3-Inch-Sin

it is D's birthday tomorrow, so I thought it'll be nice to find a new dessert place to celebrate his birthday this weekend. and well, to also get both of us excited and in the mood for this new lap of his life. so as i was browsing online in search of a new, good place, i chanced upon the website for 3-Inch-Sin and the best thing is, they serve ONLY our favorite molten cakes and in different flavours!


we went there after lunch today. they are located at cluny court - a place we've visited once or twice but never got to try anything there. 3IS is located at a quiet corner on the 2nd floor. when we were there, it was full, so we left our number for them to call us once there are available seats.it wasn't long before they called us and when we got there, there were no customers left.



As we missed the mini ones on the menu when we ordered (guess we were too excited and jump into the PURPOSE for coming), both of us ordered one original molten cake each. One 3-inch molten cake is $5/- and three mini molten cakes with flavours of your choice is also $5/-. The molten cake was YUMMY! very moist inside and definitely rich!!

We were lucky enough to have a chat with one of the owners, Celine. She sat down telling us more about her journey and on how she got to here today. Celine was once a teacher at Republic Polytechnic teaching Communications and Culture. And one day when she got up from bed, she decided to do something different and signed up for a 9 months course at Cordon Bleu, Bangkok. when she got back to Singapore after that, perhaps while deciding what she wanted to do with her life, she went back to a 9-to-5 job for a year or so before she started 3-inch-sin. together with her brother who handles the financial matters of the business, they started this homely, warm and happy looking dessert place a month back. the molten cakes are made with valrhona chocolate and are freshly baked when you order them. so be patient as it is about a 10 minutes wait for the warm chocolate molten cake to be served fresh from the oven!!

Reservations are allowed and it's a good place to hang out with friends and have dessert over a cup of coffee/tea (or even IBC root bear/coke) and chill out on a lazy quiet sunday afternoon, just like what we did today...!

Arinco King, Arashiyama

We first had arinco in Arashiyama, Kyoto. Woah....it brings back good memory when we gobble down this very light chiffon cake.

We got this for 50% as there was a sale going on during cny. A bargain as the usual cost around $15 for a small roll of chiffon cake roll (about 15cm long). The THING about this chiffon cake is the light cream that goes in between those soft sponge cake. We usually take the caramel one..but it was sold out ...so we took the vanilla one which we thought taste even better...

umm..can't seem to find the picture of the cake i took last time...will do so and link it here ....

dessert - banana split

Prepared with love -
Haagen-Dazs belgium chocolate and strawberry ice-cream. Yummy!

perfect mango pudding at Lei's

The Picasso of Pastries

"A good thermometer in the kitchen is like having a good pen." ~ Pierre Hermé

Never did I imagine I could attend one of the world's famous Pastry Chef' Pierre Hermé's dessert workshop 2 saturdays' ago (19 Apr). Though it was a mere 1 hr workshop (maybe slightly longer), there were about 100 pax packed in the small auditorium of Singapore Tourism Board. In conjunction with the World Gourmet Summit, this workshop was organised to bring us pastry lovers, an eye-opener to what true pastries were.

Pierre Hermé conducted the workshop in French and it was translated by a fellow French in English. We had the joy of seeing how great were his art pieces and how complicated they could be. He brought us 2 recipes for Révélation and Tarte mogador.

Révélation puff pastry with tomato
puff pastry with tomato

mascarpone cream
olive oil

pieces of black olives
tomato and strawberry compote

Tarte mogador
shortcrust pastry
milk chocolate and passion fruit ganache
roasted pineapple
flourless chocolate cake

I was surprised I fell in love with Révélation since I never enjoyed sweet and salty going together. Not only was the tomato and strawberry compote fantastic, but the sweetness of the mascarpone lifted the whole taste of the pastry. It was really good. On the other hand, maybe because Tarte mogador was prepared in advance, somehow I tasted bitterness from the caramelized pineapples. And that, I felt brought down the taste of that 2nd dessert.

But overall, I was overwhelmed seeing the complexity for each of Pierre Hermé's pastry. I was really glad that D asked me to attend this workshop.

See how satisfied we were...we finished up all the samples we've got! Nothing was left.

Macarons

We were in town and thought of having some macarons. Coincidentally, Canelle is having a Macaron Festival with limited edition of creations. Flavors in this selection includes green tea, chestnut, sesame-seed, violet, pistachio, citron vert and truffle cream. The chestnut one was unique and the pistachio one was terrific!

You won't be able to resist the packaging even if you had wanted to reduce some calories. We love the little macaron fairy on the boxes of these nicely packed macarons. Great choice for dessert if you want to spoil yourself during the weekend!