Baking in Hong Kong

I really like baking, it's the best thing one can do in a kitchen! Cooking for dinner is nice too, but it can never be as fun as baking cakes! Here in Hong Kong I only have a tiny toaster-oven that burned every single cake I tried to bake in it. Not having a big and properly furnished kitchen with a good oven is probably the thing I like the least about my appartment. I miss baking!!! That's why I was so desperate to bake anything at all when I went back home to Barcelona at the beginning of the month. My mom and I cooked this easy chocolate cake and brown sugar heart-shapped muffins. They were fun to make and yummy to eat! Seriously, I need to buy an oven!

Have a marvelous weekend! Follow me on instagram to see what I'm up to!

Wedding Wednesday: Wedding Menu Tasting

After this crazy week getting everything settled for the wedding, I found it hard to decide what to talk about first on my Wedding Wednesday series! I finally decided the food seemed a good enough topic to start off.

On Saturday the 6th {exactly half a year before our wedding!} , my parents, my uncles, my brother and I went for the wedding menu tasting at restaurant To(+). To(+) is owned by chef David and I think he is likely to get a Michelin star soon, his food is that good! It reminded me deeply of the food at Robuchon au Dome in Macau, which has 3 Michelin Stars! The restaurant is located near Suria, next to my wedding venue, although for the wedding they will be catering the food to our venue, of course. The picture above is the view from the restaurant, so nice! The wedding menu tasting is originally intended for the bride, the groom, and their parents, which unfortunately couldn't be the case for us.

Before going to the tasting, David sent me the never ending list of all the choices available at the restaurant, so that I could choose some to try. To begin with, we tried 20 starters, out of which we had to choose 14 that will actually be served during our reception. They will be served in a cocktail style outdoors for about an hour. Then we tried 5 ice creams, and decided on 4, which will be served after the appetizers and before the proper meal. This is a non-fat ice cream, more like a sorbet to make some room for the big meal after all the snacks!

We then tried 4 first dishes and 3 second dishes. 

Needless to say we were all full before the second dishes came. But after that we still had to try 2 pre-desserts, and afterwards, 3 desserts and 5 mini-desserts. I wonder how I'm still alive. All of this was served with a free-flow of different white wines, red wines and cava, because, well, we had to choose that too!!! My father needed a longtime before he could drive the car back home, and even then I was a bit concerned for our safety.

We were really full and kinda drunk, but the whole experience was memorable! Of course I missed J very much and wished he could have make it but oh well. After lunch we also chose the tableware, cuttlery, and stuff. The whole thing lasted from 1pm to 6.30pm... You can imagine!

The food we'll be serving in our wedding will remain a surprise, but at least with all these pictures you can get the idea...

Back to Hong Kong

I'm safely back to my lovely appartment in Hong Kong. I'm waiting for J to come home after work while I'm typing this. I'm so anxious to see him! 

Tomorrow I'm going back to work and it seems like forever since I last went! With these days in Barcelona and our pre-wedding trip to Thailand it's certainly been a long holiday! 

These 10 days I spent in Barcelona organising the wedding have been so productive. We basically have everything settled except for the video, for which I still want to look at some more options. The rest is confirmed and we only need to polish some details. I'll be telling you all about my wedding providers one by one in the upcoming Wedding Wednesdays! I also want to thank my amazing mom once again, who has been organising everything with me for the whole week {and since I got engaged, really!}. The pic above is us visiting my wedding venue, isn't it stunning? :)

Besides getting everything settled for the wedding, something else totally awesome took place: my bridal shower! You may have seen some pics on my instagram, and I'm so looking forward to share the whole thing with you! It was a very touching experience to see everything my girls put together for me! I won't be able to tell you all in detail until two to three weeks from now, because we had an official photographer for the day and she needs some time to process all the 2,000 pictures she took! OMG!!! 

Happy week to you all!

Wedding Wednesday: Our Pre-Wedding Trip to Thailand

Finally! Finally! Here is the post on our awesome pre-wedding trip to Thailand! I wanted to thank my love once again for organizing such an amazing trip because, unlike him, I had never been to Thailand, so he took care of most of the organization. The result was the most perfect and romantic pre-wedding trip one could ever wish for. A short one for sure, le sigh, but unbeatable nonetheless. We left Hong Kong on Wednesday the 27th of April at 8.15AM and arrived to Bangkok Airport at 10AM local time. We then took a cab to Bangkok, which took about an hour because of the crazy traffic jams in the city, had some lunch, and then took the bus to Hua Hin at 12.30PM. We reached Asara Villa & Suite in Hua Hin at 3PM, where we were greeted with a refreshing blue mocktail that I managed to spill on my white shirt -__-

Never mind, nothing could ruin my good mood at the sight of our breathtaking resort. The resort had suites or pool villas, and obviously we went for the latter, a house with our own pool!!! We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying our pool villa and relaxing at the hotel's private beach, until 8.30PM when we took the shuttle bus provided by the hotel to go to the city center for dinner. We had seafood Thai style, which was a bit disappointing for me {Thai food in Hong Kong is better lol}. We did find some very good western food on the following days though! My favorite was All In Hua Hin, a European restaurant with superb food! I enjoyed that meal sooo much :) 

The following day we joined the yoga class at 6.30AM and where the only ones to do so. Come on, free yoga class with this unbeatable atmosphere?! I totally had to join!!! Both J and I loved it, and we joined the Thai Chi class the next day at the same time, which was even better! That means we had breakfast around 7.30AM, so the whole buffet was basically for us only! 

On the day of our check-out, Saturday, we didn't join the morning class and woke up around 9.30AM for breakfast. Oups, bad idea!!! It was CROWDED! I hadn't even noticed so many people were staying at the hotel before I got to that breakfast! {That breakfast buffet was the best I've ever had btw! I loooved everything!} The resort always looked empty to me, and J and I always mentioned how there were obviously more workers there than guests. Well, maybe not after all! Anyway I think a lot of them checked in on Friday, since it was the official start of the Easter holidays. Another thing my fiance planned extremely well!!! We had the resort just for ourselves during our stay :)

After checking out we took the bus back to Bangkok where we arrived for lunch time, and enjoyed 24 hours in the city before going back home. I have to say I genuinely fell in love with Bangkok. It has my favorite place on earth. Whenever I die, please God remember I want that to be my heaven, so kindly send me there :D The place I'm talking about is Siam Paragon, a shopping mall filled up with nice cafes, what is there not to love??! Cupcakes, doughnuts, pancakes, cakes, pastries, everything is available x 1000 at the Food Hall of Siam Paragon! 

I was very glad to discover that cute cafes are so popular in Bangkok, not only at Siam Paragon but everywhere in the city. I also visited Radi Cafe as I already explained in this post.

All in all, I loved this first time Thailand experience and I hope I can go back real soon! Thank you fiancé for this unforgettable pre-wedding trip!

A quick tour of our summer house

I've been to our summer house today, which is about an hour away from Barcelona. No matter how busy my schedule is these days, I HAD to come here. I love this seaside house very much, for it is rare to own such an amazing property. It's a two stories house separated from the beach only by its own garden. It's the perfect place for kids to enjoy an unforgettable summer, and for adults to relax away from the city buzz. The weather was perfect today, yet a bit cold. 

I wish I could take you on a more detailed tour but the house was not entirely ready for it today, so it will have to wait until next time. {Like my grandma had been sleeping in my room during the easter holidays and my nice bedsheets were not back in my room after being washed, and I don't want to be showing you my bed without bedsheets because what's the point!}

So I finally only took pictures of our garden and a corner of our living room. But it should be enough for you to realize how awesome this house is and why I'm so crazy about it!!!