'Scrumptious' - Bea's of Bloomsbury weren't lying either!

Recommended by Miss R D (via her contact in the Afternoon Tea underground of Chicago...). This is now my official 'best afternoon tea in London bar none'!

High accolade indeed, but how can it not, when the jam and clotted cream arrive not in measly little dishes, but in gravy boats(!) and the (homemade in the kitchen in the back) cakes are on a stand where the handle is a pair of golden-shod ladies legs?

Where a tea comprising fresh, warm, scones, generous jam & clotted cream, a selection of brownies (blonde, chocolate and a nutty one), selection of meringues (cocoa, raspberry and plain) plus your choice of cupcake is all yours for £8!

I don't know if there is an Ottolenghi connection, the meringues and passion fruit tarts bear a remarkable resemblance, does anyone know?

Bake leftover clementines!

If you have a surplus of over-enthusiastically bought clementines that aren't quite as juicy as they once were, here's an idea for a zesty, caramelised treat;

• Light the oven and set to gas mark 5
• Top and tail the clementines. Place top and tail slices into a pan with some sugar, cinnamon and water. Boil.
• Meanwhile cut the top and tailed clems into 5mm slices and lay out onto a baking sheet.
• Sprinkle a bit of sugar all over the clems and blob some butter around and about on the top too.
• After about 10 mins of boiling, drain the cooked peel, sugar and cinnamon mixture and pour the liquid over the butter and sugared clems on your baking sheet
• Whack in the oven until they are looking a golden brown; even a bit crispy.
• Use as they are to nibble on, make a dessert with (chop up and add to plain yogurt), add to muesli or whizz up roughly for some quick marmalade!

A very homemade Christmas; Mints, Fudge & Scrub

So this years gifts have been mostly handmade, including;

• Peppermint & Rose kind-of-creams*
• Frankincense / Clementine bath salts** (a bit fail, as most people have showers I found...)
• Fudge*** - supremo hit (if I may say so myself!) as it worked first time, is v tasty and easy to adapt. A tiny bit of fail was cutting it into star shapes for gifts, which meant that were lots of trimmings of peculiar sizes that - oh dear - had to stay here to be eaten by us!

* recipe hastily scribbled down from a cafe's copy of Fresh magazine.
** Martha - Body Scrub; adapted scents and changed it from a scrub to salts using Dead Sea Salt.
*** Martha again - Foolproof Holiday Fudge; adapted to use veggie marshmallows (US import, try Sweet & Sara or Sweet Vegan in the UK) and G&B's Maya Gold choc; seriously tempted to try another batch using their white chocolate. I'm guessing both these projects will be available on her site after the next issue is published?

ETA: Tried another batch of fudge using white chocolate and it failed miserably; it just stayed melty-marhmallowy and didn't set.

14 people (+ 4 babies) = £140!

Yayy... lots of cakes made and eaten yesterday and a bit of Phd research in the corner all equalled to a lovely afternoon and lots of cash...

Add to that the £145 donated online, and I'm very pleased to be able to pass on a total of £285 to the Macmillan charity.... thank you all :)

Coffee & Cakes vs Cancer

Tomorrow is the Macmillan Cancer Charity's World's Biggest Coffee Morning event. I'm holding one at ours in the afternoon and cakes have been planned..

• gingerbread 'shapes'; cos I love gingerbread
• chilli choc fudge cake; that Dan lepard is a genius
• beetroot cake; guess what was in the veg box!
• pumpkin pie; autumnal innit?

Still, I know it's a work day, and not all of you who read my blog are even in the same country, so I've also set up a virtual Coffee Morning event too! You can still have your cake and eat it (boom boom) at work, or in a different time zone nonetheless...All amounts are appreciated; from broken Digestive to Black Forest Gateaux size :)

All tea should be this glamourous!

Me and a pal, at the new PatVal... :)

dinner

firetongues

Woohoo! I only discovered I had any beans ready to eat after my friend's 1 yr old was rootling about in the garden yesterday… Had to lift up all the leaves but then, there they were, all 7 of them, hiding underneath… [beams proudly].

Had them steamed with our dinner tonight (tasty!), but disappointingly all the fire-tongue-iness disappeared during cooking.

Stirring Jam - Craft Club Jam 2008

So this year we found pick-you-own heaven in the form of Garsons... At the last minute we discovered our intended PYO was closed due to *no strawberries at all* and so Garsons was picked at random... oh happy day :)

Between us we picked not only the raspberries and strawberries that went into the jam, but also beetroot, mange tout, asparagus, spinach, cauliflower and gooseberries.

The farm is set in 100 acres by the river Mole and there is even a picnic field, horses, and ice cream van, scarecrows, garden centre and farm shop... we will be back for plums, apples and pumpkins in the autumn!

Rolled Dates

Been inspired by foodie blogs of late; most notably Veggie Meal Plans (does what it says in the title - and the kind of food I like eating too) and Nourish Me, although the seasons are all mixed up as I think she is in Aus. I've made the chocolate and lager chilli,, the Nepalese potato salad, and improvised on the already-modified Rolled Dates by using dates, oats, orange juice, cinnamon and Jamaican pepper... yummy they were too! Loads of VMP recipes use chipotle en adobo which I've never come across in a shop, but as soon as I get some (a stall in borough market sells it apparently) I'll be sure to try out some of those recipes...

Funnily enough I'm meeting friends in later at Wahaca, where there's lots of c.e.a on the menu too! I'm hoping it's a tasty experience - there's a dearth of good Mexican food in London....