Pine Garden's Cake, Whampoa Drive Food Centre, Ghee Leong Bakery,Geylang Lor9 Porridge, Beancurd City

It was an early Thursday and Kelly's last day at emed so she bought cakes for her tutor and I got an equal treat too! We each were armed with a drink from Mr Bean (Kelly's peach soya milk and my hot soya milk) but we raided the sofa seats at Starbucks and blatantly had our cakes from the box =P - well we tried the staff lounge (but there was a function) and Kopitiam was far too crowded so.....no choice ! (at least our table had evidence of bought drinks heh)

These cakes are from Pine Garden's Cake (Block 529 Ang Mo Kio Ave 10 01-2369) and have been raved about by both URBAN's Posh Nosh and the food bloggers alike. Both of us shared the following cakes and it feels like my birthday cake platter all over again =) Best thing is, cake platters have always been expensive with each cake averaging $6 plus but here at Pine Garden, each slice is $2.40 so these sweet treats are inexpensive. Stopping at one slice of cake is just too boring.

Lychee Martini - Layers of lychee cake with martini presoaked lychee fillings

All of the Pine Garden cakes we tried were sponge cakes and were all really light and fluffy - even the cream was really light. This was a fruity cake indeed with a strong lychee scent perfusing the cake - we couldnt really taste much martini in it, but it was rather unique. We were wondering what those orangey puree within those cream layers - any clue? lychees are certainly not orange in colour..

Blackforest Cake

Again, this is a chocolate sponge cake with cherries and cream - I prefer more dense layers of cream and alcohol soaked cherries though - this cake has a greater sponge - cream/cherries ratio.

Zest Chocolate Cake (Orange)

There are also the mango and lemon flavours but Kelly chose the orange. Well, I'm partial to orange flavoured foods cos they taste like artificial vitamin C Redoxon tablets - the first taste of this orange flavoured sponge and orange cream cake tasted like an overdosage of Vitamin C but the orange taste grows on you - however I still prefer my orange dark-chocolate instead! Orange in real chocolate in much nicer than when eaten alone ( I don't like oranges) or in cakes.

Triple Layer Chocolate Cake

We couldn't finish the last cake so I brought it home, but my sister and mom attacked it before I got to it the next morning =(

Well amongst all the cakes, if I had to choose one, it'd be the lychee martini. Even though I'm not a fan of sponge cakes.

After that we were craving rojak from Whampoa Drive Food Centre so we ended up here slightly after the lunch hour but the carpark was still packed but with some patience, we managed to find a space... this was our second time here - the first time was a fail cos the Hoover Rojak was closed !! (It closes on Tuesdays, take note ok)

There are 2 blocks at the Whampoa Drive Food Centre. We walked around Block 91 first - most stalls here were closed - I think they open in the morning till lunch only.

We bought a peanut pancake ($0.60) from Granny's Pancake - the peanut filling is one of the most crunchy and nutty and gritty fillings I've tried! It is unlike the peanut paste you get in most soya bean chain stores where it is more creamy and buttery. Here it is like a fried peanut bits - real fragrant - and tasted rather good with the thick doughy pancake. If only the pancake had a pandan flavour - like the Pancake from Maxwell Food Centre!

Then we went over to Block 90 where most of the stalls were open.

We finally made it here! Many people were eating the rojak all over the food centre so we were working up an appetite receeing the place. The auntie was also trying to promote her otah.

Rojak, $5

We just ordered the largest portion - came complete with the full works including cuttlefish. The rojak was not too bad - but bordering on the average side because the prawn paste sauce was just not thick or fragrant enough for us! Lacked the chilli punch too. And the youtiao wasnt toasted so it turned out to be rather soggy with the sauce. There was alot of fruit in this rojak too - many many pineapples and occasional mangoes. What was different was the parsley on top of the rojak instead of kangkong. We prefer the Toa Payoh Rojak at Old Airport Food Centre - the sauce there is really power!

Oh what was exciting was that we saw Chew Chor Meng queueing to buy rojak here! Kelly says he lives quite a distance away so he must be a real fan =P and she observed that he looks thinner on tv (but again, we havent seen him in a while) - must be the steroids from his Kennedy's condition.

After that we walked across the road to Sing Hon Loong Bakery (4 Whampoa Drive) - also known simply as Ghee Leong. This bakery is open 24 hours and supplies bread to most traditional toast places - so as far as freshness goes, you can't beat this. They don't use preservatives in their bread either.

It has been in operation for many many years. Oh no occupational hazard - can you imagine all the collection of microcrumbs in their lungs? I love the smell of bread, but after doing respi med.....hmmmm...we always tend to think pathologically...
They sell loaves of bread, baguettes, and bread with fillings such as coconut and red bean.. check out those blackened ends! You should check out the huge, blackened ovens man - many many years of toiling you ovens.

To ensure your toast doesn't have the unsightly ends (though I like those crispy ends )

We bought a baguette ($0.90) and topped up $0.60 to add fillings of planta margarine and peanut butter on one half and kaya on the other half. This is really old school and you can only have this style in neighbourhood bakeries.


We then walked over to Whampoa Drive Food Centre again to eat our bread.

I felt like I was eating a Subway but with more conservative fillings =P The kaya was real sweet but did not have the eggy feel (a good eggy one is like Good Morning Nanyang Cafe's). The plantar margarine kinda overwhelmed the coconut taste.

The bread has a really thick crusty layer and was rather hard to bite into when the bread cooled down. But I liked the crust - the bread was not really crumbly at all, very unlike toast.

The peanut butter was creamy - again the planta margarine to peanut butter ratio was great and overwhelming but since the peanut butter taste was stronger it was actually good to eat. Funny thing is it was the first time Kelly was eating Planta margarine on bread. Planta margarine taste really good with bread when you sprinkle sugar on top of it all!

It was a really hot day so we bought soya bean mixed with grass jelly drink from this corner soya bean stall at Whampoa Market (Block 91). This stall has been around for 28 years! The auntie is super chatty.

Try the soya bean-grass jelly concoction. It is fanastic! sweet beany taste with the chewy slightly bitter grass jelly.

Soya Beancurd $0.60

The tauhuay here is in a class of its own. It just melts away...into nothingness. Very very smooth!

We saw a grandmother and her primary school going grand-daughter enjoying tauhuay - and the grand-daughter ordering from the chatty stall auntie. The grandma yelled if she had enough money, and the grand-daughter so cute, ferried the tauhuay over! The granddaughter even manged bits of dialect in their conversation - sweet indeed...

Then 2 deep voiced people walked over and the ever chatty auntie blatantly asked them if they were tai guo ren....heh that was hilarious - they moved to sit near us and were interesting indeed...

Time spent hanging out at hawker centres people watching can be interesting indeed - from celebs to trans - you really see the world of personalities in these humble hawker centres.

We then drove to Plaza Singapura, intending to catch the 450pm show, Detroit Metal City. We intended to enter the cinema only at 510pm (Golden Village has a standard ad time for 20 minutes =( ) so to kill time we scouted around for travel money pouches - Carrefour, travel shops on level 4 and 6 - Carrefour has the cheapest at $3 but was sadly uncomfortable whereas the travel shops was sadly overpriced. sighh....

We were again very excited when we saw popcorn (Large, $6) in the popcorn machine so we were fooled to thinking it was fresh (actually I think either the display one is full or they too lazy to scoop over) Today's had many chunks of popcorn stuck together. But the rest tasted like styrofoam!

Detroit Metal City was HILARIOUS, we havent watched a comedy together ever before (amazing since we've prob watched over 40 shows in the past year) but we laughed so hard it was so uncomfortable because we were SO FULL so carbo loaded from the cakes and bread that the food almost threatened to pop out..

The actor with the dickhead hairstyle was amazingly plastic! He really swings to extremes of the super cheesy-sweet-childhood-dreamy prototype to the Saturnic Death Metal cursing alter ego in his band - the stunts in the show esp the ones where he hanged down towards the audience was really hilarious! His costume was such a get up and the way he parades it obliviously when he got confused between his childish demeanor and his domineering alter ego was really funny! And him chasing the (REALLY GORGEOUS) girl, trying to hide his real job, highlights again - like in Departures - how certain jobs having a kind of stigma. Japanese films do seem to focus on this. Ooh but death metal is so extreme - female death Saturnic music was even more extreme. Go laugh your head out and watch this movie. Cry your hearts out at Depatures first then laugh at this one.

After the movie we wanted something soupy (it was carbo overload with that half - baguette each and all the cakes) so we drove to Sunshine Plaza and parked there (the Prinsep Street public lots were full, period) intending to eat at Victor's Kitchen. But it closes at 8pm so we didn't make it. Then we wanted to eat the Tom yum noodles in Burlington Square.

Failed again!!

Disheartened, we decided to settle for the Lion City Geylang Lor 9 Porridge at Peace Centre. We passed by Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts on the way and we realised it was really very new and gorgeous! There seems to be an event going on because there were art exhibits, peoplke drinking wine at a platform, and even a strings quartet performance.
This is part of ....
a very long sentence..

and it was a sentence about a cow who appealed NOT to be eaten up...
This art was on one of their walls...

And on further walking, we found out there was a block of HDB flats right next to NAFA! It is so strange seeing flats in the middle of the city!
Thank God the Lion City Geylang Lor 9 porridge (Peace Centre) was open!! This was our second time here in a few weeks. We ordered one frog ($8), and the meat was as smooth as ever, with the warm salty spicy Kung Pau sauce, it tasted awesome with the porridge...

It was one pot of yummy smooth congee...

We then walked back to Selegie towards Sunshine Plaza where the car was and we stopped by the other tau huay shop - Beancurd City (4 Short Street) - not the Rochor Original Beancurd that everyone goes to.

I think the tauhuay here is smoother - I think the Rochor Original Beancurd's is too dense and grainy plus maybe the sensation of eating it in a plastic tupperware and plastic spoons ups the synthetic feel. Here you get a good old bowl and porcelain spoon.

The grass jelly is cut up into cubes (just like the way Kelly doesn NOT like it) and I think the Rochor Original Beancurd has a better, firmer version (and is not cut up!)

The next time I come here, I shall order the tauhuay from Beancurd City and the grass jelly and youtiao and sesame ball from Rochor Original Beancurd. Question is, where I should sit?

We walked back to Sunshine Plaza and spotted this funky bag shop...

Which is your favourite food label? I love the corn flakes one and Kelly picked the Pretz one.