you are doing! 🙂