City Hall as the Light Fades

I really wanted to share this beautiful photo with you all.  It was taken by one of the local Tweeters, @iCharlotte and I really liked it, so I asked her if I could share it here on I ♥ BrisVegas.

Doesn't it have an awesome kind of twilight feel to it?  (I'm not talking about the sparkly Vampires people!)

I love City Hall.  I also love King George Square.  I only wish they hadn't put those ugly 50's style buildings in it that lead down to the new bus station.  It used to be a fantastic open space, there for all to enjoy, but the bus station buildings just chop it up and hide the square.  It's a shame.

Thanks again to Charlotte for this one, if you're interested in seeing more of Charlotte's stuff, she has a Tumblr account HERE.

Full of Cakey Goodness

I figured since I have tried the goods from TWO of Brisbane's cupcake boutiques this weekend, that I had better tell you about them.

Thanks to the Brisbane Twitter group, BTUB, I enjoyed cupcakes in New Farm park with some of my fellow Brisbane tweeters.  @shique purchased our cupcakes from two different cupcake boutiques, Poppy Cakes in Fortitude Valley and the Cupcake Parlour at West End.

The Poppy Cakes ones were very good - nice moist cake, sweet icing, cute presentation.  I was really excited to see that they have red velvet cupcakes, as red velvet cake is one of my favourite things in the whole world.  So of course I had to try one of those.  Take a look:

Cute huh?  Want a close up?  Ok, here you go:

My only criticism is that they weren't authentic red velvet cupcakes simply because the icing was plain vanilla icing.  Red velvet cake just isn't red velvet cake without vanilla cream cheese icing.  It's just not the real thing.  But they were still tasty anyway.

The Cupcake Parlour cakes though... what magnificence!  Not only were they totally scrumptious, but every single one was a little work of cupcakey art.  Check 'em out:

Gorgeous aren't they?  Each one totally individually flavoured with it's own style of decoration.  That green one on the bottom right with the pale purple flower?  It was apple.  This is the one that I had:

I also thought this one was extra pretty:

That little rose is just exquisite.
I will say though, eating two cupcakes was no easy feat.  Both types were incredibly sweet (without being sickly) so it was a pretty huge sugar rush afterwards, and then a crash a bit later.  I had to go home and find something savoury for dinner to counter all that sugar!
I'll definitely be buying cupcakes from The Cupcake Parlour again, that's for sure.

Jan Power's Farmers Markets

I finally got a chance to really go and peruse the Jan Power's Farmers Markets in Reddacliff Place, at the top of the Queen Street Mall.  They've been on since the beginning of this month, but I have been on holidays, so I hadn't had the chance to go and really take a look yet.

Running on Wednesdays from 11am to 6pm, the markets have everything from fresh fruit and veges, meat, bread, flowers, cheese and other dairy products, smallgoods and some hand crafted goods.  From what I could see, most of it was very well priced too.

As it was lunch time, I started out with a cheese kransky from the German sausage stand (slapped into a crusty breadroll with sauerkraut and mustard) to munch on while I had a look around.  I picked up a gorgeous ciabatta from the German bread maker (and a cinnamon stick for afternoon tea), some diced pork from one of the butchers, and fresh fruit and veg from some of the produce sellers.  I also popped back down at afternoon tea time to pick up some fragrant roses from the stall out on the William Street end, absolutely gorgeous roses for $8 a bunch.  I think that may become a regular weekly treat for me.

I'm really glad that they've moved to regular weekly markets right in the CBD.  It means I can get fresh, good quality produce at a reasonable price every week, without having to haul myself out to any of the suburban markets on the weekend.

Do check them out!