I sampled some of the Chinese New Year goodie from Kedai Kue Kue at Great World City.

The promoter offered me the best seller which was the Emping Cookie which the main ingredient was emping. I did not get any bitter taste of emping. If I were to eat Emping cracker, I would get the bitter taste of genuine emping. However, when emping is blended with flour, butter, the emping flavor had diluted. Per tube of emping cracker costs $11.50 while the cookie costs $14.80, comes with 25 pieces. The cookie is not heavy with butter. It is light texture.

The next item which I tried was shrimp roll, 300 gram per bottle at #12.30. The shrimp roll is long which means the there are many times of roll and the filling is not generous. It is not oily.
The last item which I tried was pillow pineapple tarts costs $17.80 with 25 pieces. There is no cracker of the pillow pineapple tarts skin which means that the tarts are baked not too long. The texture is light weight with sufficient butter. The pineapple is not thick. Among the 3 sampled items, I liked the Emping Cracker as it gave the genuine taste, pineapple tarts which had light weight butter flavor and emping cookies.

I was at Great World City and visited Kedai Keu Keu at Basement 1. I sampled the Lapis. The crew offered me a tray of cut lapis. There were the chocolate, prune, pandan, coffee, srikaya steamed cake and original flavors. There were no preservative added and neither was the lapis sweet. The lapis are made to local flavor that means no cinnamon added.

The Lapis is soft texture and no strong aroma of spice. My favourite lapis is the Srikaya Steamed Cake and the original flavor.

The pricing of the lapis are as follows :
Traditional large (1 kg) $51,
Prune Lapis (1.1 kg) $56
Chocolate Lapis (1 kg) $53
Pandan Lapis (1 kg) $52
Mocha Lapis (1 Kg) $53
Srikay Steamed Cake (1 kg) $25.80

The crew was polite and patient and allowed me to sample the lapis. She explained to me in details of the quality of the Lapis.

I won the Design your Magnum voucher and visited the Magnum Singapore Pleasure Store outside City Hall MRT Station.

The store is fully air-conditoned with some dining table placed outside and 2 sofa sets and table and chairs.

The crews were young, most probably in they are tertiary students. The crew asked me for the choice of coating and 3 choices of toppings. There are great varieties of toppings to choose. I chose toppings that are fruity and healthy. I had Fortune Floss, Golden Pineapple Nuggot and Dried Cranberry to go with the vanilla flavor magnum.

Once the toppings had been chosen, I moved to the next station to watch the coating of the magnum. I chose the dark chocolate. The crew dipped the vanilla ice cream into the dark chocolate and then she was ready to spinkle the 3 selected toppings and then spread with design using white chocolate. Before the magnum was served, the crew pasted a round chocolate chip with the initial “M” representing Magnum.

I was excited to try the magnum. At the first bite, the coat was crispy and that was why some of the coating broke and dropped onto the box serving as plate. The vanilla was soft, easily to bite and together with the selected topping, I chewed more to break the toppings to fine elements.
While enjoying my Magnum, I noticed that every 5 minutes, there was expected customers to walk in to order the $7 magnum. The ambience of the Store is pleasant. Four paintings of Magnum are displayed on the bare walls which will crave for customers to seek pleasure in Magnum. The crew were polite. Upon request of plain water, they were pleased to serve and there is no charge.

I enjoyed the visit to Magnum Pleasure Store. The store will stay till 2 Feb, even 31 Jan 2014 is still operating.

I had a $2 Ya Kun voucher to consume. I visited the branch at Orchard Central at Level 5 as I was in Orchard. As the store was not located at prominent location such as MRT station, the store was quiet and clean. There were only few customers. The store was spacious and well decorated with history of Ya Kun. If diner likes to watch the Orchard Street, there are window seat and round table for a group of 6 for discussion. There are high seater or the cushion sofa seat. The ambience was excellent.

I ordered Toast Cheese with Kaya. When the bread was served to me, the bread was warm and the cheese was not fully melted. If the bread is well toasted and with the heat, add the slice of cheese, I would think the aroma and taste of the cheese will be greatly enhanced. It can be considered was a mini pizza. Anyway, the toast served to me was still alright but it was my expectation was not met to 100%.

Today is the lunar 15th of the month. I took vegetarian for my lunch. I ordered take away vegetarian bee hoon and vegetarian fried hor fun. The ingredient given were green vegetable, white fungus, carrot, mushroom and the gravy base was corn flour. Each pack costs $8. It was rather expensive. The taste was not fantastic as there were no meat. The only compliment was that the food was still hot when served even though I ordered take away.

The restaurant is clean and quiet. It is a good place for cozy discussion. The wait is short.