Pâtisserie Für Elise: High Tea in a Super Cute House!

Think pink. Think princesses. Think tea party. Pâtisserie Für Elise in Yaletown is all that, and more. This is absolutely the perfect place for a bridal shower - so it was exactly what we did. We held a bridal shower here for my friend and they had a special room for us for 2 hours, which was perfect.

Because Pâtisserie Für Elise is actually in a heritage home itself, there are 2 floors of this high tea location. The main floor is a bakery shop where people can just go in and buy their products while high tea is on the second floor.

Once I stepped inside the house, I felt like I was in a dreamland of a princess. Everything was so detailed, adorable, and looked delicate, including their waitresses, whom were all wearing a very cute dress. I wish I had taken some pictures of the decor, but I was just too focussed on surprising my friend and living in the moment! Pâtisserie Für Elise offers their afternoon tea set menu for $30 per person with your own choice of tea.



Their menu of teas has an elaborate description of the teas, so you can get a good idea of your tea. Their selection of tea included the classics: honey scented black tea (apparently exclusively imported by them), Jasmine green tea, Earl Grey, and the more unique: creme brûlée, blueberry yogurt, to name a few.

First, we were our choice of tea with our own tea pots. It also came with a sandglass timer which is exactly 2 minutes so we know when the tea is done seeping. On our tea cups, we got a little birdie strainer for catching the tea leaves. Look at how delicate the cups look!



Secondly, we were then served a very delicious blueberry panna cotta. Smooth and creamy, light and refreshing, and not too sweet - absolutely perfect.

blueberry panna cotta

Then came our 2-tier of goodies! The bottom tier consisted of the savouries and the top tier were all the sweets. There were 4 of everything as we sat 4 per table.

Afternoon Tea at Patisserie Fur Elise

Savouries (bottom):

Proscuitto, brie, and fresh basil in a croissant - very yummy and a great start to the platter

Cucumber dill finger sandwich - simple, yet refreshing

Asparagus and mushroom quiche - loved the flaky pastry

Almond strusel scone - especially good with their homemade jam

Cheddar and pancetta scone - really liked the tad bits of green onion and pancetta

savouries

Almond strusel scone and proscuitto, brie, fresh basil sandwich croissant

Ok, so after the platter of savouries, I already felt quite full. Probably from all the butter. But as the saying goes, we girls have a second stomach for dessert! The top platter consisted of:

Honey madeleine 

Macaron

Maple pecan daisy tartlet

Tiramisu

Mini Für Elise

Sweets

From the sweet platter, I especially liked the maple pecan daisy tartlet and the mini Für Elise, similar to a strawberry mousse. It was smooth and had great strawberry flavour. 

I was absolutely stuffed after all the savouries and sweets! Overall, I really liked this place because of the atmosphere and the fancy, princess feeling I got while having high tea here. It was absolutely perfect to hold my friend's bridal shower with all the girls. We also had privacy as we had the private room in which we could place gifts and party favours, which I shall show in another post. In fact, I also played a couple of videos I made from my laptop here. Here is a group picture!

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Ken's Chinese Restaurant 南軒中西美食: Chinese-Style Afternoon Tea

Sometimes, I just want to go to a Hong Kong style cafe because they're fast, affordable, yummy, and satisfying. Well, not as fast as the ones in Hong Kong....except there might be a line up for seats in Hong Kong since there's always so many people, everywhere, all the time.

Here, afternoons are usually pretty quiet for restaurants. That's why Ken's Chinese Restaurant has a special offer of 10% off starting at 2:30pm to 5pm. I ordered from their Special Set menu which comes with soup of the day and a drink. I got one of my favourites of all time... 

Baked seafood rice

Yes, that's right - baked seafood rice! Just looked at how nicely it's baked. Now let's dissect it a bit.

baked seafood rice

What's in it? Big shrimps (or are those prawns? I can't tell),  slices of fish and squid, scallops, mushrooms - all covered in melted cheese and creamy sauce. Wow, I think I just made it sound better than it tasted. But you can never go wrong with the baked seafood rice, it's like the complete package for a seafood fan.  

As a lover of thick noodles, I also chose the Shanghai Stir fried noodles. Now this was mostly noodles - it could have definitely use more meat/cabbage. 

Shanghai stir-fried noodles 上海粗炒面

Getting a set meal makes me feel complete. For soup of the day, I got to choose vegetable or creamy soup and I chose the creamy soup. Now it does not look very good and it wasn't. It was kind of watered-down. Optimistically, at least it didn't fill me up before the main dishes came.

Soup of the day - creamy soup

As for drinks, you can choose from the typical list of drinks at a Hong Kong style cafe in cold/hot:  

- Hong Kong style milk tea 港式奶茶

- Hong Kong style coffee

- Hong Kong style half coffee half tea 鴛鴦

- Hong Kong style lemon tea

- Lemon and honey 

- Almond 杏仁霜

- Ovaltine 阿華田

- Horlicks 好立克

... and the list goes on....

Hong Kong style milk tea 

Almond drink 杏仁霜

 I believed the entire bill came to less than $20. I've also heard of their late night dinner with all you can eat congee. In Cantonese, that's probably called "siu yeh" Hahaha. They're opened until 1am - perfect for those night owls! I'd loved to come by here on a late night for "siu yeh" :)

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Copa Cafe 高柏餐廳

The "other side" 

I met up with my two music friends (we're music nerds when we're together) for lunch at Copa cafe right at noon on a Saturday. They were packed and we were waiting for about 10 minutes until they finally decided to open the other side, which has 8 tables. (I didn't know they had another side and I don't know why they didn't open it earlier).

When seated, they served us the typical tea you find at HK style cafes.

We ordered from the mini lunch menu (which isn't really that mini) and comes with a complimentary drink. Ever since I first ate baked seafood rice a few years ago, I have grown to like cheesy baked rice. This time, I got the baked chicken steak on rice in Portuguese style and chose Horlicks for my drink.

Baked chicken steak on rice in Portuguese style 芝士葡汁焗焼鸡饭  $6.95

Baked chicken steak on rice in Portuguese style 芝士葡汁焗焼鸡饭

My friend seemed to have enjoyed her order of bacon, lettuce, and tomato with toasted white bread. The ingredients were fresh and the salad was creamy and had fruits.

BLT sandwich with salad $5.95

The scrambled egg and shrimp with fried rice noodle took the longest time to arrive. I wonder if the menu actually meant flat instead of fried, because that looks like non-fried rice noodles to me. The flat rice noodles would have been better if they were separated a bit instead of being stuck together in chunks. Hence, it made it difficult to get the creamy sauce in every bite and as a result, was plain. I don't believe this met my friend's expectations as there's some discrepancy between the actual dish and the menu. Due the the wait to be seated and for the dish to come, my poor assumption that we could be done with 1.5 hours was wrong. I apologize for that as she had to pack most of it.

Scrambled egg and shrimp with fried rice noodle 滑蛋蝦仁炒河 $8.95

Horlicks 好立克

Almond 杏仁双

Hot chocolate with whipped cream

As with HK style cafes, you can choose the your drink from a list including Horlicks, Ovaltine, almond, HK style lemon tea, HK style milk tea, etc. Like Ovaltine, Horlicks is a name of a company and typically used to refer to the powder malt drink. I have a thing for malt so I got that.

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Banana Walnut Crumb Muffins [recipe]

 I love muffins, but muffins are definitely not my forte when it comes to baking. Mine has never turned out to be like the store-bought soft and moist muffins. However, I''m stubborn (and wanted a muffin) so I decided to give it a go again. 

Banana crumb muffins

I would say that these turned out relatively successful. They were soft and moist, and had a crumbly crunchy top. The inside of these muffins reminded me of banana bread and I'm still unable to tell the difference between them.

Here's what you'll need (for a dozen):

• 3 ripe bananas
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• an egg
• 1/3 cup oil (I used grapeseed oil)

• 1.5 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

     Topping

• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tbsp softened butter
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Here's what I did:

1. Wet: Mash 3 ripe bananas, add in 1/4 cup of white sugar, 1 egg, and 1/3 cup grapeseed oil.

2. Dry: Mix together all the dry ingredients: 1.5 cup flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla extract.

3. Topping: Mix together 1/4 cup brown sugar, 2 tbsp flour, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tbsp softened butter, 1/4 cup chopped walnuts. Mix thoroughly.

4. Pour the wet into the dry and fold them together. Don't over-mix. After buttering the muffin pan, carefully pour the batter into 12 muffin cups. If you're using muffin paper cups, skip the buttering.

Muffin batter, ready to go into the oven.

5. After the oven reaches 375°F, place the tray in the center of the oven and let it bake for ~5 minutes. Take it out and place toppings on to the half-baked muffins. 

Toppings on muffins, ready for the oven again

6. Place tray back into the oven for another 13-15 minutes (until golden brown). Sorry for the blurry picture as I wanted them back in the oven AFAP (as fast as possible).

Fresh out of the oven!

Sit back and enjoy your fresh muffins, perhaps with a cup of tea. They will still be soft and moist the next couple days too. 

Banana walnut crumb muffins with tea

Though I was pleased with this batch, I'm constantly looking for improvements/tips for better muffins. Here is what I think I'd do next time: 

- Add walnuts to the batter.

- Make bigger ones so they look more like muffins. 

I adapted this recipe from the one on allrecipes.com by Lisa Kreft. I made a few changes/additions to the recipe. My family and I don't like extreme sweet things, so a major change is omitting some sugar. Nevertheless, I thought the sweetness was at a perfect level. Be sure to go gentle on the sugar when you also have ripe bananas because those are your natural sugar source already!

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Solly's Bagelry

I've passed by Solly's Bagelry on 7th and Yukon St. quite a few times and it always seemed busy.  I stumbled into it with my mom for an afternoon snack and realized it was actually quite big with seats available inside and outside. They also have two other locations in Vancouver.

Solly's Bagelry (7th Ave. and Yukon St.)

Inside of Solly's Bagelry

Bagel bar

Goodies from Solly's Bagelry

This sign (below) was clear and big at the window and so I knew I had to get one because my mom loves warm, gooey cinnamon buns.

Their "world famous cinnamon buns" cost $2.85 each and I got myself a chocolate babka ($2.95). Yup, this place is owned by a Jewish family.

Chocolate babka & Cinnamon buns

My mom liked the cinnamon as it was soft, warm, and gooey, but I'm not sure if she would refer to it as  the "world's best"- that's quite a title. After having a bite of both the cinnamon bun and the chocolate babka, I don't understand why the chocolate babka is 10 cents more. It's just like a chocolate bun, while the cinnamon bun was more unique.

This certainly looks a lot bigger than it actually is - it's only two bites. This Jewish pastry is called rugelach and is rolled with some sort of sweet filling.  It costs less around $1. 

Before leaving, I also got half a dozen of bagels to take home with us. The guy who was helping me was very friendly as I'm an indecisive person and they had a variety of bagels. I got poppy seed, sundried tomato, raisin, mix, multigrain, and herbs. The raisin wasn't anything special and the herbs had a unique taste.

Bagels from Solly's Bagelry

I loved their bagels. I would definitely come back and perhaps try a more exotic bagel at the bagel bar (picture above).

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Kam Do Restaurant & Bakery 金都餐廳餅店

I love bakeries and freshly baked goods. Among the abundant Chinese bakeries here in Vancouver and Richmond, Kam Do is my favourite for winter melon cakes (alternatively called sweetheart cake). In Chinese, they're called 老婆饼, which directly translates to "wife's cookie". Why such a name for a pastry? There are a few legends that describes the origin of this pastry. One legend says that winter melon cakes were invented by a man and dedicated them to his wife. His wife had sold herself in return for money that was needed for medicine for her father-in-law.

I've tried many winter melon cakes from many different Chinese bakeries here, and I have to say that I fell in love with Kam Do's after the first bite. Be gentle with them as the outside is flaky and delicate, but the inside is filled with a paste that makes it chewy. I think Kam Do does an excellent job of making the outside flaky as well as the taste of the paste and the degree of chewiness. And as you may know, I love chewy food! 

老婆饼 Winter melon cake

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T&T Green Tea Cake Pastry

As I've mentioned in my previous post about Bon Crepe, green tea is one of my all-time favourite flavours. My mom surprised me with a green tea cake pastry from T&T today! I think this is one of their rather newer products as I've never seen it before. I have definitely noticed that T&T have been constantly creative with their products and developing new products for consumers.

T&T Green Tea Cake with
pastry surrounding

I don't think I've had cake with a pastry surrounding it before, so I was very excited when I first saw this. It looked extremely good to me and I do really like how its wrapped in a crust-like pastry, which adds a twist to typical cakes. Indeed, this was very good, but I wouldn't say extremely good. Inside, the cake is soft and moist at just the right level of sweetness and a tasty green tea flavour.

The outside of the cake makes the cake more interesting to eat as it adds a bit of crispiness to it. However, I think I would enjoy just the green tea itself without the pastry just as much as the pastry is more on the oily side. I try to limit my consumption of things that make my fingers oily as that adds extra calories. Nevertheless, a slice of green tea cake with pastry once in a while is nice for a change.

Bon Appetit! 

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A Bread Affair

As I was grocery shopping, a shelves of colourful paper bags caught my eye - A Bread Affair. The bakery is located in Langley and is a family-owned business since 2006. They are known for their artisan breads made from scratch with local, organic ingredients. 

I was impressed by the writing that each type of bread had. I think they all relate back to "A Bread Affair." I picked up the organic ciabatta bread as you can see in the picture, the writing written on it. Indeed, the entire bread felt very soft, just like a pillow. This is the first product that I've bought as well as the first time trying ciabatta. I'd definitely like to try more bread from A Bread Affair and read more of their phrases. 

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