Bailey's Chocolate Mud Cake

It occurred to me the other day, that it's been some 3 or so years since I've last tried a new chocolate cake recipe. Perhaps not a big thing for most people, but it's quite a surprising thing for me, being the type who really loves trying new recipes.

Ever since I discovered the Chocolate Beetroot Cake, which has been one of my favourite chocolate cakes so far, I never really felt the need to experiment with other mud cakes.

Well......until now.

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JPB@Swissotel, Sydney CBD

It's not every day that you get a choice of 4 different salts to add to your food, at least not for me anyway. But then again it's not every day that we dine in fancy restaurants like JPB (Just Pure Bistro) at the Swissotel. Infact, we rarely dine at restaurants like this (we like quantity perhaps a little more than we like quantity) but a recent Groupon deal did make it quite affordable for us to have a quiet birthday dinner here.

Black Garlic and Chive Damper

Situated on the 8th floor of Swissotel, right next to Crossroads bar (home to the famous high tea buffet), the restaurant is a nice dining space. If you're lucky enough to get a seat next to the window as we did, you'll have a lovely view of Sydney Tower towering above you.

The 5 course menu starts with the black garlic and chive damper with seaweed butter. The bread is nice and soft, though the butter didn't really taste that different to normal butter.

Moreton bay Bug

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Spanish Chicken Hotpot

It's probably because I'm Asian, but hotpot to me means those winter meals where we boil a pot of flavoured soup and cook our own food in the pot in the middle of the table.

Well apparently this isn't the only meaning, since the label on the sauce base mentioned 'Spanish Chicken HotPot' but showed a picture much more like a stew than my definition of hotpot (I didn't choose it myself, it came in my Easter Show Showbag!). So when I mentioned to my family that I was cooking a Spanish chicken hotpot for lunch, all I got was plenty of confusion and unfortunately not much anticipation (infact, they were all expecting some kind of cooking failure).

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Pumpkin Soup

When I first started this blog, some 5 or so years ago, never would I have thought that I'd post a recipe for pumpkin soup. Nor would I have thought that this pumpkin soup would be one that I'd love so much that I'd make it weekly during Autumn (because one batch never really lasts a week!). 

You see, I've never really been much of a fan of pumpkin, with pumpkin soup being one of my least favourite soups- one I try to avoid whenever possible. So when the waiter at a restaurant I was visiting told me that the only soup they had that day was pumpkin soup, I almost ordered something else instead.

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