Rochester Park and Delicious Dessert

As a finalist in the Singapore Blog Awards (vote here!), I was invited to a food tasting at 1-Caramel in Rochester Park.

If I could use one word to describe Rochester Park, it would be "posh." Rochester Park is an out-of-the way avenue lined with quaint white and black houses that have been converted into upscale restaurants. I'd only been to Rochester Park one other time, when Bryan too me to a restaurant called Graze for my birthday, and I had the most mouth-watering pumpkin ravioli of all time.

If it wasn't for this sign, the place would be kind of hard to find!

I want to live here!

I always have some qualms about accepting invitations to events that I will then be expected to blog about. What if the movie is bad? What if the food tastes awful? I've been lucky so far in that I haven't attended any bad events, but it's always in the back of my mind- if this sucks, I'll have to blog about it. And I'll have to be honest, because I won't lie to my readers just because someone gave me a free piece of cake. I mean, I'll do a lot of things for free cake, but lying isn't one of them.

As soon as I walked into 1-Caramel, my worries started to melt away. The little patisserie is tucked away on the cozy second floor of one of those charming houses. When I climbed the stairs, I was greeted with the aromas of melting chocolate and warm bread. You enter 1-Caramel through the kitchen, and I always like to see places that expose their kitchens, because it seems to say "What? We have nothing to hide. It's always clean and professional in here." And it was. AND THEN. And THEN I saw the cakes. And my worries about possibly having to say something bad about the food melted away. If the food tasted half as good as it looked, I would be in heaven...and possibly in a sugar coma. (See more of 1-Caramel's custom cakes here. I'm partial to the Hello Kitty cake).

I love the lion! Look closely to see me smiling in the mirror.

I want to get married just so I can have a cake like this one.

Fancy cupcakes!

The room we sat in was small. It was kind of a tight squeeze for the group of bloggers, but seemed like it would have been a cozy spot for brunch for two. And they had a super tall chair! I'm pretty sure they had it specially made because they knew Flora was coming!

1-Caramel dining area. Pic of Flora in the Alice in Wonderland chair is from Flora's blog

Once all the bloggers were there and settled in, the food parade began. 1-Caramel specializes in brunch, so first was salmon eggs benedict (for everyone else, just regular eggs benedict for this vegetarian).  I usually don't get too worked up over eggs benedict, but this was awesome. I think the secret ingredient might have been some sort of euphoria-inducing drug. I wolfed mine down, then looked up and laughed to see that Flora and I were finished, while everyone else was still snapping photos! Typical Americans!

Gone, probably in under a minute.

Next was a fancy hors d'oeuvres platter. I couldn't eat some of the meaty stuff, but I didn't care because the little toasties with French brie were super good.

I may or may not have eaten all of the toasties...

Next was a raspberry cake pop. I thought the cake pop was dessert. Silly me. I had no idea that the food process had only just begun. We were bombarded with dessert. It came, and it kept on coming. Holy geeze, I felt like a 7-year-old who had been let loose in a candy store with no supervision.

Dessert paradise. Food? Art? Both?

There were lots of delicious things: death by chocolate, baked Alaska, lychee gelee, creme brulee, hazelnut sorbet, passionfruit sorbet, two kinds of souffle, Earl Grey tea flavored macaroons, and more. Each time I tasted a new dessert, I solemnly declared it my favorite. But in the end, I think my real favorite was the passionfruit sorbet, which tasted so refreshing and summery (or, as I said to Flora, "EAT THIS. It tastes like summertime. And unicorns. And rainbows." And it did.)

Contemplating stealing the other table's sorbet.
Pic from Flora

Overall, it was a wonderful night. I made new blogger friends, discovered a new restaurant, and ate a dinner that consisted mostly of dessert, which made me feel deliciously sinful, and about an hour later, when I had my kindergarten-style sugar crash, very sleepy. If you want a cupcake or some rainbow-flavored passionfruit sorbet, I recommend 1-Caramel. And I promise- I recommend them for real, not just because they gave me free ice cream!

OMY bloggers!

(The finalists in the OMY Blog Awards are behind some pretty great blogs! See some of them at Moonberry, Ai Makan, Love You Wrong Time, and Jeffrey and Flora. If you like them, don't hesitate to vote for them! And, of course, don't forget to vote for me daily!)