miette & President's Day Weekend

This past weekend was President's Day weekend, a 3 day weekend! I was lucky enough to have my sister and some friends in town so that means going to lots of yummy places!

One of the days I took my sister and her friend to the Ferry Building for an afternoon snack. We stopped by miette to get their Old Fashion Cupcake - a bittersweet chocolate cake with an Italian meringue topping (which was similar to a marshmallow consistency), Rose Gernanium Macaron, and Vanilla Macaron. They had other desserts there in addition to cupcakes and macarons, which include cookies, cakes, tarts, ice cream sandwiches, and other confections. After, we headed over to one of my favorite coffee places, Blue Bottle Coffee, to get lattes and cappucinos to go with our treats.

The cake portion of the Old Fashion Cupcake was nice in the fact that it was not too sweet but it was a little on the dry side for my liking. I really liked the Italian meringue topping though and the candied peanut on top (It was like a Boston Baked Beans candy)! The macarons were nice also but again not the best I ever had. Bouchon still makes the best macarons in my book!

The packaging & decorations were really cute!

Hazelnut Macarons

Also, while at miette, I picked up some cupcakes (Yellow Lemon, Old Fashion, Carrot Cake, Gingerbread (which was recently acclaimed the "Best Cupcake in American" by Food Network), and Carrot Cake for the friends I had visiting. One of my friends is as big of a cupcake/dessert lover as I am. I had gotten a Hazelnut Macaron for their baby girl who finished the whole thing herself when I gave it to her after having dinner with them. She's a dessert lover just like her mommy and I! I'll have to ask them how the other cupcakes are.

Here are the highlights of other places I visited this past weekend:

Cha Cha Cha - shrimp appetizer!
Flour + Water - margarita pizza!
Tartine - this time we had the brioche pudding with nectarines! (b/c they didn't have anymore chocolate croissants or chocolate banana cream tarts)
Mama's - eggs florentine and grapefruit juice!
Bi-Rite - salted caramel and earl grey!
Humphry Slocombe - salted chocolate!

Budapest: Cakes and Bath Houses

One of the destinations on my backpacking trip in Europe was Budapest. I didn't know what to expect of Eastern Europe and I LOVED it! It's a beautiful city. The buildings are historical and gorgeous. The people are so friendly and helpful!


Budapest is famous for their bathhouses, which have been around since the ancient times. One of our days there we spent the morning sightseeing and exploring the city. Once afternoon hit, one of my friends went off on a caving adventure. (Because of the natural springs, caves have formed under the city) My other friend and I decided to go to a traditional bathhouse instead. On the way to the bathhouse, we stopped by a cute cafe to have a snack and expressos. We got a traditional Hungarian cake, Dobostorte, which had a hard top layer of caramelized sugar over alternating layers of sponge cake and chocolate buttercream filing. We also got the cafe special, which was a chocolate cake that had alternating layers of chocolate sponge cake and chocolate buttercream filling. Both were decadent and delicious!

Dobostorte and The Cafe Special Cake

There are several bathouses in Budapest. One of them turns into a nightclub pool party on summer nights. Since we were there in autumn, we were unable to go to that. The bath house we ended up at was more of a locals place. Since it was a women's day, you could go bare. My friend and I also got 1/2 hour massages for only about $12. It felt amazing especially after hitting the pavement for 3 weeks straight. The next day we went to another bath house with our friend who went caving. It was called Széchenyi, which is the big tourist bath house and it was the most pretty looking one. It was ginormous and all the baths and sauna and steam rooms were coed so bathing suits required. 

The locals bath house

Homemade Chai Tea

I LOVE TEA! One of my favs is Chai Tea.

I gathered all the ingredients, most of which I had on hand already or could find at any neighborhood supermarket. The only one that gave me trouble was cardamom. I eventually found it at Whole Foods Market but it came with only a few seeds and cost about $2.99. Luckily for me, there is an Indian Market nearby where I work. I went there and found a big bag of cardamom for $6.99, which is a much better deal. I used the English Breakfast tea I got from Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, which is a blend of Darjeeling and Ceylon black tea.

I used this recipe I found online. It turned out nice but I prefer my tea a little more stronger and spicier. The next time I made the tea, I let the spices simmer longer to get more flavor and steeped the tea a little bit longer and it came out much better! The recipe still needs some perfecting but it'll do for now!