Tag Archives: Macaroons

Pamper party bliss

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The past few months I’ve been on bridesmaid duty.  When my dear friend, Lucy first asked me to be one of her bridesmaids, I was nervous… like REALLY nervous.  I mean, I know absolutely nothing about weddings!  But luckily, thanks to Luce’s amazing organising skills and bubbly personality, helping out has been such a breeze…

My major responsibility was to put together the bachelorette celebrations.  Lucy being both a fabulous lady and a mean party girl, I decided to do it in 2 parts:

  1. An afternoon pamper party
  2. A night out on the town

For part 1 – the lovely ReyJeane from ReyJeane Salon & Spa in Mouille Point hooked me up by offering us her gorgeous salon for the afternoon.

Pretty chandeliers, velvet seating, great view...

A fresh, modern look and super friendly therapists all ensured that everyone was very happy.

The ladies attending got to choose between a mini mani, a mini pedi or a luxurious hair treatment & blowdry.  Or hey, even all 3 if your heart so desired – which is exactly what we organised for our “bride to be” to ensure she got the full pamper experience.

Just look at the seriously cute pedi stations!

I only had to bring in my own champers, because food wise they also had us totally covered with decadent French snacks from Cédric, a French pastry chef who shares part of the premises with ReyJeane.

Large quiche (R250), macaroons in various flavours (R5.50 each) and white & milk chocolate mini eclairs (R6 each).

All the food went down like a treat.  I really couldn’t believe the amazing quality taking the prices into account.  Normally regte egte French goodies like these would set you back way more.

Then this has nothing to do with anything, but there was a lady in the store that had the cutest ugly doggie!  (I loooooove ugly doggies – the uglier they are, the more I want to cuddle them)

He's like: Come down here so I can give you a kiss baby... if only I wasn't allergic... sigh...

The pamper party was a great success.  We all left there looking beautiful and ready for the big night ahead.  A huge thanks to ReyJeane and her ladies & gents for letting us take over the place for the afternoon.  And also to Cédric for the amazing food.

I would highly recommend this to any other bridesmaids out there who are stuck with ideas.  Or even if you just want to organise a bit of a girls get-together.  Every girl can do with more pampering right. :)

xxx

PS.  I’ll tell you all about “part 2″ in my next post.

The people at Voila! are pure evil ;)

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Seriously, have any of you tried walking past Voila! in Cape Quarter without stopping for a little snack?  I’ll give you the answer…. NO!!!  Why?  Cause it’s humanly impossible to pass by THIS table without totally cracking…

You see what I mean?  I am pleading to the people at Voila! to please add some kind of covering so I can’t actually see the table when I walk by… my ass needs a break please! :)   

On a different note, being in a renovating mood of late, I am totally obsessed with the lights they have on the inside.  Check it out:

Gorgeous right?  You can’t see it properly in this pic, but they are actually large glass teacups.  Really cool.  Would love to somehow work something similar into my apartment.

So I dare you guys – go take a walk past there and see what happens.  You’ve been warned…

xxx

A High Tea treat at Myatt

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On Wed eve, Leila and myself headed over to the V&A Waterfront to be spoilt with High Tea at Myatt Cafe.

I’ve mentioned this place in one of my blog posts before.  It’s truly stunning.  Just check it out:

We met up with total sweetheart, Leozette, from Greater Than PR.  Myatt is one of the clients she looks after and she was awesome enough to put together this little dessert extravaganza for us.  Thanks again babe! ;)

That's Leozette in the middle

Now Myatt’s High Tea spread is normally served from 3:30pm to 6:30pm.  It costs R150 per person and you get the following:

  • Tea or coffee of you choice
  • 3 x macaroons
  • 1 x scone with strawberry preserve & cream
  • 2 x types of finger sandwiches of your choice
  • 2 x mini croissants of your choice
  • 2 x pastries of your choice

Just look at our “tower of indulgence”:

Totally worth the kilojoules!

That tart right at the top, next to the macaroons was this seriously amazing banana fridge tart type thing.  It rocked my world!  I basically at the whole thing myself… barely giving poor Leozette & Leila a taste. Mwhahahahahaha…

There was so much to sample, we were totally stuffed by the end of it and there was still some things left over!  Leila took a little doggy bag home for her man.  I could never do something like that, it would be demolished in the car on the way home.  I’m a bad girlfriend.  But I’ve come to terms with that shortcoming. hehe.

One thing that really stands out about Myatt is their incredible attention to detail.  From the beautiful imported china, to the interesting black chandeliers hanging above.  Everything has been carefully thought out.   Even the water is an experience:

Naturally flavoured with strawberries, oranges & mint... so yum!

Now look at all the tempting treats they have in their glass display unit – so cruel:

Eat us Karisa... eat us!!!

Once again I had a vision of people serving these to me while running on the treadmill. I must still try that out to see if it works. :)

We popped over to the inside of the shop as well and it turns out it’s just as impressive as the outside dining area:

This is where you’ll find their insane chocolate collection.  They are called Mary Chocolates and are imported from Belgium and crafted especially for Myatt.  They have 38 variants to choose from… yes, that’s right 38!!!

But be warned:  These babies don’t come cheap.  At R22 per piece, you really have to savor them slowly.  But standing in front of the chocolate display, you quickly seem to forget about the price tag…

Seriously, if I worked here, I would be the size of a house!

I tried the “Astrid” – Orange zest marzipan in dark chocolate.  It was deliciously bitter yet sweet at the same time.  I know marzipan’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I love it.  I think a few of these would make a really nice gift for someone with a serious sweet tooth.

By the end of the evening I had what I’m calling a “High Tea Boep”  – thank goodness I was wearing a dress.  I think I would have been bulging over my pants otherwise…

This was such a decadent experience.  I would highly recommend their High Tea for an afternoon with your girls or maybe even to spoil your mom, she did bring you into the world after all.  I think she’s proved that she deserves this. ;)

xxx

The macaroon war revival

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Right, so I’ve sampled macaroons from a couple of places in Cape Town now and Cassis keeps coming out tops.  Mmmmm.  ♥

But people have been insisting that I still needed to try one more place -  Daniela’s – shop 040, The Square, Cape Quarter.  I figured ah what the hell, I better give it a bash to see if I can finally put this epic battle to rest. ;)

Daniela’s is quite a pretty little shop with lots of decadent treats to choose from (dieters BEWARE!).  The cakes especially looked really really good…

I had to be strong... I was there for the macaroons... nothing more! This was serious.

They had 7 macaroon flavours on offer, including a very unique champagne flavour  (actually, I had heard quite a lot of hype about that one).  I decided to try all of them except the peanut butter flavour.  I love peanut butter on its own, but for some reason a peanut butter flavour in anything else is just seems seriously wrong… blegh.

Anyways, these babies come at quite a hefty price – R10 each!  Yes, that’s right.  For only 6 I had to fork out R60!!  Ouch.

At least the beautiful packaging somewhat softens the blow:

Almost looks too good to eat... I said almost... hehe

My favourite one was the coconut (pale green) – it was soooo yum!   The champagne flavour (beige)  was a disappointment because to me it just tasted like plain ol’ caramel.  The chocolate was boring.  And the other ones, although great in texture  (slightly crispy outer, soft centre, creamy filling), you couldn’t really tell what the flavour was!  I’m assuming the yellow one was some kind of citrus flavour and the two pink ones were supposed to be some kind of berry variant.  But they all tasted the bloody same.  I mean, that’s the whole fun about macaroons!  Trying different flavours! This did not make me happy at all… :(

Now before I give you my Miss K Kiss-o-Meter score – just to recap, here are my ratings for my other macaroon finds so far:

  • Emporio Leone (V&A Waterfront): 
  • Myatt (V&A Waterfront): 
  • Cassis (Gardens & Newlands): 

So what about Daniela’s then?   I’m gonna have to give them: 

As I said, the texture was spot on and they get bonus points for that coconut flavoured gem, but the R10 price tag and lack of distinguishable flavours let them down in the end.

I’m definitely gonna stick to my darling Cassis – where for R60 I can go home with a full dozen! Oh yeah baby, now that’s what I’m talkin’ about…

xxx

Macaroon wars & cupcake face off

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OK, so a while back I did a blog entry about these amazing macaroons I bought at Cassis in the Gardens Shopping centre.  In that post, I claimed that they are by far, the best macaroons in town…

But then, my friend Dani challenged me on that and said that I needed to also try the macaroons at Emporio Leone in the V&A Waterfront.  So on Friday evening I ended up meeting up with Dani and another bestie, Joe,  for some dinner & a catch up.   After dinner, we needed something sweet, so we figured this was the perfect opportunity to go check out those macaroons.

Emporio Leone is a relatively new spot and they specialise in all things sweet and evil.   Just look at the goodies on offer at this place:

Hold me back people...

And then there was this baby:

No, no! Get that away from me!

Oh and these:

Seriously!?! You are killing me here...

And finally, we found the little macaroon beauties:

There they are!!!

The price is a bit steep at R8.50 each! (Cassis is only R5 a piece)  And they only had 3 flavours on offer:  Lemon, Pistachio & Chocolate orange.  A bit limiting…  Dani actually got me one of each flavour, cause she was so sure that they would blow me away.  Such a sweetheart! Mwah.   But sadly, they were quite hard and dry.  Maybe it was just a bad batch…  The only saving grace was the creamy filling.

I also got a deliciously evil-looking chocolate cupcake before exiting the shop… but more about that later. :)

After the disappointing macaroon tasting at Emporio Leone… Joe, suggested that to make this a proper “best of” macaroon review, we needed to head over to Myatt.  Myatt is a stunning coffee shop on the upper level at the V&A, on the Woolies side.

Can this place possibly be any prettier?

Their menu consists of sandwiches, wraps, salads and light meals, as well as an array of sweet treats.  One thing to note though is that these people take “attention to detail” to the next level, just look at the sugar cube bowl for example:

Sugar cubes just don't taste the same unless they're served in a golden cup!

And isn’t this the most beautiful cappuccino you’ve ever seen!?!

The cappuccino "hearts" me!

But on to the real reason we were there… the macaroons!  The prices here weren’t too much better.  You can get 3 macaroons for R25.  But just look at their flavour selection:

BAM!!!

I went for the Vanilla (according to the waitress, that’s their top-selling one), the Pistachio and the Honey & Saffron.  The presentation again was top notch:

Oh so pretty...

However… the filling in these babies were seriously weird.  They had a strange margarine taste to them.  It was quite off-putting to be honest.  A total bummer though as the meringue parts were great…

So after getting to taste some of the supposed best macaroons on offer in Cape Town, here are my final Miss K Kiss-o-Meter ratings to put an end to this war:

  • Emporio Leone: 
  • Myatt: 
  • Cassis: 

Cassis still wins by far!!! Woohoo!  Told you guys…

Now, back to that decadent chocolate cupcake I purchased at Emporio Leone.  Joe bought a vanilla cupcake at Myatt as well, so we decided to do a bit of a cupcake “face off” while we were at it.

In the left corner we had the Myatt Vanilla cupcake with chocolate shavings:

Contender nr 1

In the right corner we had the double choc, dressed up in gold dust cupcake from Emporio Leone:

Contender nr 2

While the Myatt cupcake won on looks 100%, the cake part was way too dense.  The Emporio Leone chocolate dream on the other hand was just yum!  But again, I have to give you my official Miss K Kiss-o-Meter ratings:

  • Myatt Vanilla cupcake:
  • Emporio Leone Chocolate cupcake: 

So there you go guys.  Hope you’re all craving sweet things just as much as I am now!  Gotta still try and work off all that sugar in the gym…  aargghh.  Does it count btw if you eat a cupcake while on the treadmill? haha.

xxx

Macaroon heaven…

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So…. I actually came back from my Italian holiday 1kg lighter than when I left Cape Town!  How awesome is that?  The whole time I was stressing about coming back the size of a house with all that eating I was doing…  I think it must have been all the walking and stair climbing that helped me out. :)

To reward myself, I decided to get something a little extra special… some macaroons!  And where do you go in Cape Town for only the best?  Cassis of course!  They have two stores in Cape Town – one in the Gardens Shopping Centre (that’s where I go) and then another one in Newlands.

They do cost R5 a pop – so you have to pick carefully and really savour them.

Hello babies!!!

I went for the following flavours:

  • Strawberry (pink)
  • Citron (yellow)
  • Pistachio (green)
  • Passion Frui (purple)
  • Coconut (white)
  • Chocolate (brown)
  • Orange with dark chocolate (orange)

Which one was my favourite?  I can’t pick just one!  That would be like cheating on the others… haha.  I had promised myself that I would eat them slowly, maybe even one a day… but then I was like “who am I kidding!” – I ate them all in one go. :)

Now I have to get my ass back into the gym…

Chat soon. xxx