Twix Cookie dough Cheesecake Bar

So... I am back from a long hiatus.  I honestly don't know why I haven't posted anything throughout my summer.  I guess I lost the determination to do so with full time work and school happening simultaneously.  I had a great summer this year with a lot of sun, ultimate and friends... I wish I had the chance to go away on a trip though...I am definitely saving that for next summer. This summer passed by way too quickly and now it's already October. Can you believe it!?  I have 1.5 months of school left till winter vacation.  Time just flies by way too quickly.

Autumn is my favourite season and I love walking outside with the cold breeze hitting my face and the colourful leaves everywhere I look.  Maybe I like them so much because of the warm colours of the leaves or because I get to wear my winter clothes again. UBC is gorgeous during autumn, well...it is all year around but I think it's especially beautiful during autumn so if you live in Vancouver and have never been to UBC during autumn, please, please visit this year.  I also love wearing cozy sweaters.. and pumpkin spiced latte so this season just makes me unusually happy.

This past Thanksgiving, I was debating on what to make for a potluck. I made apple dumplings for as long as I can remember but I didn't want to be known as the "Apple dumpling" girl (not that there is anything wrong with apple dumplings) so I decided to try something new.  I have a list of recipes I saved from long time ago and I found two contenders: S'mores rice krispies and Twix cookie dough cheesecake bar.  Seriously, this was one of the hardest decisions I had to make in a long time (I can be extremely indecisive when it comes to food:P).  I was so close to picking s'mores rice krispies bar but I had a lot of travelling to do to get to the potluck and I didn't want the meringue/ marshmellow to melt.  To avoid a disasterous situation, I picked the twix cookie dough cheesecake bar.  Whoever created this recipe, they are a genius.  How do you even think of putting twix, cookie, and cheesecake in one bar?  Mind blown. 

You can find this amazing recipe here 

I cheated a little and got pre-made cookie doughs 

The process

Peanut butter banana chocolate chip cookies

Follow my blog with Bloglovin 

I've been sick for awhile now so I thought it would be better to do something productive while resting at home.  So, I decided to collect a bunch of recipes to slowly work my way through them.  I found some amazing cooking blogs on bloglovin and I am excited to try making different things from different blogs.  I really want to try baking more and get familiar with different baking techniques.  For example, I would like to perfect meringues and macarons and try making desserts with mascarpone and ricotta cheese in them. OH! ALSO making some avocado chocolate pudding.  I've been obsessed with avocado these days! The combination of chocolate and avocado sounds odd but I think it will taste amazing. 

Anyway, for this weekend I decided to make something quick with the ingredients I had.  I wanted to pick between red velvet chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter banana chocolate chip cookies.  I went with peanut butter banana chocolate chip cookies after asking a lot of people (because I can't never make up my mind when it comes to food) and I had most of the ingredients to make them.  

Some of the ingredients

Bonjour...je ne parle pas francais

Follow my blog with Bloglovin  


I love it when it's sunny outside on the weekend because I don't have to be stuck in the office till the sun goes down and I get the chance to just roam around aimlessly around the city finding secret jewels here and  there.  Also, I can sleep late for no reason.  It's been sunny every single weekend so far, so I've been going outside to explore the city a little every weekend.  I am mostly around Mcgill/ Concordia area on St.Catherines, and it's mostly shops around that area.  There are some popular restaurants such as Kazu which... I am really hoping to visit soon and also this dessert place called cacao 70.  It seems like old port is always a good place to visit and I would like to get to know the plateau better.

Several things I noticed about the city:

-People smoke a lot
-men dress well
-extreme quebecois aren't very polite when you ask a question in english on the streets (derp). I didn't even know how to say " I don't speak French" before I came here but now I can just tell them.. "Je ne parle pas francais" .. woot!
-They definitely know how to have fun (I went to the igloofest and I saw this person dancing alone.  " I don't give a shit as long as I am enjoying myself" attitude)
-music and art everywhere
-oui is pronounced as a nasally"WEH" 
-People don't know what nanaimo bars are... (say what..? I guess it's a BC thing)

I am sure I will run into things that are very "Quebecois"again before my departure.  It's like a complete different country over here. 

Anyway, moving on to my overdue photos.

mmmm Yummy cupcakes

This place is located right beside the Notre Dame cathedral.

October randoms

 Bel Cafe

they have cookies & cream flavoured macaron!

Santouka miso ramen

Santouka ramen is good... but I can't get over the nanashi ramen from Shibuya... :(

 Green tea shaved ice from Midam (in Coquitlam)

L'abattoir in Gastown

So I've been trying to go to L'abattoir for about 4 months now.  It didn't work the first time because we thought they don't take reservations (silly us)  and the 2nd time, my friend made a reservation on a wrong day.... ha... ha... We were even deciding on what to order on our walk over to L'abattoir on that day... We did end up going to Bao Bei, hence my previous post and my friend who made the mistake got crapped on my a bird on our way to Bao Bei.  XD (karma?)

I finally got the chance to make a reservation just before my departure to Korea.  I really wanted to sit in the atrium so I wrote it down in the little blurb while making the reservation through Opentable and we did get the seats in the atrium!  L'abattoir is beside Blood alley and it was originally the site of Vancouver's first jail.  In the 19th century, the restaurant apparently supported the city's meat packing district hence the name L'abattoir (The slaughterhouse).

The menu

Chocolate Madness

I decided to go to the Vancouver Sutton Place Hotel's Chocolate Buffet with my friends this weekend.  I've always wanted to go to this place because I do have a sweet tooth and I love desserts even though I don't eat it often.

The first thing I saw when I walked into the buffet was the Chocolate fountain!  I was so exicted when I saw the fountain I forgot to take a picture of it... (Does that eve make sense?)

Chocolate peacan pie and croquembouche!! I've never seen a croquembouche in person!!! I've only seen them on Masterchef Australia... (yay for being a food tvshow nerd!) so I was pretty excited.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to try the chocolate peacan pie because I was so full after 3 plates but I did have two cream puffs and I LOVED LOVED it! 

Mink Chocolates

 I went back home to White Rock this weekend and decided to drop by Mink Chocolates.  There are two locations, one in South Surrey and the other one is near Waterfront station.  If you are interested, check out their website http://www.minkchocolates.com/ !!

I wanted to go to Mink Chocolates because I was fascinated by their Smore Fondue set!  Even though you're not out in the woods camping, you can still enjoy smores at Mink Chocolates. (Dip melted marshmallows in the chocolate fondue and sandwich it between the graham crackers om nom nom)

I didn't order the Smore set yesterday just because the portion looked too big for myself and I do get sick of smores after eating about two of them.  I find them too sweet!

Mink Chocolates specialize in ganache filled chocolate bars, which are a more portable form of bonbon.