Blooming Hot Chocolate and Churro Duos
If the name Dominique Ansel doesn’t ring a bell, you should know that he’s made a huge impact in many people’s lives – possibly even yours! Dominique is the French pastry chef responsible for the cronut – the decadent treat that took our tastebuds and stomachs by storm a few years back. Now the mad scientist of dessert is back again with a couple of new inventions – Blooming Hot Chocolate and the Churro Duo. Blooming Hot Chocolate is a new beverage available from Dominique Ansel’s bakeries in New York City, Tokyo and London and features a marshmallow shaped into a closed flower bulb, which unfolds when lightly placed on top of a cup of hot chocolate. The marshmallow flower is typically wrapped around a secondary treat and makes our hearts melt quicker than the marshmallow flower itself. The Churro Duo is a pair of interlocked churros (one white sesame with cinnamon sugar, one darker sesame with black sugar) moulded into geometric shapes. Fans of churros can head to Dominique’s Tokyo bakery to try these bad boys.
Image: Tokyo Weekender

The Sparkke Change Beverage Co
When we see a great cause we can’t help but support it, and it makes it even easier when said cause incorporates such a wicked concept. The Sparkke Change Brewing Co. is a newcomer to Australia’s beverage industry, created and spearheaded by a group of young social activists from various walks of life. The organisation creates a range of canned beverages including pilsner beer, apple cider, hard lemonade and alcoholic ginger beer made by a team of professional brewers and winemakers. Each variety boasts a slogan relating to a different social issue including the promotion of gender equality, education on sexual consent, advocating the change of date for Australia Day and providing care and supportive safety to asylum seekers. Ten per cent of Sparkke’s direct sales will be donated to an organisation aligned with the cause on the can. Sparkke Change Brewing Co. is currently crowd-funding its pre-sale through Pozible. Be sure to throw your support behind the initiative and raise a can to social change!
Image: Sparkke Change Brewing Co.

Domino’s Reindeer Delivery
As Santa gears up to deliver presents to nice kids around the world, it seems his reindeer are getting in a bit of pre-season training. Domino’s Japan has unveiled a quirky promotion that will see specially trained reindeer deliver freshly made pizzas by sleigh. I can see your bemused smirk from here – don’t worry, there is a method to the madness. When the snows hit and bikes and cars become less reliable, the reindeer-led sleigh becomes a viable delivery method – well, in theory. Each sled is equipped with a GPS tracker to allow patrons to watch their pizza’s arrival in real time, though if the above video is any indication they might need Rudolph (with his nose so bright) to guide the pizza to its proper destination.

Kellogg’s Cereal Cafe
We’ve all heard of cereal cafes popping up in different cities around the globe, we’ve been skeptical that the trend will progress beyond the realm of token, hipster experimentation. We wouldn’t really want to line up to be given a bowl of rice bubbles when we’ve probably got a packet going stale in the pantry already. That being said, our curiosity was piqued when we heard that Kellogg’s has opened a cereal cafe in Times Square – right in the heart of New York City. If anyone were to do a cereal cafe well, it would be the creator of most of our favourite cereals, right? Kellogg’s celebrated its 110^th birthday by teaming up with Journee to build Kellogg’s NYC, a place were cereal is reimagined according to your own whims. The menu allows patrons to choose whether they’d like their cereal in a bowl, a milkshake, on a sundae or as a parfait, then allows them to select from a range of flavour combinations (or pick their own) for a truly memorable breakfast. You can check out the menu here while we busily look up how much flights to New York are.
Image: Kellogg’s NYC

IKEA launches online ordering
Say it with me home decorators – hallelujah! It’s been a long time coming, but IKEA is finally launching online ordering and home delivery in Australia. No longer will we have to trek large distances to just wander aimlessly around the megastore looking for a particular lamp. Soon, we’ll be able to click a button and have it sent straight to us. Following on from the launch of click-and-collect in Tasmania, Canberra will be the lucky city to trial the online service, which will gradually roll out nationally over the next few years. For now we’ll have to be satisfied with visiting the store in person, but at least we have a second location in North Lakes now to take advantage of.
Image credit: Cropped photo by Håkan Dahlström, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence.

Bonus Vibe: Coachella 2017
Disclaimer: this one hasn’t exactly been confirmed by official sources, but if it is even half accurate consider us completely and utterly hyped. Sources are reporting that the line-up has leaked, and boy – it’s a doozy. It’s being said that Radiohead, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar will be headlining the massive festival, which takes place next April over two weekends. Coachella hasn’t confirmed the rumours, but we will probably expand our trip to the USA to include a stop at Coachella just in case.
Image: Beyoncé