Ms: 3 girls, 3 hours, 3 dessert spot. Sweetness Overload!!!

*** Alert ***

Long post ahead!

Dessert bomb incoming!

Fat-ness infection!

Continue reading at your own risk!

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Not leaving? Don't blame me for not warning xD 

One of my girl is going back to Malaysia for good tonight =( sadddddddd~ Few days before, she texted me to date me for most-likely-our-first-and-last-tea-session in Melbourne, no wayyyy I would say NO rite! So, one fine afternoon, 2.30pm, I met up with le gurls at South Yarra Station and the hunt for desserts begins! At first I was thinking, okay i'm going for tea time surely there's cakes involved so i skipped brunch to save tummy space, then le gurls tells me that they have plans to crash 3 different dessert spot. =D Muahahaha~ Lucky i went with an empty stomach waiting to be filled with dessert and more desserts! Forget the calories and guilt!

First stop: The Stables of Como

Our leader of the hunt but is poor in finding her way and needs a navigator xD

We were lost.....sort of...

We were heading towards the address with the help of our trusty phone map, it led us into a garden with no sign of any human being and the deeper we got the more we got worried. Are we in the right place? We kept walking and then we saw this old building, we thought we're there but no, the cafe was nowhere to be seen. Lucky us there's this two lady walking their dogs so we asked them for direction, she told us it's just a little bit further front. Phew...

Passed by this beautiful area, wouldn't you want your wedding ceremony to be held here? 

Found it!

Nope this is not the cafe, it's just a building next to the cafe

Le menu

You can choose and pre-order your picnic meals then they will prepare everything and you can have your picnic session on the grounds surrounding Como House

Le desserts and pastries bar

Giant Meringue Clouds

Hazelnut & Cranberry Meringue Cake

Aggies Lemonade Scones with Bonne Maman Jam and Whipped Chantilly Cream

Le hungry Ms

Gone in a flash

Second stop: Burch & Purchese Sweet Studio

Wheeee~~ I'm here!! One of the best dessert place in Melbourne! We came here next because Burch & Purchese is not a cafe, there's no seating place to sit down and eat their cakes so I bought two cakes back home for my after dinner desserts Mr as his after dinner desserts. I'm such a good gf xD TeeHee!

Le entrance to awesome Desserts ~ Ice Cream ~ Chocolate~

Cute display at the entrance

We were welcomed by cutie pinkish Burch & Purchese Meringue Clouds

Eye candies on display

Where sweet arts were created

Bringing happiness back to Mr ^^

Happiness overload ^^

Caramel, Choc, Hazelnut Choux

Hazelnut sable / Baked glazed choux bun / Salted caramel, hazelnut & chocolate cream 

Pineapple, Mango, Chocolate

Coconut sponge / Mango mousse / Spicy pineapple jam / Pineapple cream / Chocolate mousse / Bounty mix / Velvet spray / Pineapple jelly / Mango curd

I bought these two sweet tooth home for Mr, he is not really a fan of cakes and desserts and is very specific to what he likes and dislikes so I chose those that he most likely will eat. The Pineapple, Mango, Chocolate is very nice! Highly recommended!! Despite so many different flavour combine together, it is still light and fresh. It is still good to eat even in the next day. The Caramel, Choc, Hazelnut Choux is nothing fancy but very good too! The salted caramel, hazelnut & chocolate cream filling is ohh-so-irresistable! As I mentioned, Mr is not a fan of desserts but some cakes on the menu caught his attention and he would like to try it so I guess my second visit there won't be too long =D hurray!

Last stop: LuxBite

Our last destination of the hunt, LuxBite! Created and brought up by two malaysians, they must have put in a lot of efforts and love to get to where LuxBite is now, one of the top dessert place to go to! LuxBite does not only sells macarons and cakes but breakfast and brunch meal as well, but with so many cakes I have yet to try, I cannot afford to spare any tummy space for food besides cakes.

Green Tea Cheesecake

Opera style cake:

Green tea joconde, japanese rice wine, pistachio ganache, cream cheese, salted green tea crumble

Meringue Monster

Signature cake:

Green tea sponge, pistachio, watermelon yogurt, sour strawberry mousse, meringue

Endless Love

Inspired by Pierre Herme's Ispahan:

Lychee ganache, rose cream, lychee, fresh raspberries

Epic Chocolate Cravings

Award winning:

Rich belgian dark chocolate with hazelnut crust & salted caramel sphere

Banoffee

Opera style cakes:

Hazelnut sponge, banana ganache, sichuan pepper chocolate crunch, salted toffee buttercream

Bread & Butter Pudding

Classic with a twist:

Served warm with pandan anglaise

The Lolly Bag Cake

As seen on Masterchef:

Each layer of this cake represents a different sweet from your classic kid's lolly bag

Be My Love

Best seller:

Milk chocolate mousse, raspberry cream, raspberry & hazelnut crunch

Passionfruit Tart

All time favourite with a twist:

Passionfruit curd, meringue, kaffir lime sherbet

Caramel Cravings

All time favourite:

Caramel lovingly placed between winning chocolate and coconut base

Macarons and more macaronsssss

The chosen ones 

Looks creamy and moussy but it tasted light and fresh

This tea-bag-with-leaf-thingy is just too cute not to be noticed

Not one bite left, this marks the end of our dessert hunt

Among the three chosen ones, Green Tea Cheesecake comes first then Meringue Monster and then Endless Love. Next visit to LuxBite I have already decided on what I want to try, Be My Love and Passionfruit Tart!

Oh my oh my... So many dessert place to hunt down, so many cakes to eat. Gotta watch out on the fats and calories count =( 

Thank you for staying with me till the end of this post, I hope you're tempted =) 

-To be continued-

What happen in MINK stays in MINK

 Photo post ahead~! 

Kiss me! Poke me! Touch me!

A night of fun =D

Have you tried ChangGo?

Having trouble deciding where to have your dinner? Well, if you haven't try ChangGo and you are craving for some korean food tonight, here is a place for you to go. ChangGo is basically a korean bbq restaurant located in Melbourne city. Google it and you'll know where is it, dont be lazy. Haha! ChangGo is always filled with people and there is always a queue outside waiting to be seated, so if you're planning to go, I would recommend you to go earlier because I dont think they do reservations (if im not mistaken). 

Waiting List

What is so special about ChangGo? Well, it is basically their special Palsaik Set which consist of 8 different marinated pork belly...

Palsaik Set

- Original Pork Belly -

- Wine Pork Belly -

- Ginseng Pork Belly -

- Garlic Pork Belly -

- Herb Pork Belly -

- Curry Pork Belly -

- Miso Paste Pork Belly -

- Red Pepper Paste Pork Belly -

Tasting all these different types of marinated pork belly was quite fun and interesting. Can you imagine after having one piece of the Ginseng Pork Belly and the next piece you put into your mouth is the Wine Pork Belly? Hahaha. The different taste in each pork is sooo different but at the same time, yummy. Ohhh and also...their assorted vegetable, the side dishes for this set is also reallyyy good! Some people may not like them but we all definitely loveeeeed it and none of the korean restaurant I've been so far serves those which kinda makes ChangGo special. However, we also ordered a Kimchi pancake but it was so so only, nothing fantastic.

The final verdict, our overall dinner here was pretty nice and ofcourse, with the right company. And no doubt ChangGo was also able to provide us a 'different' kind of korean bbq compared to the other ones. Definitely a good place to dine for dinner but honestly speaking, its probably a place that you would keep going and going to have their Palsaik set, unless you're there for their other menus. If you take the Palsaik set away from the equation, just solely the place as a korean bbq restaurant, there are actually many better ones in Melbourne. Dont get me wrong, I'm not saying ChangGo is not good or something alright. What I'm trying to say is that it pretty much depends on what you want. Whether you want the tradisional korean bbq or you want a more unique and different kind of korean bbq, you should go to the restaurant that serves your craving best. 

AND...before we end this post, here's some pictures!

Their interior...very industry-ish kind of design

Yummyyyyy Side dishes

 The grill plate...

We also ordered extra Kimchi Pancake!

Tao Tao House 陶陶居

Yuuhooo~~ It's saturday!! What else to start off a good weekend with a good brunch! We had Dim Sum this morning afternoon in Tao Tao House located at Glenferrie, it's one train stop away from our place so we took a 20 mins morning afternoon walk to there instead. Actually we had been craving for Dim Sum since last week but when we were there on a Sunday around 12.30pm, it was full house and we weren't able to get a table, we were told to go back at 2.30pm ==" What are we gonna do for 2 hours with a hungry stomach so we end up having english breakfast at a nearby place which was quite good. Will be blogging about that soon but today let us share with you our happy and satisfied Dim Sum brunch experience in Tao Tao House =D

Chili Chicken Dumpling

Pork and Prawn Siu Mai

Vegetarian Spring Rolls

Spare Ribs in Black Bean Sauce

Stuffed Bean Curd

Char Siu Pastry

Mini Custard Egg Tarts

The Mini Custard Egg Tarts were AWESOME!!! The best egg tarts that we've had in Melbourne so far! It was sooooo goooood that we ordered two plate and left us still wanting for more after consuming three each. It was fresh and HOT out of the oven, we both burnt our tongue just because it was too tempting and we cannot wait any longer to get a taste of it xD

Shanghai Pork Dumpling (soup filled dumplings)

All the dim sums were very good except for this Shanghai Pork Dumpling aka Xiao Long Bao, sad to say that it's the worst that i've(Ms) had. To make a good Xiao Long Bao, the skin, it's meat filling and soup filling are all equally important, i've heard that even the fold count at the top is also a part of what makes a very good Xiao Long Bao. Back to this particular Xiao Long Bao, no comment on it's meat and soup fillings BUT, the skin is...yucks. It should be tender, smoother and somewhat translucent but it is not, it felt like wet-supposingly-fluffy-white-buns which is thick and mushy. Also, from the picture you can see, one of the dumpling's skin has split so where's the soup filling? Gone =(

Nicely decorated interior

Pu Er Tea lovers

The place is not as spacious as you see from the pictures above, it's actually small and cramp. There are only two carts circling around the restaurant and the time frame that they serve out dim sums from the kitchen takes quite a long time so base on our experience in Gold Leaf, don't expect dim sum carts to keep coming to your table every few minute. This is slightly hard to accept at first cause we were used to getting whatever we want the moment we sat down in a dim sum restaurant and next minute our table will be full of dim sums so we can dig in to fill our tummy. So, we had to keep waiting for new dim sums to come out and that is a bit frustrating as we were both very hungry.

The bill came at the price of a total of $62+ for nine dishes (average of $6~6.50 for one dish) and a pot of tea. Honestly we weren't expecting this much as the average price for a dish in Gold Leaf was about $4, oh wells.. what you paid is what you get. At least eight out of nine dishes we had was pretty good so we don't mind paying more for better qualities dim sums (sigh..imagine how many dishes of dim sums we can have back in Malaysia with the amount that we're paying now, ($6 x 3) / 3 x 9 =54 dishes!) 

Oh! Do make reservations in advance. We can't even get a table for Sunday 1pm when we called to make reservation yesterday so remember to call and book before going to Tao Tao House! We learnt our lesson by getting turned out at the door with empty stomach and that does not feel good at all.