Pinot Gris served with Asian-style fish and seasame salt chips.

Wine.

The universal gift when you:

a) Don’t know what to get someone

b) Need a gift for a wine lover

c) The ultimate thing to re-gift if you are a non-drinker

I used to be guilty of the re-gifting option, but lately, I haven’t re-gifted any of it. I’ve either put it in my secret squirrel hole to mature, or cracked it open to share with friends. 

So the next time you are at the liquor store trying to decide on what wine to get for either yourself or someone, you may want to try Taylors.

Look at how many awards their Shiraz has won!

‘Bringing great wines to life.’

Established three generations ago in South Australia’s beautiful Clare Valley, Taylors Wines is a family-owned Australian wine company that was born from a passion of producing exceptional,  hand crafted wines. With a philosophy that embraces balance, elegance and finesse in every wine, Taylors truly brings great wines to life.

From a velvety Cabernet Sauvignon to delicate and refreshing Riesling, Taylors Wines boasts a world-class collection of unmistakeable quality and style. Plus, with a comprehensive Environmental Management System and a commitment to sustainability, Taylors Wines understands that green is just as important as red and white.

Twitter: @Taylors_Wines

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Taylors-Wines

http://www.taylorswines.com.au/

Two lucky readers will win two bottles of Taylors Wines!

x1 Taylors Estate – Shiraz 2010 & x1 Taylors Estate – Pinot Gris 2011 each.

To enter, leave a comment below telling me how you like to enjoy a glass of wine.

Winners will be chosen at random, and contacted via email to arrange delivery of their prize. Winners will also be announced here.

Competition closes Wednesday 22nd May 2013 midnight EST. 

The giveaway is open to Australia only. Winner must be of legal drinking age and provide proof of age.

Where do your favourite hot chips come from?

Are they at the footy, smothered in tomato sauce?

Grill’d? Schnitz? Heston’s triple cooked chips?

I personally LOVE the chips from Grill’d; so when I was offered to try the new Deli Chips from Birds Eye, the flavour combinations had me drooling over the keyboard a little.

The two flavours are Sea Salt & Rosemary and Parmesan, Garlic & Basil. They taste great on their own, or smothered in tomato sauce

They are made from 100% Australian potatoes, so essentially, eating chips is helping our Aussie farmers… oh if I have to!

At only RRP $3.49, they are available at your local supermarket.

I cooked mine in the Airfryer (essentially a mini fan-forced oven), and they came up a treat. Crunchy and loads of flavour. I attempted a Thermomix brioche recipe, but didn’t really know what I was doing to shape the buns, hence they look a little weird. Also served it with Thermomix ketchup and tried to make it like the Denise burger from Huxtaburger. Served with a nice cold beer, it’s a wonder how I’m still single really

For more information check out http://birdseye.com.au or check out the facebook page.

Iron Chef Shellie sampled Birds Eye chips thanks to Birds Eye and Thrive PR.

Buckwheat pancakes with grilled pear, chocolate fudge, hazelnuts and a naughty whiskey maple syrup $14.50

When Lianne posted photos of her pancakes from Merchant’s Guild, BBFF Daisy and I both shouted from the rooftops WE HAD to try them ASAP! Being the social butterflies we are, finding a date to mutually agree on was a challenge. So we ended up going on my birthday, and roped brunch enthusiasts, Haz & Gaz in as well. 

I got there first and put my name down for a table. Luckily a big group left within about 5 minutes and we were seated.

The space itself is very funky, going with the industrial look, subway tiles, grungy light fittings, and the warmth of wood. But I didn’t go there to assess the interior fixtures… I went there for PANCAKES! 

Hot chocolates are by Mork chocolate and the coffees showcase some of Melbourne’s most dedicated coffee roasters on a rotating menu. They seem to take their teas very seriously too, which is great for a non-coffee person like me! Above is a chai latte being poured by hand model Gaz, and a latte.

Vietnamese Duck Banh Mi baguette with pickled veg, pate, chilli and coriander $12.50

As we all umm-ed and ahhh-ed over the menu, we decided to order pancakes for the table to share, and we each get something else. I had my eye on the duck banh mi after checking out the menu online a few days before. It was good, but lacked the real tartness of pickled veg. Even though there was some in there, I would have liked more sourness. Having said that, the duck was nice and juicy, and the baguette nice and crispy and didn’t break my jaw as I ate it. 

Short cut bacon, avocado and chard corn salsa on sourdough toast, free-range eggs, jalapeno pesto $17

Mississippi chicken with a creole coleslaw of cabbage, fennel, apple and purple carrots $17

I was too busy stuffing my face I forgot to take photos of Daisy’s porridge, and Ricky’s bubble and squeak. Fail-town!

I dined compliments of Haz & Gaz who shouted me a birthday meal. Thanks guys ♥

 And because it was my birthday, the Never Too Sweet one, Daisy very kindly made me a birthday cake with BALLS!!! Thank you again BBFF! I can’t remember the last time someone made me a birthday cake! xo

♣ ♣ ♣

I was invited to drag myself out of bed early on a public holiday, to try the brunch offerings at the newly opened 8 Days Cafe in Armadale. 

This is former professional royal tennis player Ruaraidh Gunn’s first hospitality venture. The name “8 Days Cafe” comes from the procedure of roasting coffee beans.

From their website:

“Roasted beans go through a degassing process from the time they come out of the roaster. The speed of the degassing process depends on the nature of the roast. From day 1 the beans start to get better,and generally peak at 8 days.”

I didn’t try the coffee, but I did have a chai and an earl grey. I was a fan of the chai,

Toasted Glicks bagel w/smoked salmon,spinach, avocado, poached eggs & chilli lime hollandaise $18

Baked eggs w/ Tuscan bean cassoulét ,salsicchia & petite rocket salad $16

Smashed avocado & Persian fetta on 6 grain w/smoked bacon & poached eggs $18

Avocado & Persian fetta on sourdough w/ chilli, basil & minted broadbean dressing $17

Crossiant French Toast with pears

Wagyu beef burger, brioche bun, gruyere cheese,smoked bacon,tomato relish & sliced pickles w/fat chips, crisp baby cos,tomato & aioli $21

The cherry ripe mud cake was treat, and you don’t have to save it for afternoon tea. We all shared this slice after breakfast!

Located in the bustling shopping street of High Street, Armadale; this place is bound to be a hit with the locals and the shopaholics requiring a feed in between credit card swipes. 

What better way to end my birthday weekend than with a gorgeous high tea at Bursaria, at Abbotsford Convent.

Having never been to Abbotsford Convent or the Collingwood Children’s Farm, I was blow away at how gorgeous it was behind the fence. With a bustling market place, perfect weather, it just seems like a world all its own. We wondered around a little trying to find where we were meant to be, we turned the corner prematurely and ended up in a cute little court yard with a ye olde tennis court. It’s a magical place to explore, but I had to resist the market and exploring and head off to high tea.

We were greeted by Flossy… thank god I decided to get changed before I went, wouldn’t it have been awkward if we were wearing the same thing?

She was amazing, she worked the crowds, serving drinks, food and just being all around fabulous. It just added to the whimsicalness of it all. We all sipped champagne and lemonade whilst we waited to go in. When we were finally let in, it was just the most beautiful high tea I’ve ever been to!

Large tables with hessian, colourful flowers, boards of endless sweet treats, and a DJ pumping out some real funky tunes. Whilst you get a complimentary champagne on arrival, if you wish to purchase another glass, or wine or beer, they are available at the bar. Each table did have a pitcher of lemonade and bottomless tea and coffee refills. 

Savoury food provided a good selection, with my favourite being the salmon blinis, followed closely by the chorizo sausage roll. Who doesn’t love a good sausage roll?

From left to right:

Honey-cured salmon with remoulade on dill blinis

Poached chicken, almonds, celery teenie tiny sandwiches

Skewers of herb and citrus prawns wrapped in noodles, with lemon aioli

Cream of mushroom soup with truffle oil and red pepper tapenade

Chorizo, spinach and ricotta pastry roll, with tomato relish

King Island blue cheese and pear chutney served on fig and walnut bread

Sweets didn’t only look good, they tasted good too. We all agreed that the chocolate was the best. The disappointing one was the lemon meringue tart. The meringue was a rock hard meringue, instead of a squishy one you can just suck the top off. Whilst it was the least impressive, it didn’t matter, we had plenty to choose from, and they came around with extra everything, so none of us went home hungry at all.

From left to right:

Crème brulee, lightly scented with lavender

Mini lemon meringue pies

Scones with raspberry jam and double cream

Organic chocolate pots, salted caramel toffee, clotted cream

Rosewater meringue, seasonal berries, marscarpone cream

Vanilla, rose and pistachio panna cotta, pomegranate syrup

 This high tea would be a great idea for Mother’s Day if you are looking for something to get your Mum.

Further dates, prices and all information are available by visiting http://bursaria.com.au

Bursaria Fine Foods presents ‘A Touch of…’

Rosina Function Space: 1 St. Heliers Street, Abbotsford, Melbourne

Cost: $55.00

Time: 2-4 pm

2013 Dates (Third Sunday of every month)

• 19th May
• 16th June
• 21 July
• 18th August
• 15th September

Iron Chef Shellie dined as a guest of Bursaria thanks to Zilla & Brook. 

Today I turn 28.

For some reason, I like being an even number instead of an odd number. 

I also like even numbers on the volume control in my car. OCD much?

I think that being 28 will be a great year for me. I’m looking forward to change. Something new, something fresh, something exciting, something to put me out of my comfort zone… as much as I will hate being out of my cooshy comfort zone! 

I’ve learnt a lot from being on this planet 28 years.  

I never stop learning though. My 80-something year old grandma also tells me she never stops learning too <3 

You are never insignificant; you can make a difference. Anything is possible, and if it’s not, well you haven’t tried hard enough. Although sometimes, I do like to just give up! 

People will come and go from your life, but the real gems will stay… you people know who you are. I love you people <3

Before I get too emo, let’s share have some cake.

Chocolate cake to be precise. Who doesn’t like love chocolate cake? 

Do you like the little cake flags I made? I was having a pinterest spiral at work this week and decided I wanted needed cake flags in my life.

All you have to do is take a piece of ribbon, glue it in place (or if you are pov like me and don’t have glue, blutac works just as well!), sorta shape it , then spray it with stiff starch and let dry. Viola! Now you don’t need to go buy them! … but you can pay me for this tutorial if you like  

This recipe comes from amazing food stylist/photographer and blogger, Katie Quinn Davies. My BFF Alana bought me her book for Christmas, and I knew I had to try this chocolate cake. 

When I instagramed the ingredients, a lot of people assumed I was making tiramisu.. oh how wrong they were! I was making myself a birthday cake. Sad. Tragic. Deliciousness. The batter was so good I debated if I should bake it, or just go into the corner and devour the whole bowl. I’ll be serving it tonight, minus one slice to my friends

I’m off to spend the day with family and friends, over food. My “birthday weekend” has been planned purely around food. The way it should be! Stalk my noms through the usual channels twitter or instagram. 

I have writer’s block….

I like Nutella.

No.

I LOVE Nutella.

I would marry it and have it’s babies if I could.

No, I probably shouldn’t…. cos then I’d probably eat my babies, and that’s not really socially acceptable now is it.

This recipe calls for a 400g jar of Nutella. But when you are a Nutella freak like me, the smallest jar on hand is a 750g one. I don’t think I should be left alone with those giant 5kg one. I might go into a Nutella coma fairly quickly. 

This recipe doesn’t require many ingredients, or effort… which is brilliant when you want chocolate cookies pronto. The smell of the cookie batter alone will send you into a Nutella frenzy; but wait for them to bake, sandwich together with more of the good stuff, and put your feet up. I dubbed these “who needs a boyfriend” cookies. 

I made them as the original recipe by Valli Little says to, and they were pretty. bloody. good. But she calls them “baci biscuits” and I was wondering where the nutty component was. So I took it upon myself to improve on her recipe. I tried putting nuts and nut meal into the cookie dough and subtracted some flour. Perhaps I didn’t do it right and my cookies were harder than the first batch. I’m still experimenting with the correct ratios. But may I suggest chopped up hazelnuts in the middle with the Nutella if you have some lying around. It’s more Baci and Ferrero Rocher like, and will take you to heaven. 

If you stalk me on Instagram or Twitter, you will be aware I hosted a retro party over the weekend, to celebrate Raz, Lky and my birthdays. With our birthdays a few days apart we decided to get together and have a joint party with a few of our fellow food bloggers. I decided to just invite a whole bunch of people, and only one couple said no… which left me with 19 people in my new house! If you want to check out what we got up to, follow the hashtag #retroparty on instgram. We had a photobooth, played Twister, listened to songs way before our time, and enjoyed food and beverages of the “retro” era. 

One of the dishes I made was a French Onion Dip platter. It had the usual suspects; carrot sticks, cucumber sticks, capsicum sticks, cherry tomatoes, and these cute little radish mushrooms. I got the idea off google images as I wanted to know how to cut my radishes retro-ish. This came up and I knew I had to, but instead of doing it the way they did, I used my skills to do it the way I had been taught to make potato mushrooms from the recent BBQ Red Heads Festival masterclass. On another note, it was the first time ever I had to buy French Onion soup mix, and I felt so dirty standing in front of all the packaged sauce mixes, I felt like I was having an affair and didn’t want anyone to see me there bahaha!

So you too can impress your friends with your next dip platter, salad or whatever you wish to use them on. I can’t guarantee it will make you double in size and strength, allow you to smash through bricks or take and extra hit from enemies, but I tell you they will impress anyone!

I WAS INVITED to sample the breakfast offerings at The Wise Tapas Bar & Restaurant on the weekend. 

I headed down on my own to find fellow awesome people Libby, Daisy & Mr Bao there already with a spare seat saved for my toosh. As I got there late (by 5 minutes, OMG!), they had already chosen what they were going to have. I couldn’t break food blogging protocol and order the same dish, so I opted for themuesli  I didn’t fancy bacon and eggs after hosting a meat heavy retro party the night before. I needed something light. 

I had a chai which was great, it didn’t need any sweetening, and the flavour was a good blend.

I never order muesli when I go out for brunch, on the rare occasions that I do go out for brunch. After having this one, whilst it was good and extremely filling, I must say, I prefer my muesli toasted instead of not  toasted. 

Daisy’s coconut pancakes were so light and fluffy. We agreed it could have used a bit more fruit and sauce. Daisy requested some extra sauce and was promptly delivered a pot of salted caramel gold. If you could have only see the glee on her face!  I think they would need a side of bacon as it was on the sweet side.

Libby had the breakfast sanga and Mr Bao had the big breakie. Both smelt AH-MAZING, and got demolished quite quickly.

Gonna be honest, there were only 2 girls working the floor, and after quite a few attempts at trying to wave them down for more cutlery we finally got some. It’s not like we were being subtle either, so that was a bit disappointing. 

Prices seemed reasonable for breakfast/brunch fare, it wouldn’t break the bank unlike some places out there. 

♠ ♠ ♠

Are you freaking out that Google Reader is going to be shut down? 

Are you own the prowl for new blogs to follow?

Do you have a blog of your own, and what it to be seen by a wider audience?

May I suggest you head over and check out Canopi.

This is not a sponsored post; this is just me, sharing with you a wonderful thing. I am getting absolutely zero in return for writing this; sharing is caring. 

I’ve been with Canopi since January when someone requested that my blog be on it. 

There are millions of blogs on the internet. Who has time to dig through all of them to find the ones that speak to you? Canopi is the new way to find the blogs you can’t get enough of. Canopi allows you to easily discover, organize, follow and share blogs that are relevant to your interests and passions. By creating an innovative online community for dedicated, passionate readers, Canopi has developed a space for you to engage in a meaningful way about the topics you care about most.

What is the post score?

It’s everything you need to know about a blog post’s social influence and engagement, condensed into one single score.

Readers vote through their social actions (point, tweets, likes, + 1′s, pins, comments, and pageviews) which we condense into one score.

Not only is it a great platform to read, follow and share blogs on, it’s a great way to SHARE your content. The awesome (but small) team at Canopi have also helped tweet out my post, reaching EVEN MORE people! 

Not only that, I’ve found some new, interesting blogs to follow as well. It’s not just for food bloggers, it’s for ALL KINDS of bloggers, whether you be beauty, lifestyle, or purely like to blog about sheep wearing socks in a remote town on the other side of the world.

It’s for EVERYONE!

I’m not even kidding, as I’m drafting this post this just happened; and it soon followed with loads of new bloggers tweeting me and sharing my post! ♥ 

Get onto it and give a try!

You can also check my out profile and start following me

I am an over achiever. 

There. 

I said it.

When I invite people over for a meal, I don’t just give them one option; I give them as many as I possibly can. I don’t want one person to be stuck with something they don’t like, and I don’t want anyone going home hungry. 

In fact, most people will leave my house with a take home pack, even if they are just coming for dinner. 

I had my BFFs from high school come over shite and briney one Saturday morning to Skype our other BFF who is currently living in NYC. Naturally, I had dreams of a lavish breakfast spread, possibly pancakes, eggs, the works. I eventually came back down to Earth, and planned some more realistic options. As it was close to Easter, I made the hot cross muffins I recently blogged, ham and cheese croissants, as well as this incredibly addictive granola. 

This granola was a UUUUUGE hit with everyone. My friend Alana even took a photo of the recipe and proceeded to go home and make a double batch of the stuff. My other friend Sian just recently asked if I blogged it yet, as she wanted to make a batch too. It is THAT good people! THAT GOOD!

I served mine with a selection of Summer fruits; mango, raspberries, blueberries and the very cute kiwi berries. This sparked a bit of interest on Instagram. They taste just like kiwi fruit, sweet and kiwifruitish, only tiny. My friend Tristan said they tasted a bit like feijoa, and I would have to agree with him, they did.

Served with Greek yoghurt that had vanilla bean paste mixed through it, it was the perfect breakfast. I suggest you also make a double batch of the granola, as this single batch won’t be enough! 

Oh and if you are a huge breakfast fan, may I suggest you check out fellow blogger, and all around awesome girl, Heidi‘s blog and join her #WednesdayBreakfastClub .

My friend April is having a bebe!!

It’s a long story… well not really, I just can’t be bothered explaining it…. but her and her hubs have nicknamed the baby “Peanut”. There is another story where you had to be there, about why Peanut’s surname is Sparty. 

Wow, exciting blog post this is ey? Lots of half told stories, going no where… 

ANYWAY, I made this awesome cake for the baby shower. It was just going to be chocolate cake, until Haz said she was making peanut cookies, then I realised I needed to bring something peanut-y. Hence the peanut butter swirl came to be. THEN I wanted to coat it in ganache and smother it in raspberries like Katie Quinn Davis had done…. and then I had my final masterpiece. 

To say this experiment was a success might be a slight understatement. I don’t want to toot my own horn here but it was a cake you just couldn’t say no to.

THIS CAKE WAS AMAZEBALLS! And if you don’t believe, I can give you a long list of references to clarify my tastebuds  

 Thanks Taz for snapping this beauty with your iPhone!

The recipe below I’ve only made in the Thermomix, so I hope my translation into non-thermo-mode works out well!

(For those with Thermomixes – it is essentially the Too Easy Chocolate Cake from the Everyday Cookbook, doubled, with added chocolate and peanut butter).