Get on the Milk Train

Ever tried an ice cream that is floating on a cloud? Well 'Milk Train' has come to town! Now you can get your ice cream served on a cloud of candyfloss in Covent Garden - they offer soft serve ice cream with a choice of three flavours - matcha, hojicha (roasted green tea) and vanilla, and you can choose to have it with candy floss!

Source: Jeab

The ice cream costs between £3.50 to £3.95, and you can add other toppings to it like cookies and rice puffs for an extra 50p.

Source: Londonist

The ice cream looked so cute and it was definitely Instagram-worthy, but beware, it can get very messy! XD The candy floss tends to drop off the cone a bit so it can get all over your hands, so make sure you have some tissue or wet wipes with you if you have this! My boyfriend and I had to search for a bathroom somewhere so we could wash our hands after haha but the ice cream was tasty :D

Source: Londonist

Hope you all enjoyed this post! Please subscribe to my blog to see more foodie reviews like this! :)

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Korean Patbingsu Dessert, Shibuya

'Patbingsu' (팥빙수) is a very popular shaved ice dessert from Korea, and now it's here in London! The shaved ice is soft and fluffy, and you can choose toppings such as matcha/green tea, red bean, jelly and chopped fruit like mango, strawberries, banana and kiwi. It usually comes with sweetened condensed milk that you pour on top of this snow mountain to make it taste even better! This place is called Shibuya, in Chinatown, Leicester Square. My boyfriend and I ordered a matcha and mango patbingsu.

They also serve other dishes too:

This matcha green tea was really good and had a strong matcha flavour!

Mandu/dumplings with soy sauce. It was nicely cooked and slightly crunchy on the outside.

Octopus rice balls

This Japanese/korean inspired restaurant also offers food such as sushi and katsu curry too aswell as other desserts such as matcha cake.

I definitely recommend this place for their Patbingsu! If you decide to visit this place, let me know what you think of it in the comments below, I'd love to here from you!

Carissa xx

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Make your own Matcha Latte

 

 

If you're a big green tea/matcha fan like me, wouldn't it be great if you could have your matcha latte any time you want? In the UK there are not many places that serve green tea beverages, so instead of scouring the land for green tea, here are a few simple and easy ways you could make it at home!

Number 1:
"Marukyu Koyamaen Chigi no Shiro" Powdered Green Tea:

 

 

This powdered green tea is very strong and concentrated, so you only need a small amount, about one teaspoon. Boil some water in a kettle then leave it for about 10 minutes to cool down to about 70 degrees. Don't have the water too hot as it will destroy all the nutrients in the green tea. Then add about 100ml of water to a mug with the green tea powder and stir well. If you want to make a latte instead of tea, then you can add hot milk to it, about 75ml. This will make the drink more creamy. Add a tablespoon of honey to make it sweeter. And that's it!

 

To make a green tea iced latte instead, just add a little hot water to the green tea powder just to dissolve it, add honey or sugar to make it sweeter, then add 100-200ml cold milk to it and stir well.

 

There are other powdered green tea that you can purchase from the same brand, but this one is premium in that it has a more intense flavour. This one has 40g of green tea powder. You can also use green tea powder to make smoothies and milkshakes, or add it to baking recipes such as cakes, cookies and brownies. I have yet to bake a green tea cake with this!

 

Powdered Green Tea: Japan Centre

 

Number 2:

Nestle Bokujo Uji Matcha Green Tea:

 

 

 

This one is imported from Japan, and it comes in a box of 9, each sachet contains 5.6g. These already have the necessary ingredients in them (e.g. green tea powder, milk powder and sugar), so all you have to add is hot water (about 180ml).

 

To make a green tea iced latte, just add 90ml of hot water to one sachet and then add ice.

 

This one had a nice taste, but the green tea flavour was not as strong as the "Marukyu Koyamaen Chigi no Shiro" one above. To make it stronger, you can either add some green tea powder to it or use less water so it's not as dilute. Unfortunately the UK doesn't sell this so you can only buy it online.

 

Bokujo Uji Matcha: Amazon

 

Number 3:

Matcha Ginger Latte:

 

 

 

 

If you fancy having matcha with a twist, you can opt for a Matcha Ginger Latte. This one comes in a box of 10, each sachet contains 25g. Simply pour the powder into a mug and add about 180ml of hot water (again not too hot) and stir. To make the drink thicker and creamier, you can add hot milk to it.

 

To serve it cold, add 90ml of hot water to one sachet, stir evenly and add ice.

 

In my opinion, this one was quite gingery for me, so I prefer having the original green tea powder, but it's worth a try! I bought this from a local oriental store, so I'm sure you can buy these in UK shops that sell oriental food, or you can order it online.

 

Matcha Ginger Latte: Amazon

 

Overall, I enjoyed using all 3 products, but my favourite has got to be the first one, (Marukyu Koyamaen Chigi no Shiro) because the green tea flavour was more intense, and you only need a small amount, so the pot can last you quite some time. If you are going to try any of these products, do let me know what you think of them by leaving a comment below! I'd love to hear from you! Thanks for reading my blog.

 

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Green tea love

As green tea lovers, my friends and I went to try out a restaurant that we knew had matcha desserts~ Tombo in South Kensington, London. We ordered green tea latte. Unfortunately they didn't have a very strong green tea flavour, so that was disappointing.

For dinner, I had chicken katsu curry. It wasn't anything special though, in-fact we think the meals were like those instant microwavable meals ><

Then we finally reached the dessert menu which we were looking forward to~ we ordered matcha sundae~ the matcha taste was good!

We then had a matcha tart~ this was also really good, the matcha flavour was rich.

We also ordered matcha flavoured macarons~ they were nice, but nothing really that special.

We also tried matcha mochi :P these were quite nice too.

I think Tombo is a great place for green tea desserts, especially the matcha sundae and the matcha tart. They did have other flavours other than matcha, but we came here purely to try out their matcha desserts haha but I don't recommend having dinner here as it wasn't very good. I'd just come here for the dessert next time XD

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Timberyard Seven Dials

This was another café that I've wanted to try for some time~ what really attracted me was the matcha latte, so I HAD to order that when I arrived. The place was crowded with people, mainly students with their laptops and books on the wooden tables and earphones in, sipping their coffees. It didn't seem like a very large café, until I noticed they had a downstairs too, which was more spacious. The matcha latte was quite bitter, but you could add brown sugar to make it sweeter. The presentation though was really nice! and I love coffee art. I sat near the window overlooking the busy, touristy streets of Covent Garden. It's a cute little place to relax in and enjoy your coffee; many people seem to come here to chill out on their work breaks or to study. Though it's quite difficult to find a table to study really as it is very busy, especially on weekends. I would definitely come here again and try something else on their menu! If you have visited this café, please let me know what you thought about it, or if you have any café/restaurant recommendations in and around Covent Garden, please comment below :D Thanks for reading my blog!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Hong Kong 2014: For all you mango lovers

 There are so many great dessert places in Hong Kong, but I thought I'd make a post on just MANGO desserts, because I love mango hahaha so for all you mango lovers out there, here's a post dedicated for you :P The first picture above is mango sago and tofu pudding with green tea ice cream from Honeymoon Dessert. It was so good! Talk about putting the best things altogether in one! Honeymoon Dessert is a very popular dessert place in Hong Kong, and they have many outlets, such as in Mong Kok, Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay.

 We also had mango pancake rolls, which have ice cream in the middle. They also have pancake rolls in durian flavour, if you like that sort of thing.

 These mango desserts are from Hui Lau San/Sweet Moment. This one is the mango and white jelly dessert with mango sorbet. They also have other desserts such as taro pudding. We ordered three desserts there that costed about $100 altogether (HK dollars), which is only about £8-9!

 Or you can order 3 small mango desserts, if you want to try several different combinations :P ~ Mango mochi with mango slices, mini rice balls in mango juice, and mini crystal jelly with mango.

Another mango dessert with blueberry sorbet.

 Mango mochi ~ these were soo yummy :P they had proper mango fruit inside.

Mango coconut aloe drink ~ it had a jelly-like texture. If you like bubble tea, you'll probably like this too.

If you're going to visit Hong Kong any time soon, these dessert places are a must-go, they are very hard to miss as they are everywhere!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Hong Kong 2014: Next Station Dessert

After another busy day at work, I met up with my family in Mong Kok and we did a little shopping around, even bought myself a selfie stick from 女人街 (Ladies' Market) :P We then had dinner at a thai restaurant, and then we all fancied having something sweet to eat, so I suggested going to this dessert place that I'd heard of, called 'Next Station Dessert'. With the help of google map, we finally found the café. The queue was quite long, but luckily we didn't have to wait too long to go in.

We ordered a few desserts to share; one of them was a geeky-looking dessert that was held in test-tubes :O  The majority of it was shaved ice. From left to right, the first one was wasabi and cucumber flavour, coffee flavour, and mint jelly with lemon cheesecake and aloe flavour. It looked really cool, but the actual taste was quite bland, so it was a bit disappointing.

Another dessert we had was the passion fruit soufflé, which was really nice! The soufflé was nice and soft, and I just love anything with passion fruit!

Then we had the molten chocolate soufflé with rum and cookies-and-cream ice cream~ this was just amazing! The rich chocolate flavour was so good. And who doesn't like cookies-and-cream ice cream? :P

 Lastly, we had the green tea soufflé with green tea ice cream. This was also really tasty, the green tea flavour was very strong and sweet. It had some red bean on the top of the soufflé.

Overall, I was very pleased with the desserts, they looked pretty and tasted good (except the test-tube one, which just looked interesting haha), although they were quite pricey~ around $50-60 each (HK dollars) :O We went to so many other cafes in Hong Kong~ keep checking my blog for more foodie updates and what I get up to on my holiday in Hong Kong! If you have any cafes/restaurants that you went to in Hong Kong and would like to share, please feel free to comment below! I'd love to hear from you :D

Follow my blog with Bloglovin