South Island

South Island is one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited in my life. We drove from Auckland to Wellington caught a ferry the next day to Picton, drove to Nelson Abel Tasman, then to Fran Josef, to Wanaka, Queenstown, Te Anau, Milford, Bluff, Dunedin, Lake Tekapo, Christchurch, Westport, Kaikoura and back to Picton to take the ferry back to Wellington.

The drive all over South Island is just magnificent with the views of snowcap mountains everywhere and beautiful clear blue lakes and amazing greenery and dessert looking mountains.

Beautiful sky and sea at Marahau Abel Tasman, a great place to kayak!


The journey in the car:








Throughout the journey there were many signs by the roads reminding drivers to drive safely. I always enjoy reading them as they can be very creative like this:


At the Glaciers in Fran Josef:


One of my fav places was wanaka. It has a beautiful lake, quiet and I enjoyed their coffee and blueberry cream cheese scone I bought from one of their cafes!


Lake Tekapo where the water was soooooo blue it was unbelievable!


At Kaikoura we were told to try their crayfish by the side of the road on the way to the seal colony. There were 2 so we weren't sure of which was the nicer one but stopped by one that we saw. It was expensive and so delicious!


After eating crayfish we went to see seals - they were so smelly!


So, if there is one place to go back to I'll definately return to the south island! It's like another part of the world compared to the North!

Favourite date scone at the moment...with a twist of ginger

I brought my dear friend whom I met while working at World Vision to Ironquie cafe along Mt Eden road because I wanted their date ginger scone from there! I'm still very addicted to scones and I know it's a bad habit to have...Nevertheless here is the scone and it's just soooo delicious! It's not the usual date plain scone as it has a twist of ginger to it with dry crystalized ginger between the scone. As you bite into the moist scone you taste the chewy ginger and dates too which makes it a very nice 'different' taste and texture - It is definately for you if you want to be adventurous with your scone, and if you don't like ginger then I don't recommend it =)


Spread with butter:

Going nuts for bananas!

Due to my sisters request and my mum wanting to finished her ripe bananas they have requested I make another banana cake that they so thoroughly enjoyed! This recipe is definately for keepers!

So here it is but this time I placed sliced bananas on top for decoration:

Cream Cheese Chiffon Cake

My pandan CHIFFON cake did not turn out like one when cut up although the taste was there and more like a pandan cake without the air in the cake. I was so disappointed as I always find it hard to make a chiffon cake with that rise!

So...I decided to make another chiffon cake but this time with cream cheese. I tried a few things different - I did not whip my mixture too much this time.

My cake turned up with cracks at the top but the cake was very spongy and soft to touch!


The cake did not rise as much but the texture was closer to a chiffon cake than my pandan cake I baked the other day!




I shall try again next time and hopefully have the cake rise more =(

Pandan Chiffon Cake

I have always wanted to make chiffon cakes especially pandan flavour because I really love the smell and the taste of it! I finally bought a electric mixer and put it to use straight away! I can't believe I manage to bake all this while with just a fork and wooden spoon! Hence I've never really tried baking chiffon cakes, or anything to do with cream!

I was surprise and glad that my chiffon cake turned out well although it's not as high as I would like it to be but I'm glad that the cake did not overflow while baking.




I never knew that the egg white mixed with sugar had to be foamy and it was my first time seeing this infront of my eyes. Yes, that's how new I am to chiffon cakes or anything that consist of egg whites and sugar =)

I will try banana chiffon cake next time and hopefully improve in my steaming of cakes.
Ok, the cake smells so good out of the oven I can't wait to eat it now!