Afternoon tea at the Carnaby

Afternoon tea on short notice. One of my new favourite websites http://www.afternoontea.co.uk/ featured this one, and we went as it was convenient. First off, it's a Hilton. Therefore do not expect much. We were one of two tables that afternoon, and it took 45 minutes to serve us. The tea comes from Twinings in bags, the sugar is granulated without their own serving spoons (I hate using wet spoons). But to the review: It was £14. What do you expect?

You are served one of these little stacks each. The scones are warm and plain (joy for my sister, the non-raisin eater). However - you get ONE pot of jam each. Strawberry. I'm a purist. I expect a selection somewhere. There's clotted cream in the little black scoop, which did not match the tea set at all. Those little brown cones were either frozen mousse or very stable chocolate ice cream - nice, but when there is only one choice of cake on the stack - apple and walnut, you feel a little robbed of afternoon tea joy.

The sandwiches were cucumber and cream cheese, smoked salmon and cream cheese. Crust free, but slightly dry from being left uncovered briefly without damp teatowel or equivalent.

All in all, wouldn't go again - but it was pretty decent in terms of you could stay there all day and just have tea refills and I'd doubt they'd care...

Comments

Rachel Allen's Chicken Pie

Some things should be noted. I'm not a major fan of Rachel Allen. She always seemed such a poor man's version of Nigella. Some trophy wife of a producer somewhere making a lady of leisure's living of cookery shows playing up the Irish accent in a cavernous show kitchen. Perhaps it was because all her helpful "tricks" had already been touted by others a long time ago - like getting the garlic smell out of your hands... But over the years she's kind of grown on me. The format is a little twee, the pink accessories want to make me barf, but she isn't the spawn of all things faux goddess anymore. (FYI I have no idea with regards to her personal life etc, but like my distaste for Ashley Judd, one wonders how she gets good films with little acting skill.) So here I was, tapping away on the internet last week whilst she was on tv, and there it was. A beast of a pie. It was so beautiful. Her job was done. Out I trotted to buy a huge pie dish (we don't own cera...

Raspberry Cream Cheese Buns

What with my new cupcake books arriving from Amazon, one look at the Raspberry Cream Cheese buns on someone elses's site (made with blackcurrant there) and I had to make them. Knowing full well my family wouldn't touch them. Four of these babies were therefore made with big dollops of lemon curd instead, which made delightfully caramelly messes of the tin, but also on the buns, not that I get to touch those - I have eight buns to eat! The original recipe is from Buttercup Bakery book (New York) and one of these days I'll try the dried cherry one from Magnolias (since I own the book...) What you need to know about these is that the recipe is easy - as easy as muffins are, but they sink like heck given the amount of preserves you're putting in them. What they give back though, is something so moist and rich you just want to sink yourself into them. And since I've eaten two of them, I'm doing quite well! As you can see, massive craters. If you don't want that...

Low carb diet plan

It's January. I've allowed my weight to grow UP with the Covid curve and somehow it still has not come down. Thanks to a large part to me using up a number of hot chocolate bomb "fails" just before Christmas I think. Wall of text alert - I don't plan on ever writing about this ever again. To be clear, I've never been a fan of carb-cutting. Cutting an entire food group seems wrong. Carbs, as we were taught at school, are cornerstones for growth. I felt like decking a "doctor" at an annual work health check when he told me to cut carbs as a way to get my weight down. The fact he then pushed a blog which was at its infancy at the time felt like a distinct conflict of interest. Anyway, I do absolutely agree I need to cut sugar, and I will never disagree that whole grains are better for you. It is also very, very effective dieting wise on me. We don't know why, I do know I have a lot of water weight which fluctuates a lot in the month and also it does...

Obsession

Search This Blog