Cupcake Bakery

Cupcake Bakery

Shop 2 to 4, Lower Ground 2, Queen Victoria Building, Sydney

When faced with a truckload of assignments and lectures that go at a breakneck pace, the only legal thing that can keep me going is sugar. As such, for an after-class pick-me-up before I dive into my notes, Cupcake Bakery at Queen Victoria Building is a great port of call. Few things banish the college blues (without the price of a hangover) like a breathtaking tablescape of gorgeous cupcakes iced in psychedelic technicolour. Standard cupcakes go for $3.80 each.

I’ll start with my favourite, guaranteed to leave you with a grin on your face and not a care in the world… except perhaps your traumatized Islets of Langerhans. Sticky Date has a base of mildly salty, solidly dense, date-flavoured cake paying ample homage to the pudding that inspired it. Crowning that thickly is a decadent caramel fudge icing with highlights of coffee granting it seductive depth.

Gluten-Free Red Velvet is similarly dense if a bit on the dry side with its mild cocoa flavour. Clearly red food colouring is used instead of the traditional beetroot so those looking for punchy oomph will be mildly disappointed. However, the cream cheese frosting is deliciously creamy and surprisingly light; more than enough to satisfy this sugar junkie.

Finally, those with something more classical in mind should go for Vanilla Strawberry with a layer of thick, sweet and delicately tart strawberry jam oozing at its base as well as a massive, Mount-Everest-sized mound of smooth, vanilla, go-see-your-dentist frosting.

Hurricane’s Bar & Grill Bondi Beach

Hurricane’s Bar & Grill Bondi Beach

Shop 8, 164 Campbell Parade, Bondi Beach, NSW

I cannot stop waxing lyrical about the amazing meat available in Australia. In particular, the ribs here are a world apart from any serratus anterior - porcine or bovine - ever to enter my mouth. My first post as a medical student here will likely disappoint cardiologists but Hurricane’s is home to my personal rib apotheosis and probably the first place I’d bring anyone who comes for a visit. Documented below is an amalgamation of two feasts I’ve had there, one dine-in and one from the adjacent take-way stand.

Only available if you dine in is the Herbed Roll ($4.50) and it alone justifies braving the meandering queue and forking out the service charge. The crunch of the crust as I tore the oven-warm loaf apart seemed composed specifically to make my mouth water and taste buds tingle in sweet anticipation. Next, the smell hit like a knockout punch, a divine combination of thyme and basil doing pirouettes around the base elements of yeast and butter. Finally, placing it in my mouth elicited a shiver of ecstacy at the gorgeous mouthfeel of crunchy crust and pillow-soft interior combined with a robust herbiness and olive oil richness.

Now, a visit to Hurricane’s is – by definition – only complete after a Full Rack of Hurricane’s Pork Ribs ($36 dine-in or $29.50 take-away). The meat set the standard for balancing fall-off–the-bone-tender with sink-your-teeth-in meaty bite for that perfect rib texture. However, the magic was in the basting fluid imbuing the meat with a smoky perfume and rich, caramelised sweetness balanced with a hint of tartness that couched the porcine meatiness beautifully.

Against the gastronomical epiphany I just mentioned, the Full Rack of Hurricane’s Beef Ribs ($29.50 take-away) was no contender. On its own, the beef might have been pretty good but next to the pork it came across as chewy, tough and difficult to eat. The bones popped right out of their meaty sheath to leave you with a huge, steaming, man-sized hunk of cow that even plastic cutlery stood no chance against. That – to me – detracted from the quintessential experience of tearing meat off the bone with your teeth.

You have to get Chips ($3 take-away) to go with your ribs as these lightly salted, thick-cut fries are absolutely perfect to soak up all the delicious drippings. The mealy potato magically absorbs all that meaty character when swirled around vigorously and emerging covered in a sticky, glistening coat of pork juice.

If – for some inexplicable reason - you don’t want to get your hands messy, the Hurricane’s Beef Burger ($13 take-away) is a good bet. The massive patty weighs in at a quarter-kilogram of solid chuck beef and literally dwarfs the bun, not something you see everyday. It was remarkably moist for such a huge amount of meat and was probably grilled slowly under low heat - by grilling standards anyway - as it was evenly medium despite the considerable thickness.

Fatlittleboy's Last Singaporean Lunar New Year

The eve of Chinese New Year typically involves a crazy amount of cooking and my last lunar new year in Singapore was no exception.

Chinese Three–Layered Roast Pork (aka Siew Yok)

1 kg Pork belly, skin-on
1 tbsp salt
2 tbsp white vinegar
1 cube fermented red bean curd
1 tbsp Chinese 5-spice powder
1 tbsp white pepper
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp plum blossom rice wine

1. Combine bean curd, 5-spice powder, pepper, salt, sugar and wine and rub onto meat side of pork
2. Leave in refrigerator overnight
3. Dry meat as much as possible with kitchen towels and a hair dryer if you’ve one on hand, hanging it for a while helps too
4. Rub salt onto the skin to wick away the remaining moisture
5. Slice parallel furrows an inch apart through skin and into the subcutaneous fat; this will help prevent the skin fracturing and ease chopping later
6. Place on a rack over a dripping tray in a fan-forced oven at 200C for 20 minutes
7. Remove from oven and dry any rendered fat oozing through the furrows
8. Brush vinegar onto skin and return to the oven for a further 25 minutes till it just starts to char
9. Chop – do not slice – into bite-sized morsels

Just check out those gorgeously distinct layers.

Chestnut Tart

Tart Base

Refer to previous entry for basic shortcrust

Crème de Marron Filling

500g Chestnuts, shelled and with brown membranes removed
200g Sugar
150ml Water
1 tsp Vanilla Extract

1. Place chestnuts into a pot of water and bring to boil
2. Transfer to a slow cooker and leave on high for 5 hours until soft
3. Drain and puree into a rough paste
4. Bring sugar, vanilla and water to boil for about two minutes, forming syrup
5. Add chestnut puree to the syrup and stir in, remove from heat
6. Whip – preferably with an electric whisk – to achieve a smooth paste





This tart can be dressed up in many ways as the chestnut puree cools hard and strong, providing the perfect base for icing sugar stenciling.





Alternatively, pipe whipped cream onto little tartlets, use an electric whisk to beat heavy cream in bowl nestled in a bed of crushed ice and salt for a chemical free alternative to the spray-can sort.





Drizzle in some chocolate sauce halfway through the whipping for something really decadent.

Candied Gingko Nuts and Yam

This recipe is sort of a family secret so I can’t really reveal it; my Lunar New Year is really incomplete without it though.

It’s backbreaking work to extract the bitter stems from the nuts but the end result is completely worth it.