Bag Lady: Hermes Kelly Picnic Bag

You had me at edible Kellys, Hermes. Hermes is celebrating the launch of their Kelly Picnic Bag with homages to the icnonic Kelly bag made out of all the foods you’d need for a picnic. Love love love! The Kelly Picnic is made out of woven wicker (similar to a traditional picnic basket) and topped with a barenia leather flap and Kelly closure. See other food Kellys and the actual Kelly Picnic after the cut.

Images: Hermes

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Door to Door

E-commerce is such a double edged sword. The convenience is undeniable and the fact that you can get cool edgy brands that are not necessarily available in Hong Kong is a plus but when I’m having bad days, it makes it sooo much easier to impulse buy. There are the big ones that everyone knows and now I’m finding so many cooler smaller ones such as Doorstep Luxury. I met the lovely founder Miranda a while back and when I saw the accessories she was wearing, I was compelled to check out the site afterwards. With a wide range of brands, the beauty of Doorstep Luxury is that it’s based in Singapore and my order arrived within 3 days. (I HATE long waits for goods as those who follow me on twitter will know when I threw a fit after a certain company failed to make good on their within 3 week delivery promise). Click through to check out the Fleet Ilya cuff I got. Also, I hear there will be a sample sale online for their S/S goods starting tonight running throughout the weekend so now’s a great time to check it out.

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Pancake Passion

First off, a disclaimer. Say you wake up on a Sunday morning to go wakeboarding, and you come back home and you're ravenous but you really want pancakes. Don't make these blueberry-ricotta pancakes. Make something less fluffy that won't require you to beat egg whites until your arms fall off.

That said, if your arms are in perfect working condition, or you have a KitchenAid or some other contraption that will do the work for you, then this recipe for blueberry ricotta pancakes is awesome and fluffier than a puppy. The fresh zing of the orange zest cuts through the sour of cooked blueberries beautifully.

First off, ingredients to make the six mini pancakes pictured at top, enough for two:


150g ricotta cheese
2 eggs, separated
2 tablespoons sugar
orange or lemon zest to taste (I used half an orange, but a quarter is probably better)
1 tablespoon melted butter
1/4 cup plain flour
1 handful blueberries



Mix the ricotta, sugar, egg yolks and orange or lemon zest to make a paste, then add the melted butter. Sift the flour into the bowl and mix. Now here comes the fun part -- beat those egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the mixing bowl. The more air you retain in the mixture, the fluffier your pancakes will be. Throw in as many blueberries as you want (raspberries, chocolate chips or bananas would probably do just as well) and then you're ready to go!

Brush your frying pan or griddle with butter and then spoon in your pancake batter. Keep the heat at medium so your pancakes don't burn. The dough will rise a bit and bubble, and you'll see the edges of the circle pucker and begin to lift off the surface of the pan. When you can scoop the entire pancake off the pan with a flat spatula, flip it and leave for another 10 or 20 seconds.

Viola! Your pancakes are done.

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SHOErotica: Loeffler Randall x Suno Pt 2

We featured almost exactly the same shoes in a previous SHOErotica, but since they're on sale now at Opening Ceremony, here's the other pattern... want want want. Get them here.

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Lunar Delights

Food and travel guest blogger hkLifestyleGeek gives us her next scoop on fantastic restaurants around town and travel tips. Contact her at hklifestylegeek@hkfashiongeek.com
 
Mooncake season is already upon us, and press releases from various hotels and restaurants are flooding my inbox promoting their style of mooncakes. But one of them caught my eye. Celestial Court at Sheraton Hong Kong Hotel & Towers has shunned churning out factory-made mooncakes in favour of making them by hand and invited the press along to make mooncakes themselves so I decided to give it a shot.

Executive chef Chan Siu-kei brought us into the kitchen where some assistants were either rolling dough or pounding the steel tabletops with wooden paddles to get the mooncakes out of the mould.

The hotel makes both the traditional lotus seed paste with egg yolks and the updated mini custard cream with egg yolk ones. The traditional ones aren't too sweet or heavy (or was that because I had a small slice?), while the custard ones have an egg tart-like pastry on the outside. Both were yums.

After we washed them down with tea we were invited to get rolling... or pounding.
The fillings and dough were aleady made -- we just had to wrap the fillings in the pastry dough. I tried wrapping the smaller custard ones first. The yellow-coloured dough was rolled into a ball and then flattened. The filling, also shaped like an orange ball was put in the middle of the dough and then we tried to wrap it up. After a few it wasn't too difficult, though they were quite oily.

These were then dusted with flour and then rolled slightly cylindrically before putting it in the wooden paddle mould. It was pressed in there to make sure it filled all the empty spaces and then wacked left and right before being knocked out of the paddle.

We baked some of the ones we made, but after putting them on the baking tray I completely forgot where they were located. So someone out there will be eating a few of my mooncakes!

Wrapping the traditional ones were more difficult as the filling was so large! But again because the dough was more on the oily side, it was more elastic and did cover the entire brown mixture with whole egg yolks in it.

Celestial Court prides itself on making its mooncakes fresh and so in total only a few thousand mooncakes of each kind are made each year. That means Chef Chan and his team will be busy rolling and whacking mooncakes out for about a week.

And the price? Not much more expensive that other comparable places. The traditional mooncakes are HK$348 per box of four, HK$238 for eight pieces of the mini custard cream with egg yolk.

Put your order in before August 1 and get 5 percent off. Call 2369 1111 ext. 2777

Celestial Court
2/F, Sheraton Hong Kong Hotel & Towers
20 Nathan Road
Tsim Sha Tsui
www.sheraton.com/hongkong

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Evan Almighty

My friend Laura was carrying the DVD box set of Mildred Pierce around in her handbag for some reason when I spied on the cover the name of Evan Rachel Wood. "I love her!" I declared, at the same time pondering why on earth I had made that statement when, besides a few-episode arc on True Blood, I couldn't remember a single thing I'd seen her in. So I went on IMDB and realized I really haven't seen any of her movies. Her Frank Miller Gucci ad, sure, but no movies. And then I remembered why I love her is this article in Blackbook. Go read it, it's more interesting than anything we ever write on this blog.

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Geek Peek: Sarah Ho of SHO Jewellery

I first encountered SHO Jewellery back when I was an editor at the luxury mag and founder Sarah Ho was in town to visit her family. I was immediately struck by how down to earth and well… fun Sarah was considering that her family is so well known in town. (She’s the granddaughter of Stanley Ho.) Throughout the years, we’ve kept in touch and it’s been great to see her evolution as a jewellery designer. We talk to Sarah about her love for rice and items on her lust list.

HKFG: What’s on your lust list?
SH: A piece of jewellery by Jar, my favourite designer, I would love to own a fancy blue or fancy pink diamond. It’s the colour I am more interested in rather that the shape of the stone and I would love to make a spectacular piece of jewellery to show it off, a ring by Sevan Bicakci, a wonderful Turkish jewellery designer, also known as ‘the King of Rings’.

HKFG: What fashion item can’t you live without?
SH: My Chanel handbag

HKFG: Thing you could live without... but still can’t bear to part with
SH: My iphone! I just feel lost without it.

HKFG: Favourite thing about HK?
SH: My favourite things about Hong Kong are its energy and the cosmopolitan 24 hour culture. As well as being the place for food and shopping its also a place for me to see my family,

HKFG: Your secret ambition?
SH: To be recognised as an established international designer and trendsetter.

HKFG: What song do you sing in the shower?
SH: I join in with what ever is on the radio

HKFG: What’s your ultimate indulgence food OR go-to food when you’re stressing out?
SH: Special Fried Rice. I love rice! Even when I was pregnant, rice was the only food I craved.

HKFG: Which celebrity you would most like to be/trade places with?
SH: My mum Suki Potier who was a 60’s icon, a model, a ‘Bond’ girl and the girlfriend of Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. I would love to see the world through her eyes.

HKFG: What’s your first big investment purchase?
SH: Town House in London’s Regents Park

HKFG: What you would wish for if a genie came out of a lamp to grant u 3 wishes
SH: To see my brand established and adored worldwide, good health, happiness and harmony for everyone in my family, people would just get along in this world.

HKFG: What’s your secret-weapon beauty product?
SH: La Prairie Platinum Rare cream

HKFG: What’s your worst nightmare?
SH: Bumping in to someone who you don’t want to see

HKFG: What’s the last thing you think about before going to sleep?
SH: Last thing I think about is work.

HKSG: What’s your favourite iPhone app?
SH: Cup Cake and Doughnut Maker (actually for my daughter!)

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Hero Shots

What would Hellboy do if The Department of Paranormal Activity allowed him out of home base to travel to Hong Kong? Given his fondness for cigars and Hong Kong's somewhat strict policy against smoking in restaurants, I guess he'd probably head to an outdoor hotpot joint. I mean, it's not like he's afraid of heat.

Chow Kar Hoo explores such random situations in one of his photographic series, placing superheroes in banal Hong Kong settings, from Wolverine in the wet market to Spiderman collecting used paper -- with great power comes great responsiblity, indeed. Check out Chow's site for more such gems.
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OH SHOOT

On the hottest day of 2011, we decided to put together a shoot of "fashion people" along with visiting Aussie photographer Ben Riches. We're so smart. Taking part in our friendly little extravaganza was our old pal Superwowomg Denise, How I Met Your Style photographer Carmen, luxury fashion PR girl Sha, tot clothing-line founder Bertha and PP4E handbag designer Piecco, as well as some new friends (but old faces on the blog scene -- and by old I mean established, not elderly), the freaking hot Valerie and super cool Cindy. Laura from Gizzy was nice enough to lend us her showroom to act as home base, while we plodded around Sheung Wan in the scathing heat.

We're still waiting on the final shots from Mr Riches, but in the meantime, since I lugged along the DSLR, here are the behind-the-scenes photos... basically, us fooling around in the showroom, marching up and down Hollywood Road, meeting a new corgi friend in 7-Eleven... as well as some pics of Piecco's new pieces and Bertha's awesome convertible garments. (NEED THAT TRENCH ON VALERIE.) At the end of the day, I headed home and of course, continued the shoot with the sexiest and most stylish gal of all, Foxy Brown.

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