I heart toast

I want to make this this weekend, it’s from Martha Stewart Living.

Parfait a la mode

It was time to open the Japanese LOOK chocolate from Meg and Fujie. It is a special flavour – Parfait A La Mode.

There are four flavours of parfait – can you read them? Strawberry Parfait, Caramel Banana Parfait, Maccha Milk Parfait and Chocolate Parfait.

The back of the pack shows what’s inside the chocolate. All the chocolates have vanilla bean inside the vanilla ice-cream flavoured part.

The Caramel Banana Parfait is hands down the winner. The smiling ice-cream faces in the top pics are postcards from Loft.

One thing you can’t help but notice when you live in Japan is their obsession with parfaits (sundaes). To see an out-of-this-world matcha parfait, click here. To see a creme caramel and crepe parfait click here. To see a pretty pastel parfait, click here. To see a taiyaki (cake filled with red bean, in the shape of a fish) parfait, click here. And to view the craziest parfait you’ve ever seen, click here.

PS I’m totally obsessed with Bananagranola’s Flickr photostream, after reading about her in a super kawaii post on Epicute. She has 1000s of food pix and 62 pictures of wagashi (Japanese sweets) alone.

Happy Halloweeeeeen!

<3 from Rilakkuma. Meg and Fujie gave me this, it’s a cardboard folder that came with some Rilakkuma chips inside!

And Blythe!
(This pic’s from a cute Blythe book called Me and My Blythe which features snaps of Blythe owners with their favourite Blythe doll)

Baa baa sheep

Cute sheep cake from 85C bakery cafe on George St.

Icecream Sunday

Icecream Sundays have been a bit awol since they began last month due to the inclement weather but here are some delicious scoops from Gelato Messina in Darlinghurst. At the front you have Italian Nougat, sampled by Sarah, she said it was amazing, with crunchy pieces of nougat and almonds, and behind that you have Gingerbread flavour, which was to-die-for; gingery icecream with chunks of gingerbread throughout, on top of Chocolate Fondant, which tasted as good as it sounds.

True dat

The boxes Benzo and I shipped home from Japan arrived recently, and reminded me of my final few weeks in Osaka and my last-minute ‘oh my gosh I’m leaving Japan, I must buy cute things, CUTE THINGS!!!’ buying spree. My boxes were full of toys, cook books, books about Blythe, H&M clothes and this bag, which was from Kiddy Land in Umeda. The Japanese chocolate bars were from Megumi and Fujie, can’t wait to try them!!

Kawaii Friday

Happy weekend!! Here are some cute bentos from a book I got in Japan called Waku Waku Kyaracuta No Obentou (Exciting Character Bentos). Miffy, American themed, Aristocats, a cute mouse, and Ponyo from the latest Studio Ghibli movie. I will try to make one of these, one day!

Best afternoon teas

This issue of Japanese mag OZ is devoted to the best afternoon teas. It has the cutest pics of places to find afternoon tea around Tokyo. The places look very zakka, which I think is taking over from kawaii in Japan right now (it’s kind of minimalist Nordic or French with light wood, organic, neutral colours, handmade items etc). Here are some examples…

The mag has sections for doughnuts, roll cakes, eclairs, puddings, traditional Japanese desserts etc and has a map of Tokyo with all these places included on it. Check out the gourmet eclair selection.

Wait, is that an eclair decorated with a ukiyo-e woodblock illustration of Mount Fuji?

Thought so! Thank you Rob & Nicole for thinking I would love this mag and bringing it back from Japan for me!! If anyone’s interested in the gorgeous afternoon tea issue of OZ, it’s on Amazon here.

Oh yes I did…

…score another sweeeeeeeet Japanese KitKat! This one’s courtesy of the lovely Jess from Tokyo, of super-cool blog She Says Brief Things

This KitKat is Kinako Ohagi (toasted soy flour and sweet rice ball) and it contains mochi rice crisps inside the milk chocolate coating.

Inside was yummy-yum kinako powder (the flavour’s a little similar to peanut but heaps better). You can buy this KitKat on eBay.

All gone! It was probably the best Japanese KitKat ever, coz it had a traditional Japanese flavour to it, but it wasn’t too full on like green tea, and it matched really well with chocolate. PS those cupcakes in the background of the pix are part of a cupcake-decorated gift bag from Spotlight.

Stamp me happy

Picked up this Japanese strawberry shortcake stamp from the most adorable Etsy store called From Japan With Love. It stamps a slice of strawberry cake with ‘merci’ in the middle.

But more exciting than the cute imprint is the design of the wooden stamp. The strawberry on top pops out and becomes a bonus stamp (it makes a strawberry print)!

The same store also had an onigiri (rice ball) stamp!

When the stamps arrived in the mail, they still had their price stickers on them, they were from LOFT! ^_^