Sugar Hit 2012 - Shangri La Hotel (ROUND 3)

1 RADIOHEAD TICKET FOR SALE - 12 NOVEMBER 2012 - DROP ME A LINE IF INTEREZTED

Hello friends, welcome to my humble e-abode.

Haha hey guys,

I completely slept in and missed my lecture this morning, so I am at HOME, blogging about the third round of my sugar hit adventures.

Last night after uni, C and I decided to settle for a light dinner at Takumi (sushi4lyf) before heading to Shangri La hotel for their annual Sugar Hit offering.  I also went last year, so had built some sort of expectation - it's always good to have something to compare to.  (By the way, has anyone noticed that the really popular food blogs haven't even so much as whispered a breath about the sugar hits? So strange!)

So here it is!

The aerial shot - it was surprisingly hard to take a nice photo of the whole plate. It's such an awkward length.

The staff at lobby lounge were so much nicer and helpful this year! Overall our visit was really pleasant (compared to last year anyway - it's always much easier with smaller reservations). I really should have asked someone what the individual desserts were because I had no idea.  This is what it says on the crave website:

The Lobby Lounge offers a decadent chocolate tasting plate with an assortment of handmade chocolates infused with rose, Earl Grey, orange, lavender and Irish whisky; with a glass of Brown Brothers dessert wine.  

I thought a dessert lover like me would be able to pin point exactly which description matched which dessert - but I guess I failed last night.  There are two that I am unsure of, but you'll read about that below!  Last year, everything was a bit cake-y and mousse-y, but this year, everything was soft ganache coated in a hard layer of chocolate... sort of like a truffle?

White chocolate coconut & dark choc cream infused with Irish whisky

See those spikey balls on the sticks?  I thought they were lovely, soft balls of white chocolate and cream coated with white chocolate, glazed in honey, then dipped in lightly fried desiccated coconut for that extra crunchy texture. But I can't be sure, because there wasn't a menu or anything.

Pause, just a disclaimer- all these descriptions are things that I've magicked up in my mind. They could be really wrong :P

I found it a bit strange that they had their melted chocolate/cream in a tangchi (chinese soup soon), because there wasn't anything oriental on the plate - but I guess practicality trumps all. [this sentence sounds really pretentious, huh]. You could definitely smell/taste the irish whisky in the dark chocolate cream. It made the dark chocolate less... dark, and definitely made it more edible.  I normally steer clear of dark chocolate - it's too bitter for me.

The classy jaffa

Gritty orangey/nutty pieces on sugar syrup

I'm not a fan of the orange and chocolate combination. I have never liked jaffas even though I love oranges and chocolate (separately) A LOT!  However, I did appreciate the fact that there were so many different parts to this dessert in particular. There was the chilled and candied orange flesh sitting on the dark chocolate "plate", the actual truffle piece, and the smashed up orangey/nutty pieces glued to the plate with sugar syrup.

Once my teeth broke the chocolate shell of the truffle, the essence of oranges hit me HARD. I could not taste any chocolate, and it was quite nice actually. This made me think I should step outside of my comfort-food-zone more.  Maybe it's time to venture into the chocolate-mint arena !!

Excited about the following dessert:

Could not tell what this was. But it was delicious.

I LOVED THIS!  There were mini choc-coated crunchy malt balls (like last year on the whisky candy bar).  I wasn't sure whether the filling tasted more like lavender or earl gray - no idea what flavour was infused. It was very subtle. The chocolate slab itself tasted very nutty - hazelnut? It almost tasted a bit like Ferrero Rochers.

I would go back to Shangri La for this. :D

Rose flavoured macaron with rose-infused white chocolate cream filling - defos no debate here

I haven't bought into the whole macaron-craze in Sydney.  The white chocolate cream inside was fairly pleasant though.  I haven't had Laduree Macarons because I'm no macaron expert - I just eat the ones that my friend, K bakes.

Double layered chocolate slab with glaxed and popped wheat

This was a yummy one.  I think it's exactly the same as the candy slab they had last year, but I didn't taste the whiskey.  Not too sure what flavour was infused into this piece of chocolate.  BUT IT WAS MY FAVOURITE.  The top layer of chocolate was like a thick ganache, but the bottom layer must have had layers and layers of wafer biscuits because it was so crunchy!

C, le bestie

Et moi

Finisshheeeddd

Mandatory selfie. 

We both looked pretty spiffy that day, but my arm was not long enough to extend the frame to our bodies too :*(

Overall thoughts: Very good. I did not feel sick after the desserts, and even though Orange/rose flavours do not come close to being my favourites, I thought they were more than delicious desserts. I do feel like it's substantially less than last year's (tbh, I love CAKE so much more than truffles and chocolates).  But it was good nonetheless.  I look forward to seeing what desserts they have next year!!

This is probably my last sugar hit post for the year.  It's the 24th today - I'm not sure I can squeeze in more sweets between now and the end of the month.  Time to buckle down and get studying for finals. :(

In other news, W and I skyped with our favourite Chinese-aussie living in Berlin.

It was just after 8am over there, so he was busy getting ready to leave the house.  Didn't get a chance to grab a nice screenshot with all our faces. But if he reads this, IT WAS NICE TO SEE YOUR FACE!

This post has taken me forever to write. I've been so distracted with various things throughout the whole day. Including making vietnamese rice paper rolls - I am terrible at making those. HOW DO I STOP MY RICE PAPER FROM STICKING TO OTHER THINGS?!  But everything else is so simple and delicious. <3 p="p">
OK, talking about that has made me hungry again. I'm going to raid the fridge now.

HAPPY HUMP DAY :)  

One of those days

Took this when I was in surry a few sunny days ago.

Today was one of those days that was meant to be horrible, but somehow everything turned out right.

My assignment turned out good, presentation was good.

Weather got better for oztag (but then poured when we had just finished playing).

Got a shitty ref. Still won anyway (I feel so smug about this, take that, you biased sob).

Just.. such a balanced day. Everything shitty that happened was cancelled out by something great.

It was just one of those days where I could just fall asleep with a smile plastered on my face :)

Sometimes I do make wise decisions.

So last night, I decided to go to bed instead of continuing with my assignment.

This morning I hauled my ass out of bed at 6am and I managed to get so much crap done in the 3 hours that followed.  I don't think I've churned out such quality work in the whole year.  I should really get up earlier because my mind is so much clearer* (although it did take me about an hour to FULLY wake up) in the morning.

I am not a morning person - I'm still bright and cheery in the mornings, but I'm usually very foggy as well.  I used to be a night owl- but now (maybe it's because I'm ageing lol), I feel really tired when it gets to 2-3am in the morning.  I used to be at my peak then.

How times have changed.  Now that I know I'm super productive in the morning, I'm going to try harder to change my sleeping patterns :)  Let's hope this works out!

*I think another key factor to the quality of my work is the low number of distractions I have in the background.  During the day, my phone is always buzzing from fb, twitter, whatsapps and emails (still getting emails from work - I'm waiting for the new laptop roll outs!!) and I feel like I am barely able to sit down for an hour without being distracted.

Yesterday I decided to turn off my phone. My parents were shocked. K was shocked. I think I was a little shocked myself. But that didn't last. I had to call my uni mate to ask about something so I had to turn my phone back on =__=.

Maybe I'll try to be less attached to my phone?  That can be my new years resolution for 2013. I get annoyed at myself for having my phone with me during dinner sometimes. It's become such a bad habit.

ANYWAY, for some reason, I'm really excited it's Monday (it's pretty much the first Monday I've had with sleep) and it just feels damn good to know I'll finally doing something right.  Lately I feel like I've been making a series of bad decisions. Time to turn my life around :)

Happy Monday folks. Keep calm and drink some coffee. No such thing as Mondayitis!

Uncanny

I met a me-person recently.

She was exactly like me and it was quite a shock to me when we met.

I don't like her.

Because the similarities are too creepy.

And I'm sure she doesn't like me for exactly the same reasons.

This world is really weird sometimes. I always thought I'd be super good friends with someone exactly like me.

On a lighter note, I've listened to the 50 + albums my workfriend passed on to me. I remember complimenting the music playing in his car, and the next day, he handed me a USB with all this music.  I didn't touch anything but the Triple M ones until Thursday (ha yeah, I'm so grateful eh). So in addition to my last post, I would also like to say I like Arcade Fire, Sarah Blasko and The Black Keys (no wonder there's been so much hype! Their Attack and Release album has so much style - So he won't break and Oceans and Streams are my faves atm). Sarah Blasko reminds me of Priscilla Ahn X Ingrid Michaelson X Regina Spektor (love all three). I never talk about music, so it might be another year or so before I talk about this.  Any music recs are welcome - I listen to practically EVERYTHING except metal.

Monday already. Happy week y'all :) Go ahead and make merry while the sun shines !

Neon Trees

I like Habits.

I have no idea who they are, I just know that Animals has been on my phone for a while.  Found the album on my work computer (lol no idea why), and discovered that I like pretty much all the songs in the Habits album.

Their music reminds me of the faux emo punk I used to listen to.

"me and you, you and me,
lets go back, lets go back,
1983 is calling!!"

So catchy. I feel like the little people in my head are having a little dance party.