Apple turnover and green tea

Location: Marks and Spencer, Birmingham
www.marksandspencer.co.uk
Date: 16 May 2010
Details: Apple turnover and green tea




Notes: A favourite quick+easy bite-to-eat/lunch in Birmingham. Purchasing the turnover in the food-hall saves 60p-ish over buying it in the café. Note the freebie miniature gingerbread man - nice touch, M&S!

Website launch celebration cake

Location: The office, Stratford-upon-Avon

Date: 22 April 2010

Details: Celebration cake

Notes: Made by David Wimperis - vanilla sponge with buttercream and jam, decorated with design by me - the big red 'go live' button! Very tasty indeed.

Tea and Poached Pear Mess

Location: At home, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: 6 April 2010
Details: Tea and Poached Pear Mess

Notes: This pudding finished off dinner at my house with the Beamsleys. It's not photogenic but it tasted blummin' lovely. Kiz prepared the dish at her place (poaching pears, making meringues etc) then transported it the 12 miles by car and put it together just before eating. The meringues were super - crunchy on the outside and still squishy inside. Perhaps I can persuade her to add a comment with the recipe...?

Banoffee cheesecake, petit-fours and cup of tea

Location: McKee's Brasserie, Haig's Hotel, Balsall Common
Date: 1 April 2010
Details: Banoffee cheesecake, petit-fours and cup of tea

Notes: A birthday outing for my mother's sixtieth. Haig's Hotel in Balsall Common is becoming a word-of-mouth success for the retired Solihull population. McKee's Brasserie offers a three-course menu every day (£12 lunch, £19 dinner) - there's a wide choice of meat, fish and veggie options and the menu changes monthly. So for a birthday lunch, this was superb value.

The banoffee cheesecake was a toffee cheesecake in disguise - a few slices of banana on the top cunningly transforming it into 'banoffee' - strange, but tasty enough. The 'chocolate sauce' promised on the menu was a few dribbles of toffee sauce - strange, but tasty enough again.

The petit-fours were very strange - cute to look at but very strange to eat. Some seemed to be solid coconutty mixtures, some were miniature pastries or biscuits. Best to just admire these, rather than actually eat them.

Pretty tea cups

Location: The Beeches Bar & Grill, Hampton-in-Arden
Date: 1 April 2010
Details: Tea in pretty cups




Notes: No cake sadly - we were about to go out for lunch - but a jolly nice cup of tea and small biscotti. I took a photo to record the pretty tea-cups. Very nice.


The Beeches is a relatively new restaurant in Hampton-in-Arden - it's been open a year or so now. The walls are covered in huge images of happy Fresian cows in vivid green fields with brilliant blue skies. So presumably it's a vegetarian restaurant? Surely no-one could eat steak in here...?

Easter cupcake and green tea

Location: At desk in office, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: 29 March 2010
Details: Easter cupcake and green tea




Notes: Light plain sponge cupcake with yellow lemon icing. These cupcakes were left on a table in our upstairs hallway, we're not quite sure who made them but suspect Rachel in HR. All the cakes had an Easter chick sitting on top - mine is now sitting in my pot plant.

Cup of tea and Victoria Sponge cake

Location: Red Lion pub, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: 28 March 2010
Details: Cup of tea and Victoria Sponge cake

Notes: A great place to meet Kiz and baby Islay, this pub was almost deserted in the late afternoon. The coffee (see below) is standard Costa stuff, here nicely decorated with a star stencil. The Vic sponge could be described as 'McDonalds-y' because it's very perfect-looking, all neat edges and perfectly-piped buttercream. Perfectly-piped presumably because it was done by a machine. The sponge was more like a bath sponge so I chopped most of that off and ate the middle bit. Naughty! But nice.