Cilantro Restaurant

A few weekends ago, I went to dinner with some high school friends downtown Oakville to try out Cilantro, a Malaysian and International cuisine restaurant. We had a great time. The restaurant was very highly rated by the Toronto Star and by web reviews. We were going out to celebrate our friend Avninder's graduation and to see him off before he goes to Egypt for a month! What a great graduation trip!

Cilantro is a wonderful family run restauraunt. Emelee, the wife, is a great hostess and makes every dish on the menu sound appetizing. It is a very unusual menu with several different types of cuisine available from Malaysian to Italian! I guess it reflects whatever her husband is good at making.

Renu and Justin had the homemade lemonade and it was delicious!












I had the pad thai which was nice but I think I should have gone with the curry. I always get swayed by the noodle option. One day I will learn. Here are the spring rolls Renu had.

Dessert was really nice. Maileen, Renu and I tried this million layer cake thing which we were told was only available at Cilantro in Canada. Steve and Av had this mango rice thing which was also yummy.

Here are the guys in a very natural, unposed shot.

We will have to do it again once Av is back to find out all about his trip!

Gluten-Free Cupcakes

To celebrate Administrative Assistant Day at work my manager asked me to do some cake decorating because I've taken a few classes. At first I thought I'd bake some cupcakes but then I remembered our admin, Dianne does not eat wheat or gluten. I did a bit of research and found some gluten free cake mixes at Whole Foods! I decided to try out Pamela's Luscious Chocolate Cake mix. My manager also picked up some little cheesecakes and asked me to decorate them in a golf theme because Dianne is an avid golfer. She gave me some practice golf balls (which have holes and are lighter) to decorate with.

I looked on the internet for some ideas and was inspired by this picture. I piped on a circle of green to represent the golf greens. I used my cupcake tree to display my works of art. Each row alternated between golf balls on tees and little flags I made with toothpicks and labels. The very top cupcake had a real white chocolate golf ball nestled in the 'grass' icing. Everyone was quite impressed. The gluten free cupcakes tasted really good. I don't think I noticed a difference.












To decorate the cheesecakes I bought some great golf figurines from Michael's! They looked so cute. I also piped a green border and used chocolate icing for sand pits. I even put a lake on one of them! Since there was not much room on the cake I decided to write the message on the back of some Cote D'or milk chocolate bars I had. I tried to use some golf terminology to make the messages more fun: "You're 'TEE'rific " and "Thanks FORE everything, Dianne!"

My mom was very sweet and stayed up late with me to help me finish everything. Thanks for washing all the dishes for me, Mom!
When baking, pick a theme! It will add more character to your creations! Happy Administrative Assistant Day Dianne!