Friday, December 9, 2011

Beaufort Street Festival 2011

The thing about Asian families, is that all projects are conducted as a village.  Everyone pitches in and has to have a say, welcome or not.  It can be a great thing, more brains on the project can mean extra creativity....or there is that thing about too many chefs....?

Well for my brother's new project, it was ironically, about needing plenty of chefs on hand!

You see, he had come up with a great concept of a restaurant.  An Asian Diner, no fuss, old school Chinese food.  Retro even.  You can read about his antics and adventures at that blog:

So, that was how I was roped into spending a day in the sun on Beaufort Street for the Beaufort Street Festival.
 

It was so strange to be standing in the middle of Beaufort Street at 7am.... and silence.  The road was closed off at midnight.


Our tent goes up, on the Clarence St corner.  


Performance art setting up directly opposite us.  Oh!  The suspense!!




Our balloon brigade.....yeah, not so fun after 200 balloons!  Thanks dudes!  We couldn't have done it without you!
 
And here are some awesome pics of all the cool stuff that made the event so successful.
















70,000 people in one day.... it was amazing!

More amazing pics on the Beaufort Street Facebook page.
 See you there next year!!

Love,

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Trains, Figurines and Macarons....with friands.....

I am so behind with my postings... my cake mojo has taken a serious battering lately and I'm just coming up for air now, so please bear with me whilst I take a few deep breaths.  

First up, some really cute circus trains with Handi.


 A great pic by Diana via facebook - so adorable, dont you think?


Even cuter all finished!!  


Handi's cake with the help of ToyBox International, went to the Ronald McDonald house for families with littlies receiving treatment at PMH.  We're delighted that they enjoyed a special weekend treat.
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Next up of course were the beautiful couture figurines from our advanced class.




And look at them....just so cute all lined up.


And some close ups of the stunning details.  As in any work of art, the small details are always going to be what makes the work far more interesting and unique.






Even the queen seemed to make an appearance.

And because this is a food blog of sorts, food has to make an appearance!
Over CHOGM weekend we had resident head chef Nik Duncan (who's worked with the likes of Steve Szabo and Greg Doyle) multi tasking in the background.


and even let us be the first to taste this yummy chowder.  Nik must really be used to a crowd of delighted girls making all the right noises around his food.

Not to be outdone, our faciliator Rebecca, who is a vegan showed us how exciting vegan food can be with these amazing morsels.
Vegan cream cheese on garlic French baugette with pear, rocket & balsamic.  Oh boy!  I now only eat Tofutti.... dont knock it, till you've tried it!

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Enough for the distraction, moving onto our Marvellous macaron class that turned out rather interesting.


I also had Handi who was also enjoying class until it was time for his plane to take off.  So, MY teacher and world class cake artist (who I immensely respect) = no pressure, whatsoever.........

Perth was struck with one of those freak humid weeks, when the water just seems to hang in the air...another perfect day for making macarons...NOT!

Aha! The minute it all went pear shaped...... too much egg whites into the batter....and none left for meringue.....whoops!!

So, what does a girl do?  Make friands of course.  A quick check of an online recipe, thank you Apple.  And we split up into groups making macarons...and groups making friands.



Team macaron got things moving with perfectly fine caramel and chocolate macarons and team friand, hacked into the butter and made green tea and blueberry firands!





Who would've thought we'd be so happy to see a batch of friands??? 
At the end of the day, we stuffed our tummies full of freshly baked goodies (and some properly matured macarons) and we all had fun - which is more important than any macaron....even if it's French.

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Later that same afternoon, after all the excitement had started to wear off, we launched into our last cupcake teaser class of the year.






The cupcakes turned out superbly and we had lots of giggles.  It certainly helped that trainee Jason was dared to don a chicken costume.


Photographic evidence that he did it and there's nothing like a bunch of hot chicks!!!


Love,