The main reason we came to La Floraison was for their creative custom printing on drinks. It is located in Sydney CDB, very close to Townhall Station which is great location and easily reached. Honestly, I never heard of this place before I saw pictures of those cute drinks which then prompted me to look for their address and made the trip eventually.
So we came here on a Saturday morning only to find that they open from 12 noon. I thought this is a little odd considering this is cafe and people do get the drinks in the morning or at the very least during brunch hours. So we had to kill some time walking around Daiso (luckily just few doors away) for the open time. In that time, we noticed there was also another small family did what we did – came here way too early.
As they opened and we lined up at the cashier for order, I realised this place really must be alive mainly for their drinks. There were just a few cakes available on display, literally mean just a few. The lady in front of me was asking if they had such cake from the menu and was told they had run out. Anyway, I ended up getting a piece of cake to share and a hot drink for each of us. Upon payment, they will ask what design you would like to have on top of your drink. You can choose from numerous pictures available on the tablet and even send your picture to them as well.
The entrance – I think the decor is very pretty with flowers and hanging lights – fairy tale alike!
Here are what we ordered:
Red Velvet Cake
Taro Latte with Gudetama print
Matcha Latte with Sinchan print
The drinks were not bad taste wise, but the cake was dry and felt like it’s been sitting there for too long. We love how the drinks are not overly sweet and can absolutely taste the taro or matcha flavours. Also their price point is fairly expensive – but I guess you pay for the experience. After all, we enjoyed slurping the printed Gudetama and Sinchan over our hot drinks 🙂 Would I be coming back? Perhaps no, mainly because we have already experienced it and apart from the print, everything else was not outstanding.
Click here for our experience at Gudetama Cafe in Osaka, Japan….
Day 8 is another day when we plan to maximise our JR Pass and we have planned to visit Hiroshima and Miyajima. I added these two places in our itinerary not only for its distance, also we wanted to try Hiroshima’s style okonomiyaki. And while there, we might as well visit The Great Torii at Miyajima. Initially, we had planned to spend a night at one of the ryokan in Miyajima; however it just didn’t work out with our overall itinerary. So, it would just be a day trip then.
Day 8
We started today early again hoping to have enough time at Hiroshima and Miyajima since the last ferry service from Miyajimaguchi is 4.10 pm. We took the shinkansen from Shin-Osaka and the ride was about one and an half hour to Hiroshima. Hiroshima itself is a fairly big station, and once we exited the ticketing gates there are many “Hello Hiroshima” volunteers. These people will help tourists for directions and how to get to points of interest. As we must have been so easily identified as tourist, one of these volunteers helped us out with directions to go to city centre and recommended an okonomiyaki restaurant in the area.
We took an electric railway ride as per our guide to Hatchobori and from there we walked around the area using the Google map. We could not find the recommended restaurant, so we ended up going into one restaurant that seemed pretty busy with locals. Must be a good sign, right? We tried two types of okonomiyaki here and both were really good. They were different to the Osaka style, in which they have loads more vegetable here plus they are not served with mayonnaise although you can always ask for it if you want to.
From here, we walked to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a designated UNESCO World Heritage site since 1996. It was a nice park as are many other parks in Japan, but seeing the Atomic Bomb Dome was really something. How the whole city was completely destroyed during WW II and look how advanced it is now, is amazing. Gotta admire the dedication and discipline of the Japanese! The park covers massive ground and it will easily take hours to wholly explore the area, which we didn’t have such time for. So, we took the free bus back to the station (note it is not free per se, but is covered by JR Pass).
From there, we took a train ride to get to Miyajimaguchi station and headed to the ferry wharf. The ferry services between Miyajimaguchi and Miyajima is frequent and served by two ferry companies, namely JR and Matsudai. The ferry ride was only 10 minutes each way and here we are at Miyajima. You would be able to see the Great Torii from the ferry ride towards Miyajima.
We happened to have only about 2 hours in Miyajima to make it to our reserved shinkansen back to Osaka. In that short span of time, we could not possibly able to do much in Miyajima. I had wanted to take to cable car to the top of the hill but that would not be enough time for this. So we only explored the market and walked to the beach nearby The Great Torii. It was low tide while we were there so the base of the six pillars of the torii are visible. Had we spend the night at Miyajima, I’d love to come by early in the morning during high tide to see it floating on the sea.
Anyway the market were busy, there are a lot of stalls selling Miyajima’s most popular snack: momiji manju and oyster. Momiji manju is maple leaf-shaped cake with various fillings, such as red bean paste, matcha, blueberry, cheese, custard and few others. Some stalls even sell deep-fried version of this cake, which we didn’t get due to the long queue. Oh, you will not miss a giant wooden rice paddle in the market as well. At first, I wasn’t sure what is the paddle supposed to be, was it an oar or something else. Then when I read some travel stories about Miyajima that the city is well-known for its rice paddle. So, you’ll see many stalls selling mini rice paddles souvenirs here as well.
What we ate on Day 8
Because it’s going to be a fairly long ride to Hiroshima, we got some ekiben for breakfast in the shinkansen. Shin Osaka has massive options of ekiben and all them looks delightful! I can happily buy one each day and will never get the same one for maybe few months or even a year. I find the kids ekiben more interesting for the packaging and had hoped to get the Hello Kitty one, but sadly they were not ready yet.
Beef and Pork Ekiben – Â¥2,350
Pork Cutlet Sandwich – Â¥842 (with a oack of Matcha Pocky that forgot to take picture of)
What else to have than the famous Hiroshima style okonomiyaki while in town? We forgot the name of that famous okonomiyaki place in Hiroshima and for some reasons just Google search just failed us. In the midst of all confusion, we saw this restaurant that many locals went right in. So, we gave up on going to Okonomi-mura and instead came here.
We tried one of the original and the other with udon, both with pork. The udon one is a little too heavy and for that we prefer the original one better. In general, okonomiyaki here is really loaded with vegetables as you can see in the video below – it’s quite different to Osaka style. Our okonomiyaki was tasty and full of flavour, it is already rich without having to add mayonnaise. Although if you prefer it with mayonnaise, they can also accommodate the request. Total spent for lunch was ¥2,400 and that was super filling!
These are what we bought at Miyajima market:
Grilled oyster skewer – Â¥300
We bought eight of these momiji manju with different fillings: matcha, custard, and chocolate. Custard is definitely the best despite we both love matcha generally. These taste best when they are hot and the soft custard is still gooey – delish! Total spent Â¥720
As for dinner, I was still aiming to get the Hello Kitty ekiben, and thankfully when we got there, I got one of the last two left! Mission accomplished, yay 🙂
Hello Kitty Bento – Â¥1,100I think this is good size bento. It may not be the best but it’s very cute plus I get a new Hello Kitty lunch box 🙂
And hubby got another okonomiyaki from a shop close to our AirBnb.
Takoyaki and Okonomiyaki from Jazz & BLues Octopus Cafe – Â¥1,300
Pumpkin is one ingredient that I never ever bought or cooked with, let alone baked with 😛 I enjoy pumpkin soup every now and then, or have had mashed pumpkin with my meal in restaurants. But that is all my encounter with pumpkin, really. Then I watched a video on making pumpkin baked cheesecake the other day and my curiosity prompted me to try it out. Perhaps I was thinking by adding pumpkin, the cheesecake would be healthier. I have to say the recipe does not disappoint, in fact you can hardly taste the pumpkin at all if you mashed them really fine. It taste just like a baked cheesecake, except maybe more orange in colour.
Anyway, here are the ingredients as per original video:
200 grams Kabocha squash/pumpkin, net weight after mashed
60 grams granulated sugar
200 grams cream cheese(room temperature)
100 grams heavy cream
2 eggs (large) at room temperature and whisked
Vanilla extract
Chocolate for decorating
Method:
Cut the squash/pumpkin to small pieces, skinned. Place in a microwave-safe dish, cover with cling wrap and microwave for 3 – 4 minutes until cooked.
Mashed them with a spatula, add in sugar and mix well.
Add cream cheese, heavy cream and eggs, whisk together until all combined and no visible lumps.
Lastly, add a dash of vanilla extract to the batter.
Pour into a round 15 cm baking pan.
Bake in preheated oven at 170 C for 30 – 40 minutes.
(Since I don’t have a baking pan of that size, I used muffin cups instead. My baking time took about 30 minutes.)
Once it is cooked, let it cool to room temperature inside the oven with its door ajar.
Decorate as you wish and keep in refrigerator.
Enjoy the cold pumpkin baked cheesecake with your favourite tea or coffee 🙂
Ready to go to preheated oven
Should have let them cool down inside the oven to prevent shrinking
Here is another post on Indonesian Cheesecake. I used the same base cake recipe as in this post. But this time, I made cream cheese whipped cream for the filling and also to cover the cake.
The recipe is taken from here with slight adjustment, and below is my version:
Cream Cheese Filling:
150 ml thicken cream, cold
50 grams of cream cheese at room temperature
30 grams of grated cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon of sugar
Mix the thickened cream with sugar until almost become whipped cream.
Add in the cream cheese and continue mix with high speed until stiff.
Fold in the grated cheddar cheese to the cream cheese whipped cream.
Set aside in the fridge, covered with cling wrap.
Simple Syrup:
50 grams sugar
150 ml  water
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Bring everything to boil in a small pot, make sure all the sugar has been dissolved well.
Set aside to cool to room temperature.
White Chocolate Ganache: (I skipped this)
100 ml thickened cream
250 grams cooking white chocolate, melted and cool down to room temperature
Mix the thickened cream to whipped cream, add in melted white chocolate. Mix well until the texture is soft-cream-alike.
Assembly:
Once the cake is cool down, trim the side and the surface of the cake to make it level. The cut it horizontally into two or three layers. (I halved mine). Keep the trimmed pieces aside for choco balls.
Brush the surface of each half with simple syrup. Then coat it with generous amount of cream cheese filling.
Put the other half on top of the base and repeat the process again.
Cover all sides with the remaining cream cheese filling (or white chocolate ganache if you made this)
Then cover the whole cake with more cheddar cheese.
I find it difficult to stick the sides of the cake with grated cheddar… Probably waste more cheese here than what actually stick to the cake 😛
Since we have some trimmed pieces of the cake and  I do not want to waste those, I thought why not make them into something more exciting hence the choco balls. There is no fixed measurement, just approximate.
Choco Balls:
Crumble the trimmed pieces of the cake into a bowl.
Add in about two tablespoons of cream cheese at room temperature and mix well.
Then add about three tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk in chocolate flavour.
Mix until everything is combined well. The texture should resemble cookie dough, a little bit on the dryer side.
Shape into bite-sized balls, roll in chocolate rices or dip into melted chocolate – enjoy!
I only rolled them to chocolate rices here, would be better looking had I dipped them in melted chocolate 🙂 But regardless of their appearance here, they actually tasted good and not overly sweet.
My cousin recommended us to try the iced filtered coffee at St Ali Coffee Roasters, which she spoken of highly. So, after our burger meal on a very nice Saturday, we headed to South Melbourne. It didn’t take long to get there by tram and a short stroll in the area. Even though the distance is not at all that far from CBD, South Melbourne surely has a different vibe. It is a lovely area, laid back and has so many local shops that offers many interesting items. And of course, all the hidden little shops inside those little lanes also can be found in the area.
St Ali is located in another alley, inside a looks-alike-ex-warehouse building. Once you entered the door, it is actually much spacious than it looks from the outside. There are crowds of people, graffiti on the walls, and smell of coffee and delicious looking cake displays near the cashier.
And as per the recommendation, we tried their iced filtered coffee, flat white and one of their yummy cake. The food menu actually looks very appetising and delicious, but unfortunately for us who just had our lunch, therefore the cake.
The recommended ice filtered coffee in bottleFlat whiteI think this is the black forest cake
I personally am not a big fan of the filtered coffee because it has that acidic after taste. But it sure is refreshing for that hot sunny weather. On the other hand, hubby thinks the filter coffee is great. I, however, love the flat white – smooth and slightly fruity.
From there, we walked to South Melbourne Market and it was delightful. A huge building, with many shops and stalls and so many people. A lot of the products sold here are local produce, or made by local artists/designers – everything are just exciting! And there is also the Padre Coffee stall there, which I really love their coffee. So of course, we had to buy couple bags of their coffee beans to bring home 🙂
