birthday and recent foods

It was my sister's 21st birthday and she found this 'Big Fat Chocolate Cake' in one of the cafes while we were in Fremantle. It was the first and last cake that she saw, and it doesnt take much to guess why she picked it. It was essentially a chocolate mud cake, with lashings of milk chocolate icing, and protected by a delicate layer of more chocolate. I don't really like mud cakes because they taste a little too boring and dense for me, and the cake itself wasn't very sweet apart from the icing and surrounding chocolate. But it was a good way to end a fun birthday dinner party.

This was from the nearby Japanese restaurant Yuki's that the family dined at the night before her birthday party. This dessert, I think, was some kind of almond and coffee ice cream, and unfortunately I only remembered after I'd taken a bite that I disliked almond ice cream, just like I disliked marzipan. 

I baked the Aria Chocolate Tart; which featured on Masterchef (of which I'm a hardcore fan of) from this recipe, for my sister's birthday lunch. I had pie dough left over and decided to turn it into some chocolate cookies for the family to nibble on. In the end I ended up nibbling the most of them. 

 My favourite lunch of late: toasted sandwiches. I think I had it about 5 times during the school break, and with the usual characters: cucumber, carrot, chicken and cheese. I'm in love with my mother's sandwich toaster at the moment, and I've tried it on spinach wraps too. Next time I'm putting in a little djon mustard.

Spontaneously I decided to make use of the gluten-free pasta I'd bought a while back. The sauce consists of some regular spaghetti sauce, fried celery, tomato, onion, garlic and pork mince. I just love a chunky pasta sauce.

Vancouver post cont.

Continuing on from the previous post, this was on a day when my sister and I went out to Metrotown by ourselves. She got a traditional asian meal while I decided to go with what I think is a classic italian sandwich, however I can't remember the name of the shop. I thought that it was delicious and very filling; I was already full on the first half.

I then continued to buy an ice cream from the shop nearby...again, the name has deserted me, but I'm sure if any Canadians saw it they'd recognize it immediately, since it's quite unique. Well, I'd never seen anything like it in Australia, so why not? As I've said before, I'm quite easily amused.

Me showing how surprised I was by the size. I believe that was a medium.

My sis also picked up some mouth-watering fruit yoghurt from yogen fruz. This one was strawberry and other berries I believe.

And finally, breakfast; the most important meal of the day. This particular one was quite important because it was our last day in Vancouver. The bacon ended up smelling like fresh sugary waffles, but maybe it was because the brand had something to do with maple. It tasted normal though. :)

I've done a bit since getting back to Australia, including baking and icing some vanilla satins. I finally got to use the icing tools my cousins lent to me, but only to spread the icing on top. I think they ended up quite cute, if I dare say so myself.