Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way
It is that time of the year again! Just a few more days before the school term ends before a long-awaited summer break! It is time we show our appreciation to this group of exceptional hard working people that we leave in the care of our children!
We all know that it is not easy to educate our precious little ones, so why not send your child’s teacher a small gift of appreciation? Check out some of these amazing gift ideas for your child’s teacher we have selected and reviewed.
This Valentine’s Day, we’ve been invited to try out these two boxes of gorgeous Guylian Belgian chocolates: a selection of 22 pieces of Guylian’s classic Sea Shells and a 42g box containing four praline filled hearts. We are no strangers to this well-known market leader in boxed Belgian chocolates. What we love about Guylian is the lovely flavour! They use a unique blend of West-African cocoa beans which forms the basis of its premium chocolate, made with 100% cocoa butter.
These churro butter cookies are churro lookalikes as they are made from a butter cookie recipe. The cookies melt in your mouth and smell gorgeous!
Have you thought of what to get your other half this coming Valentine’s Day? Why not check out this affordable range of Guylian Belgian Chocolate Sea Shells, which are renowned around the world by chocolate lovers for the ultimate taste experience they provide?
Each chocolate sea shell is marbled and carefully crafted from a blend of silky smooth milk, white and dark Belgian chocolate, made with 100% pure cocoa butter. The Belgian chocolate is made from the finest West African cocoa beans, filled with melt in the mouth roasted hazelnut praline. The praline is made using only the finest, hand selected Mediterranean hazelnuts, which are roasted and caramelised to perfection before being blended with premium Belgian chocolate.
To celebrate the Best for Fledgling Romances, you could get this selection of 22 pieces of Guylian’s Belgian Chocolate Sea Shells.
If you are a big Nutella fan, then you will love this recipe! This recipe only uses four ingredients which are butter, malt biscuits, Coco Pops and Nutella of course! These ingredients can be found in most kitchens, but if you could always substitute Coco Pops for Rice Krispies for example. When I offered to make this, both my children were super eager to help with this one!
Today is the beginning of National Chocolate Week, so what better time to treat yourself to some delicious chocolate or get your children involved in making Chocolate Apples?
This Chocolate Apples recipe is from Amy Beth-Ellice. In her recipe, she uses Granny Smith apples. I have chosen to use Royal Gala because my family are not keen on sour apples, so we just picked our favourites.
My son has been watching quite a lot of video on YouTube and one of the videos he saw was about unwrapping a food box and trying out the snacks in it. So he asked my sister who happened to be working in Japan at the time to make him a box.
I asked her to get us a small box of candies and I was so surprised to receive a huge box of Japanese goodies! Some of them are my favourites too! I have been to Japan three times for holidays and I am totally in love with the place and their cute ‘kawaii’ foods/snacks. They place emphasis on the emotive packaging and pay extra attention to detail. It makes the food so appealing!
Need to send flowers to your family or friends overseas? Not sure which website to use? For over 10 years, FloraQueen has overseen delivery of gorgeous flowers to people in over 90 countries around the world with their 100% Satisfaction Guarantee.
Having looked through their website, their flowers are very affordable and elegant. Besides ordering flowers for your loved ones, you could also add a box of chocolates , a card, vase, teddy bear, ribbon, flower food and even wine on top of that! I love the convenience of having one site to be able to send flowers internationally, especially as my family and friends are all over the world!
Recently, I came across MeinCupcake’s website and was very pleased with their online shopping experience. They have a huge range from baking equipment, baking ingredients to cake making supplies.
I am a very keen baker and like to bake at least once a week. I always find it hard to get all the items from one shop but Cakemart has it all. I love the brands that they stock like Dr. Oetker, Renshaw, Wilton, Kitchen Craft and many more. The website is easy to navigate with clear titles and categories. For each product, it will show you how many items are available online. One quirk I discovered though – some pages have not been translated from German to English as they are a German company with international web pages.
Happy Egg Taste Makers recently partnered up with food stylist and instagrammer, Marte Marie Forsberg, who has provided her Top 5 Tips for creating the best looking food. So they set us, the Happy Egg bloggers, a challenge to take part and create our own style using her tips for a chance of winning some great prizes.
I love baking and I have always wanted to make roulade. I have tried a few times now and had made a rainbow roulade and vanilla sponge with strawberry. This time I am going to make this Blueberry Chocolate Roulade. This recipe is from the Favourite Cakes book by Best Baking.
This Easter, Choc Nibbles set us a challenge to use a variety of Choc Nibbles flavours by either baking them, eating them or decorating with them. I decided to create an Easter Garden. I filled the flower pots with a mixture of different flavoured yummy delicious Choc Nibbles.
Did you know that Sweetdreams Ltd have been manufacturing Choc Nibbles in the North East for nearly 30 years now? They are unique and the only manufacturers of this type of product in the UK. They have seven different varieties: Original Choc Nibbles, Toffee Crumble, Choc Lick, Orange Choc Nibbles, Mint Choc Nibbles, and two brand new to the range: Jammie Choc Nibbles and Posh Original Choc Nibbles.
For this Easter, I decided to make these delicious hidden mini Easter egg chocolate truffles for my little guests. This recipe is inspired by Co-Operative Food Home Bake’s March week 2 chocolate truffles recipe. I was going to make a huge centrepiece dessert recipe – a chocolate egg filled with chocolate mousse but changed my mind at the last minute, and decided to make these simple chocolate truffles with hidden mini eggs.
A chocolate truffle in fact is chocolate ganache which is coated in chocolate, icing sugar, cocoa powder or chopped toasted nuts. They come in different shapes and are usually bite size. Other fillings can include caramel, toffee and all sorts. You just need to use a little of imagination!
Dr. Oetker wants everyone to celebrate the great and good about chocolate and get experimental by trying new chocolatey bakes you have never attempted before. To get everyone excited, throughout March, Dr. Oetker is running a Twitter competition to encourage everyone to have a go at baking their own yummy chocolate cakes and bakes. To enter, simply Tweet @DrOetkerbakes a photo of a chocolate bake you have made and tell them who you will be sharing it with using the hashtag #evenbetterbaking for the chance to win a deluxe hamper of Dr.Oetker chocolate products! What are you waiting for!
We are a huge fan of chocolate and I frequently bake chocolate cakes or cookies to share. Chocolate always tastes better if it’s shared with your loved ones and friends. I tried baking traditional chocolate profiteroles recently, but this time around, I decided to make a creative linked heart effect pattern on the Choux buns. This chocolate recipe can be found on Dr. Oetker’s website where you can find lots of baking inspiration for chocolate cakes and bakes.
After I watched Comic Relief Celebrity Bake Off, I really wanted to bake chocolate profiteroles too! They are my favourite desserts! However I was temporarily stopped in my tracks when my mixer went kaput. I managed to find a new affordable mixer so here’s how I got on with the profiteroles.
Today is the last day of the Year of the Horse and tomorrow we are going to welcome the Year of the Sheep. To celebrate this coming Chinese New Year, Serenata Chocolate is giving one of my readers the chance to win this delicious box of 24 of the finest Belgian chocolates. It is beautifully presented in a black presentation box bound with white ribbon. Inside this luxury box, it comes with different varieties of Belgian chocolates with assorted milk, dark and white filled chocolate. Each scrumptious chocolate comes in a bite size which makes them perfect for sharing.
