Post-workout tea and flapjack

Location: New Bodies Gym, Buxton
Date: 18 July 2010
Details: Post-workout cuppas and flapjack

Notes:

Milky coffee for The Lion, black tea for me, and homemade flapjacks.

Ahhh, little hearts hidden in the saucers.

The Lion makes himself a coffee.

Builders' tea (no cake)

Location: The Carriage Café, Milcote, Stratford-upon-Avon
http://www.carriagescafe.co.uk/

Date: 9 July 2010
Details: Builders' tea, no cake

Notes:

A straightforward cup of builders' tea. No enticing cakes/pastries were available, just a couple of packaged sad-looking muffins. The clientele was mostly taking bacon butties with their cuppas.

The Carriages Café at Milcote, halfway along the Greenway.

Inside The Carriages Café.

Perhaps you can buy one at this establishment...?

A sign especially for someone with my initials...

A nicely designed signpost, hidden in the shadows.

My bike resting at Stannal's Bridge on the return journey.

Tea with chocolate ice-cream pud

Location: Tapa, Leith, Edinburgh
www.tapaedinburgh.co.uk/
Date: 25 June 2010
Details: Tea with 'sticky toffee bomb' pudding

Notes: Dinner out with a rediscovered cousin-something-removed in Edinburgh! Jen had heard good reports about this tapas place (called just 'tapa'; translation: 'cover' - how boring) so we drove out to Leith to give it a try.

The World Cup is inescapable at the moment and particularly so in a Spanish restaurant when Spain are playing, d'oh! Still, it livened up the atmosphere and luckily they won so the crowd of boozy Spaniards was in good spirits.

We had a table-ful of tapas dishes, and didn't really need a pudding but in the name of research for this blog, we managed to share this pud, a 'bomb'. It was similar to those served by dodgy Indian and Chinese restaurants - you know, the ones which hand you a shiny card menu with photos of puddings - usually including one which looks like Pingu. So, it probably just came out of the freezer and onto a plate but it was a fine ending to our meal.

I'll be back in Edinburgh at the end of August so looking forward to exploring more cuppa+cake venues!

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.

Jasmine Green tea and Eton Mess

Location: Benson's Tea-room, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: 27 March 2010
Details: Jasmine Green tea and Eton Mess

Notes: It goes without saying that the tea was perfect - a cup of tea will always be top notch at Benson's. With 80+ varieties of tea, Benson's know their stuff - no basic mistakes like incorrectly cleaned teapots here, no way. Most cafes concentrate on their coffee with tea as an after-thought, just a sorry-looking tea-bag slung into a cup. At Benson's, the tea is designed and prepared by people who care.

It would be a nice adventure-in-tea to taste my way through their tea menu each time I visit, but I like Jasmine Green tea too much to do that. The only blip with Benson's is their newer staff who require proper training about the menu and about tea.

The choice of Eton Mess was down to Polly, an American MA student at the Shakespeare Institute, who had never tried this very English dessert despite living in Stratford for 1.5 years. Americans often cite trifle as a quintessentially English pud and Eton Mess would be in the same family of puddings. Benson's version was very straightforward: cream, merigue and fresh strawberries - simply the basics but simply delicious. Hopefully Polly's now regularly making this pud with her young American cousins.

Green tea and carrot cake

Location: Bard's Tea-room, Antiques Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: 15 March 2010
Details: Green tea and carrot cake


Notes: The proper china cups! The dainty real ceramic teapot! The just-iced homemade carrot cake!
It's cuppa-and-cake perfection.

This tea-room inside the musty and slightly ramshackle Antiques Centre on Ely Street in Stratford is a hidden gem. Usually it's peopled by pensioners on day-trips to Stratford while those with delusion of hip-ness prefer to be seen in Costa, Starbucks and so on. If you've bypassed this place before, give it a try - it was recently taken over by a new manager and team who are keen to impress with a simple menu and honest home-cooking (the kitchen actually looks like a home kitchen, complete with pine cupboards).

On this occasion - in need of a sugar-hit after a tattoo sitting with Az at Deviant (D~viant) upstairs at the Centre - I had a slab of the ginger cake (Delia Smith recipe; open texture but sticky with chunks of stem ginger inside and on top) and was pleased that the café offers green tea. Refills of tea and coffee are free. Fantastic!

This place is brilliant. I insist you there at once. In fact, take my bicycle. Tell Janey that Suzanne sent you.

Tea and petit-fours

Location: McKee's Brasserie, Haig's Hotel, Balsall Common
Date: 5 March 2010
Details: Tea and petit-fours

Notes: See post on 1 April for more about Haig's and McKee's Brasserie.

Afternoon tea with a selection of cakes

Location: Cox's Yard, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: 26 March 2010
Details: Tea and a selection of cakes

Notes: Afternoon tea with my brother John, his lady-companion Sophie and Nick, my gentleman-companion. John was buying on account of having securing a new job. Sophie and I did a recce of the cake counter in the waterside café and gave John a report; he then bought a sample of everything that looked decent and returned with tea and tray laden with cake.

The ginger crumble-cake I'm holding aloft on the photo was very good - heavy, moist and not really a crumble, just a ginger cake with a good thick wadge of frosting.

The raspberry slice was rather minging due to the inclusion of coconut (making it reminiscent of those evil raspberry and coconut square sponge puds we used to have foisted upon us at primary school).

The toffee cheesecake (background of photo) was dense and sweet, not really appropriate for afternoon tea but a good rival to Caffe Nero's excellent cheesecakes.

Good job we were sharing the cakes because each one individually was too big for one person. Although I think John ate most of them on his own anyway...

John is moving to Liverpool soon so Nick and I look forward to sampling some Liverpool cuppas-and-cakes this summer. All suggestions gratefully received.

Tasse de thé et Crepe Chocolat Et Banane

Location: Cafe Rouge, Canterbury
Date: 7 February 2010
Details: Tasse de thé et Crepe Chocolat Et Banane







Notes: Breakfast time. Duska had a proper petit dejeuner francais, but it was pretty much elevenses/brunch for me so I had this crepe with a lake of chocolate and a hint of banana. Not bad.

Beetroot and chocolate brownie and cup of green tea

Location: The Veg Box Cafe, Canterbury
Date: 6 February 2010
Details: Beetroot and chocolate brownie and cup of green tea

Notes: Yes this really is chocolate brownie made with beetroot. Cunningly disguised among the chocolate but it's definitely got bits of purple stuff in it. Very tasty, although perhaps a little worthy for brownie connoisseurs. This place is how The Warehouse Cafe in Birmingham should be - lots of choice, plenty of non-veggies to enjoy and a well-stocked wholefoods shop downstairs.