Sawadeekaa...

*mula-mula tu terkejut biler bukak blogger tengok semua dalam thai.mampos mcm mane nak baca ni...hahaha

Sawadeeka, sa bai di mai ka to everyone. Greetings from Bangkok. It's been 2 weeks now and i'm adjusting well. Missing nasi lemak already!!! I don't know how i'm going to survive without it. On the other hand everything else is great here.

My latest updates on food or should i say DESSERTS!!! sorry nothing Thai inspired today but i promise in my future posts.

First up, i came acroos this ice cream parlour called Cream & Fudge and fell in love with it. I'll have to add it to my lists of Haagen Daz & Swensens. It literally took me about 15 minutes standing there deciding on which flavour and concoction i wanted. I fianlly settles on this...feast your eyeballs...


oooohhh aaahhhhhh i want more!!!

Here, the rival for Dunkin Donuts is Mister Donut...ahahha (kelakar tak kay?) anyways i had already took out my camera to snap away but they wouldn't let me. Boo :( I can't say they taste better but their products sure do look interesting and mostly cute. They have mini donut lollipops, bunny shaped, donuts on sticks and more.


Sorry as i only have a photo of the packaging. Was awwed with the smiley face i totally forgot about the actual donut. Hahahaha.


Mini donuts i bought at the market...not bad and inexpensive as well.


Random fact...i love the coconut ice blended here....very refreshing.

One of the specialties here are these...


It's balls of deep fried rice noodles with a meat filling. Could be chicken but most of the time it would be pork and this particular one happens to be the latter. So boo hoo to me...it looks yummy ha? I forgot what's it called...(thinks for 10 minutes) damnit still can't remember...

Finally we go to school...will show you a few of what i've made since i arrived.


Shortbread cookies... very rich and nice (mcm butter cookies yg dlm tin biru tu)


Fruit Cake


Almond sponge cake with almond fondant flower and leaf


Tarte aux Pomme....apple tart..my favourite....pomme tart :)


Mini Fruit Tarts...these are like to die for...i just love em. Filled with pastry cream and topped with any fruits to your liking....*drools*


Same fruit tart but bigger version with more mixed fruits...i still have half of it in my fridge. Mmmm *winks* (kay, ummi, nanie...want some?)


Lunettes...a softer version of the shortbread cookies with strawberry filling.

That's all for now...will go jalan-jalan around Bangkok and hope to write a more thai inspired post. :)

I still don't get the fuss over JCo's doughnuts. Ayesha and I had a huge moan about the 'fad' and how they (the consumers who'd skip work and queue for ages for those sweet cakes sans holes) say it's the best thing evurrrr but we still think the hype is unjustified. At first I based my argument on, 'it's only doughnuts' whilst holding the 'KRISPY KREME IS THE BEST THING EVAAAAHH' banner without even trying out the famous JCo product. So last week, my brothers and I head to Pavilion for other reasons but decided to get the doughnuts as our mom hinted that she might want to try the doughnut that must be good because of the people queueing for it.

So that we did. Took us 20 minutes. Actually, my elder brother queued for the most part of it as I got bored (read: do not want to be seen queuing hahahah). While we were queueing, one of the workers tried to coax us into getting the pre-packed doughnuts. The benefit? We do not have to queue. The catch? You have no say as to what you'll get. It's a lottery. After deliberating for 5 seconds, we decided we'd rather queue than not get what we think we want. On the menu, there were oreo flavoured doughnuts, some belgian chocolate thing, caramel (I HAD MY EYES ON THEM) and strawberry among others. But as the queueing went on, the doughnuts disappeared and the new ones made didn't replenish the lost ones. Instead of having a variety of doughnuts on selection, we're left with a double batch of less than half of what is offered.

I still don't get the fuss.


I think this is a brilliant marketing ploy.

Step 1: Hire people to queue up (I kid, I kid.)

Step 2: Instead of having two tiered counter, which would be economical and if they wish to have two batches of one flavour, the two tiered counter would provide enough space for other flavours offered, have only tiered-less counter just for kicks.

Step 3: Have a service so slow that you would make the queues longer.


Because the queues were longer, people who were queueing are more likely to buy in bulk. And because it is bought in bulk, the selection goes fast rather quickly. To aid this, make sure the people in charge of the flavour department don't replenish the sold flavours, instead just do things haphazardly.

I noticed there were two trays of choc-nut, glazed and cheese. By the time it was our turn, we barely had any choice so we bought cheese, glazed, choc-nut, green tea, almonds, some strawberry swirl and some blueberry thing. Yes, a selection of 7 doughnuts, how can I be moaning? Of course I am not happy as I'd like to have the option to buy what is advertised and I (read: my brother) did not just queue for 20 minutes to not get what I want.

But eh, what's done is done so we thought, the doughnut BETTER be good. The prices are OK-lah but we thought the taste should justify the 'hard-work' undertaken. We went for the cheese.

TASTELESS.

Is it cream cheese? Is it supposed to be sweet? Or savoury? Or what? It didn't even taste like cheese.

The glazed ones weren't half bad. I had a taste of all of them and I think the only doughnut I like was of the almonds variation. I liked it but it still doesn't seem to match on what a lot of people have been raving about. The only thing was it WAS different from Dunkin Donuts. Just because it's different, doesn't mean it's good. Give me Cinnabons anyday. And I don't like Cinnabons.


We came up with a conclusion to the hype.

You probably queue for half an hour (average). You don't buy A doughnut, you probably buy at least half a dozen to justify the queuing. You pay RMxx amount for the said purchase. YOU HAVE TO LIKE IT BECAUSE OF ALL THE CONTRIBUTIONS AND EFFORT MADE. To go through all these and then NOT like it would indicate the futility of the attempt, therefore making you look like mugs for investing on something that you don't even like. So what do you do?

Feign it.

OMG IT'S THE BEST THING EVER.


No, it's not, luv.


Unfortunately, there weren't any pictures of the purchased doughnuts as we just couldn't be arsed.

I still don't get the fuss.

Note: I know it's a question of preference and taste so JCo lovers can save their time from bashing me and start queuing on your favourite doughnut store while I have some kuih keria.

Big Apple Donuts & Coffee

This new place just opened in The Curve @ Mutiara Damansara. First look at it and you say to yourself, "wow looks impresive, good crowd, and even just the signage and name somehow makes to think it must be a franchise from well NYC." But after sitting down for awhile and tasting the product, you somehow beg to differ. Hhhhhmmm well i still don't know for sure where this outlet originated from because i googled it and nothing came up.(maybe Ummi could confirm this for me once and for all) BUT IN MY OWN OPINION...i think it just started from here and then they decided to just use the name Big Apple AND use The Empire State Building for their logo??? Maybe the recipe is from NYC? I donno...


So anyway like i said first impression was good right? You're walking towards the open concept kitchen/counter/cashier with a smile on your face full of excitement and the second you step into the boundary of the queue line, all that dissapears.

1. No signs whatsoever for indicating types/flavours of doughnuts. Just a board with several random doughnut pictures in the background and then it just says : Doughnuts or was it Donuts RM2 each....and that's all...like WTH??? so fine.

2. Turn your head down towards where the dougnuts are displayed and you see many empty trays and what luck i had NO MORE CHOCOLATE....as in nothing with chocolate when they are suppose to have chocolate coated ones, chocolate with banana cream ones, choc with nuts, choc with rice krispies ones......and TAKDE....when i asked, they just replied with a selamba "finish". So like wtf??? finish?? i still see you guys making hundreds of doughnuts behind you and the most important chocolate finish???? what it's a thing to not carry stock now?? whatever la...

3. So i decided to get a box of 6 (btw forgot to mention i was with Z and our friend K) and guess what hahaha there were only 6 flavours at that time when there was suppose to be 16 or 17... sheesh.

4. Peanut Butter, Strawberry Filling, Blueberry Filling, Green Tea, Mango with Cream Filling and Vanilla Cream.

5. The drinks had to wait like forever...mintak hot bagi ice....mintak ice bagi hot. Then they said they will send it to us when their concept was suppose to be self-service. Don't even see any of their staff outside of the working counter. Waited and waited and waited....then i realised they had a condiment counter similar to the ones at Coffee Bean, Starbucks...etc. So i thought if they did ever send the drinks over, i still would have to get up and get my own sugar syrup and what not. SO WTH...walked all the way over and demanded my drinks...while they were ever so busy, queue is getting longer....sigh...sabarjelah....

6. Since they're new they were very generous in giving away free doughnuts. Can't remember how many different offers there were but i know there's a buy a drink and get 1 doughnut free and buy 1 dozen doughnuts and get 1/2 dozen free. Yeah, but the free doughnuts are only the plain ones which means it's their basic doughnut with original glazed sugar. You can't choose. So where is the logic in that? If all the doughnuts cost the same then why free ones are only the plain ones? Just imagine beli 1 dozen full of flavour and colour...and then dapat 6 plain doughnuts in a box... sedihnye...

7. Since there was Z,K and moi therefore we had 3 drinks and therefore dapat lagi 3 doughnut biasa...we ended up just bring those home.

8. Tell me, am i being to critical with this new place? Cause i realise i'm usually nice but not here :P

SO basically the doughnuts were okay...it's a total different texture from Dunkin. This one is lighter and somewhat weightless and fluffier. It depends on individual preferance how a dougnut texture should taste like.The thing is that there is no variety unlike Dunkin their doughnuts itself are different where you have chocolate or plain, then proceed to the topping. At Big Apple all the doughnuts are the same ONLY toppings vary. I think because it's still new that people just flock over there non-stop...most are by word of mouth. When someone starts saying it's the best doughnut ever then habis lah...majority will just follow blindly...will see how they do in a few months time. There also might be a chance that people might actually like it and it's just me who had the bad experience. Well can't blame them la, just imagine the only doughnut place we ever knew was Dunkin...now there's Big Apple and people will ALWAYS want something different.

I'll stick to my Dunkin's for now because there ain't no Krispy Kreme in Malaysia :)