Tag Archives: cake

Devouring Cake at Soet Society Cafe in Durbanville (2019-05-11) Food and Drink | Photo Gallery 13 OCT 2019

I turned 39 this year and decided to celebrate it by taking Chantelle away for the night to the fabulous Darling. Of course, I couldn’t quite leave the girls out of all the fun, and so on the way to dropping them off with our folks in Bellville, we decided to kick the celebrations off with an impromptu stop for coffee and cake at the delectable Soet Society Cafe in Durbanville.

Known for producing extremely delicious cakes, Soet Cakes eventually opened what has become an exceedingly popular cafe in the heart of Durbanville, with the ever so fashionable (and modern) Soet Society Cafe delighting locals with all manner of artisan breads, designer cakes, Bootlegger coffee and beautifully presented bistro food.

The eatery in fact became such a popular hub that it has since gone on to spawn the Soet Emporium, essentially welcoming small artisan businesses to join them in the building, resulting in an eclectic mix of local boutique, hair salon, decor, skincare, art gallery, and biltong shops all situated in one single space.

As for this particular visit, we picked up two trays with a whole array of small slices laid out on them, thus sampling just about all the cakes they had on offer in one single go! Absolutely delicious, and of course, absolutely too indulgent. Mind you, not that anyone minded taking these leftovers home!

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Sunday 13/10/2019Food and Drink, Photo Gallerycake, coffee shop, durbanville, emporium, soet society cafe, south africaCraig Lotter

Breakfast Snacking at the Schoon Manufactory in Stellenbosch (2018-09-15) Food and Drink | Photo Gallery 09 JUN 2019

Fritz and Chanelle Schoon’s beloved bakery has certainly moved around a bit. Having started out as Oude Bank Bakkerij in Stellenbosch, then reformed as Schoon de Companje, then moved to Somerset West with the opening of Schoon Bright Street Café, and now back in Stellenbosch with the Schoon Manufactory Café, the team must be doing something right because their devoted fans seem to follow them everywhere!

The new Schoon Manufactory in Stellenbosch is actually quite interesting to visit. The manufactory (derived from ‘manual factory’) acts as the centralized hub for Schoon, giving them one large space to produce all their bread, pastries and café food in, while also allowing them to run an experimental kitchen and small onsite café from. The end result is a very much factory like space that is open to the public and allows interested fans the opportunity to observe the ongoing artisan baking taking place, whilst all the while tasting and spreading the word of Schoon’s decadent bakes.

The girls and I started one of our big day out adventures with a breakfast run at the manufactory, and I have to say that their pastries are just a thing of absolute delight. Unfortunately for you though, this stop involved a full on effort of marshaling of two very excited (at the prospect of all that custard, chocolate and other sweet treats) little girls, so I didn’t exactly take any pictures of what was put down in front of us!

Never mind though, all the more reason to pay them another visit then.

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Sunday 09/06/2019Food and Drink, Photo Gallerybakery, cafe, cake, doughnuts, pastries, schoon, schoon manufactory, south africa, stellenbosch, sweet treatsCraig Lotter

A Lion Cake at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town (2018-06-02) Events | Photo Gallery 01 FEB 2019

Last year the animal welfare organisation Four Paws teamed up with South African Wildlife Project’s Elda Thomas and big name baker Dot Klerck to ignite the launch for their latest SA lions canned hunting awareness campaign #RiseUpAndRoar. The result? A giant lion cake which popped up in the V&A Waterfront for a couple of days in June.

Naturally, as the baker behind the best cakes in the Helderberg, Chantelle had to make a trip to see this baked marvel.

As for the girls and myself, we just wanted an excuse to go and sight-see at the Waterfront! :)

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Admittedly, it was a pretty cool cake.

Related Link: Four Paws | V&A Waterfront | Cape Town

Coffee and Cake at Old Mill Guest House and Restaurant in Swellendam (2017-12-26) Food and Drink | Photo Gallery 07 APR 2018

When I am in the mood to holiday then I holiday, and invariably that then means that I double the length of all long drives because I pretty much want to stop anywhere and everywhere.

Case in point: I felt like a Swellendam cake and coffee stop on the way up to Mossel Bay last December, but I didn’t feel like popping into (the almost always busy) Tredici as per the norm. So instead, Chantelle dug deep into her memory banks and came up with this little gem: the Old Mill Restaurant.

Situated at the foot of the Langeberg Mountain range, in the heart of the Overberg, the Old Mill business is primarily that of a guest house, operating out from a beautiful old, protected national monument building set along the main road, where Belgian owner Nikki and his staff do their utmost to offer accommodation that comes intertwined with warm, friendly Flemish hospitality.

In addition to the guest house (and art gallery/curio store), the Old Mill also operates a lovely restaurant, featuring both an indoor and outdoor dining area.

The menu on offer is a diverse à la carte menu inspired by both traditional Afrikaans and international recipes, all waiting to be washed down with some imported Belgian beer. (The Old Mill appears to be rather proud of this offering).

And yes, as it turned out, they also do good cake and coffee as well.

We were of course super interested in finding a space under the canopy of trees that provides the much needed shade over the outside dining area, and pleasingly we did manage to grab just such a table on what was a particularly warm Summer’s afternoon in the end.

So. Coffee, cheesecake, carrot cake and sorbet was then (more or less equally) shared all around, thus making for a lovely little road trip leg stretch stop.

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Lovely find and definitely a place I’ll stop for a bit longer at the next time that I find myself back in the Swellendam area again!

A Birthday Rainbow Cake Surprise (2016-05-15) Photo Gallery 19 MAY 2016

On Sunday we enjoyed a brilliant braai at the Montgomery Clan Stronghold, welcoming back Rob and Tarryn who had just returned from their 3 week long honeymoon holiday in Thailand! It was brilliant to hear all about the sights and sounds that they had encountered, leaving both Chantelle and myself super jealous in the process!

The best part of the day was however dessert time, when out of the blue, Chantelle came strolling out carrying a rainbow cake of all things! What I didn’t know was that it was a surprise cake for me in celebration of my birthday that had fallen earlier in the week, which meant that I got the Full Monty in terms of having Happy Birthday sung to me and blowing out the candles (which of course, Jessica did on my behalf).

I love rainbow cakes in general – how can one not like this happy clappy cake! – and this particular one from The Velvet Cake Co. (situated in Rosenpark, Bellville) was delicious, tasting as good as what it looks!

What a nice Sunday surprise.

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Jessica’s Mondeor Restaurant Birthday Party (2015-11-13) Photo Gallery 22 NOV 2015

For some or other reason, Chantelle decided to challenge herself by having not one, but two birthday parties for Jessica (turning five) this year.

The first one would be for all the local Gordon’s Bay friends (i.e. from Vergeet-My-Nie playschool and our Country Mews complex), and the second one for our family and other friends out in Bellville.

To be fair, Chantelle didn’t want to do setup twice, so the first birthday party was organised to be held at Mondeor Garden Restaurant, the same place we had Jessica’s fourth birthday party last year.

Jessica had decided on a Frozen themed party in the end (originally she was leaning towards a super hero Barbie party, but changed her mind at the last moment, much to Chantelle’s relief), and as such dictated that no boys were allowed at her princess party, the girls had to all wear dresses and have plaits in their hair (not that she wore one on the day mind you!), and of course, that she needed a Elsa cake for her birthday.

Mondeor is actually very nice for hosting kiddie birthday parties, as they do a pretty cool little setup for the kids, have a great outdoor play area for the little guys to run riot (sucks if it’s raining though – which is actually what happened a few weekends before on Lisa’s – one of Jessica’s friends – birthday party), and have more than enough space, seating and menu options to keep the adults pretty happy for the duration of the chaos too.

In the end I think that we had about 10 or 12 little girls having a thoroughly fun time on a Friday afternoon which brought pretty okay weather along with it, whilst all us big people happily chilled at a long table with wine and pizza pretty much flowing all session long.

So, Jess loved her cake, had a great time with her friends, and also got loads of cool gifts from everyone – sounds like a successful fifth birthday party to me! :)

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Chantelle’s Cookies & Cakes: Bumblebee Transformers Cake My Life 06 JAN 2013

Chantelle got a cake order in the other day for a “Bumblebee Transformers Cake”, destined to make a lucky little 9 year old boy smile on his birthday.

And this is the yellow and chrome hued mecha that she came up with!

Check out that detail. That’s the reason Chantelle handles all the baking and decorating and I simply man the stall! :)

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Obviously if you’re based in the Overberg or Northern Suburbs and want to lay your hands on some fabulous cake like this one, grab hold of Chantelle over on her own Chantelle’s Cookies & Cakes website!

And Recently… My Life 03 MAY 2012

I guess our quota of public holidays are pretty much up for now, but damn, what a good run it has been. I’m not sure I even remember what a five day work week is any more! As it happens, next week will also be a four day work week for me, seeing as my birthday falls on Friday the 11th and we get off on our birthdays.

Lucky!! Seriously though, I am turning 32. 32?!? (Wow, it really is downhill after you turn 30!)

In addition to the short work weeks we’ve been enjoying, I haven’t set foot in the Westlake Touchwork office since last Wednesday – we’re moving office to new premises (still in the Westlake Business Park though), and without Internet set up yet, it doesn’t make sense for me to make the trip in, so have been instructed to rather stay and work from home. Again, lucky! (And a heap saved on petrol to boot!).

Anyway, seriously looking forward to this coming weekend though – We’ve (and by we I mean Evan) have organised a big 12 man expedition to Cape Gate Ster Kinekor on Saturday evening in order to watch Avengers – and from everything I’ve been seeing on the ‘Net, I’m in for a slice of awesome comic book movie goodness!

Which kind of reminds me that I haven’t really been filling you guys in as to what has been happening with the Lotter family over the last while. So a quick recap then. Two weekends ago (outside of all the Young Justice viewing and FIFA season mode gaming I’ve been keeping myself occupied with inbetween), Chantelle and her mom put together another successful market showing at the Willowbridge Slow Market – despite the gloomy weekend weather. During that time Jessica and I also made the trip through to Bellville first to pay a visit to Mom and Dad for a bit of grandparents and toddler time, followed by a stop in to check out Ryan’s awesome new kitchen (and grab more viewing material).

After jump-starting a woman’s car before leaving Willowbridge at the end of the afternoon, Chantelle and I capped the Saturday off by leaving Jess in Ouma and Oupa’s care, and heading out to Cape Gate, first for supper at the Spur, followed by a viewing of the harrowing but cinematically excellent Liam Neeson plane crash/blizzard/wolf survival film, “The Grey”.

Back at the Montgomery Stronghold, Jessica unfortunately didn’t have a good night, meaning a lot of awake time for the two of us, though luckily for us this didn’t continue on into Sunday, where a surprisingly enjoyable Nicholas Cage movie, “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, scuppered our plans of going out to feed the ducks in the morning. Robert was in charge of producing the excellent steak lunch which we enjoyed with the Montgomery Clan, which was followed up by a fun game of darts with Monty and Cheryl, with Chantelle and I losing both games played – though to be fair, the first game ended rather abruptly, with Cheryl’s first throw netting a Shanghai to take the unexpected win!

Of course, all of the above means that last weekend was a Chantelle on duty weekend, and outside a lot of FIFA and looking after Jessica while Chantelle was at work, I didn’t get up to all that much. However, Saturday did feature a nice interlude in that my folks came over for an afternoon home-made pizza lunch and visit (complemented by an awesome stroll around the Strand duck pond feeding all the ducks), whilst Sunday yielded an evening trip through to Bellville to drop Jessic off with the Montgomery clan – for looking after on Monday’s public holiday when the creche would be closed and both Chantelle and I would be at work in case you were wondering.

In amongst all of this, Chantelle has been producing fantabulous cakes for various orders that have streamed in, including two Barney the Dinosaur-themed cakes as well as a gloriously decadent chocolate birthday cake for Louise. And then of course there is all the preparation baking for this weekend’s market that has been going on behind the scenes…

And me? All I’ve managed to do is finally get around to sorting out and tidying up the office! Anyway, that should just about cover everything we’ve been getting up to the last while, and yes, just in case you were wondering about this as well, Jessica continues to get cuter with each and every passing day! :)

A Busy Single Parent Weekend! My Life 13 DEC 2011

Whew, this weekend was another busy single parent weekend for me (actually, I don’t know when last we’ve actually had a quiet weekend come to think of it!), though in fairness Friday evening was pretty lame, what with me coming down with a bit of a cold and having to head off to bed pretty early on, meaning not much to report on there.

However Saturday it was up and at them, guns blazing, as I whisked Jessica off to Somerset Mall for some shopping and present purchasing after her usual breakfast and nap routine, before returning home for the big pack – with the assistance of a duly worried Mommy of course! From there it was off to Bellville for a quick stop in by Gran and Grandpa Lotter in order to drop off my torn karate pants in the hopes that a miracle can be worked, before picking up Ryan from his pad and then shooting through to Evan’s place to meet up with all the friends for a proper South African birthday braai, in celebration of Natasha’s 25th birthday!

At Natasha's birthday braai

As is customary for the days whenever Evan and Natasha organise a braai, the weather didn’t have a clue on what it wanted to do, but regardless of the undecided cloud cover, we all had a great time, enjoyed good food, and tucked into an even better dessert – a sumptuous Charlie’s Bakery chocolate birthday cake which Evan had organised earlier on in the week.

Thanks to my early morning commitments on Sunday, I had earlier made the decision to sleep over at Ryan’s place for the evening, the first ever evening that Jessie and I would spend away from Chantelle. As it turned out, we were off to a bad start when Jessie passed out on the way home from the braai, meaning that the normal evening routine was completely thrown in disarray which resulted in a much later than usual bedtime for my little princess. As for Ryan and myself (after Jessie was in bed), we dug out the XBOX controllers and got a fair bit of FIFA 11 in, with Ryan admittedly thrashing me, allowing me to win only two games out of the plus minus nine we played on the night, one in regulation time and one via penalty shootout (which never really counts according to our stats keeping). This was followed by a late night viewing of the frankly disappointing “Van Helsing: The London Assignment”, which proved enough to drive us both straight to bed.

Unfortunately for me though, despite how much I would have loved to get a good night’s rest, little Jess seemed determined that I would simply not have it this very night!

She started out the evening sleeping in the camping cot borrowed from my mom and dad, but after the first couple of restless wails that had me up and scrabbling to tend to her in the pitch dark without my glasses on, I resorted to removing her out of the cot and laying her beside me on the bed, where I proceeded to have a night of very light sleep, interrupted at regular intervals by the moaning and shifting around of my uncomfortable little one, all of which resulted in a very zombie-like Craig who arose at 06:00 for the usual morning feed routine the next day!

Shame, I now have full understanding and sympathy for my poor wifey who always seems so drained every morning! (The baby monitor isn’t enough to wake me, meaning that I’ve always enjoyed a proper night’s sleep while Chantelle has handled all that worrying and light sleeping stuff! :P)

At Zandea's birthday party

Anyway, Pops popped in for a quick visit after his and Ryan’s early morning gym session, after which I got everything packed in and ready to go, our next destination being Dean and Zania’s pad in Kraaifontein, for little Zandea’s 2nd birthday celebrations. Pleasingly, Jessica and I found Dean’s house first time around without getting lost, and even more pleasingly, our awesome gift of a colorful interactive children’s bible was very well received, both by the mommy and by my little godchild! :)

A lot of the guys who were there at Natasha’s birthday braai were again at Zandea’s colorful Barney birthday party, and so we all quickly fell back into conversation whilst tucking into the delightful party spread that Zania had come up with. Cute Barney cake candles were extinguished and we even got a visit (with gifts!) from Father Christmas, though to be honest, poor little Zandea could have done without the latter – she was absolutely terrified of Dean and his white beard!

Dean as Father Christmas

Anyway, Jess and I ended up being the last ones to leave, and then it was a race back home to Gordon’s Bay in order to get ready for the next birthday party on the list, namely little Annabella’s 1st birthday celebrated at Andrea and Albert’s beautiful house out in Strand. This time though Chantelle had organised to go with us (she took her afternoon split a little later than usual), meaning that for the first time this weekend, the Gordon’s Bay Lotter Clan was a complete unit at last!

Andy’s house was brimming with babies and toddlers when we got there, and Albert had seen to a fantastic array of eats to cater to both young and old. A smiley face cake completed the afternoon, with me on hand as the resident filmographer to capture Bella’s big moment of blowing (with a little help) out the candles.

Two hours flashed by, and seeing as Chantelle needed to get back to work, it was back home where I was once more abandoned with Jessie and I set about with unpacking from our epic single parent weekend and getting through the Sunday night routine.

So whew, this time I really can say I need another weekend just to recover from this one! :)