Homemade Jaffa cakes!

I watched the Sorted guys on You Tube making delicious cakes and decided to give their Jaffa cake recipe a try.. Who doesn't love Jaffa cakes??

The recipe and ingredients themselves are super easy.. the chocolate drizzle was rather hard to do neatly though.

I followed the recipe from Sorted - the only thing i did differently was that i added the orange zest to the jelly instead of the sponge and i added a spoonful of marmelade too for some tartness :-)

Recipe can be found here: http://sortedfood.com/#!/jaffacakes/

My cake mix made 16 cakes/bases... i would probably make them thinner next time so i would get around 20 in total.

I cut the jelly out with a shot glass since my cutters were too big.

 The Chocolate topping was the hardest.. they look a bit uneven but they taste good!!

Duck and Waffle - 11th of August 2013

My hubby plays golf most Sunday mornings and following golf yesterday he came back and announced that he has a great idea for Brunch - let's go to the Duck and Waffle!
Fab idea i thought and off we went. The Duck and Waffle is on the 40th floor in the Heron Tower http://duckandwaffle.com/
Not for the faint hearted if you are not keen on heights! We had not made a reservation and that was a mistake.. popular spot for Londoners and tourists alike! The lift is all glass on the outside of the building and it is very fast.. my ears popped on the ride up!

We went up to the bar and was put on a waitlist for a table.. very happy we did that since we then had the most amazing drink (i had 2 of them actually :-)) It was called "Rhubarb" and is made of DWΣ rhubarb liqueur, DWΣ rhubarb cordial, sparkling wine... AMAZING.. i now need to recreate this at home going forward.

We enjoyed the view and our cocktails and voila, 30 min later we had a table.

Since it was Sunday there was a brunch menu available and there were plenty of nice dishes to choose from. We ended up with the "Duck egg en cocotte" with wild mushrooms / gruyère / truffle / soldiers. This was really lovely (doesn't look great on the photo but the TASTE!)

We also had the "Colombian eggs" scrambled eggs on toast with avocado and chorizo. This was also very tasty.

We both then had waffles following the eggs, i had mine with fresh berries and cream and hubby had his with banana and cream. We were too focused on eating so forgot to take a photo. They also had a very nice dessert menu but we were in full on brunch mode so it had to be waffles.

I really enjoyed this place and will definately go back again.. there is also the famous "Sushi Samba" restaurant on the 38th floor which is next on our list of places to go to. I will however make sure that we have made a reservation next time to avoid disappointment.

I will leave you with a photo of the view!

Tom's Kitchen in Canary Wharf - 10th of August 2013

I quite like Mr Aiken's food and i was looking forward to try his "brasserie style" restaurant called Tom's Kitchen. http://www.tomskitchen.co.uk/canary-wharf
Sadly, we came away slightly disappointed and £250 lighter (dinner for 4). Yes, it is a brasserie - not fine dining but the portions were very inconsistent, food arrived too quickly and was not hot etc. Strange since there were only a handful of people in the restaurant.

I started with the "Piquillo Pepper Tartine - sourdough, goat's cheese and onion relish" which was a piece of sourdough with lots (and i mean lots) of caramellised red onion relish. I do love onions don't get me wrong but i had to really look for the peppers and the goat's cheese which were hidden amongst the leaves on top. It tasted perfectly fine but in the end of the day it was mostly bread and onions.

I then had one of the specials. "Pollock with ravioli filled with prawns, courgette puree and a lemon and butter sauce" The fish was unfortunately overcooked and the ravioli were a bit flavour less and the butter sauce was coagulated.

I did not have dessert by my friend had a lovely creme brulee with passionfruit. I tried it and it was tart and creamy at the same time - and a rather large portion. Our husbands both had Eton mess which came in rather small glasses.

I really wanted to like this restaurant but sadly i won't be rushing back in a hurry. The menu had a good mix of comfort food (burgers/shepherd's pie) and some more modern dishes so it would appeal to most. For me it was too expensive for the execution of the dishes.

Ispahan Macaron's - 4th of August 2013

My favorite macaron flavours are salted caramel and pistachio but it is fun to try new combinations now and again. One of the most talked about macarons are the Ispahan by Pierre Herme.. a delicate combination of Lychee, rose & raspberry. I decided to give it a try, following an adaptation of Pierre Herme's recipe.

I have included the adapted recipe below. I always use the same recipe for the macaron shells, from Adriano Zumba which work well for me. The recipe is already on my blog so below you will see the filling recipe only.

Ispahan Macaron

makes filling for about 30 macarons

For the raspberry jelly:
200gr raspberries
20gr caster sugar
1,5 leaf of gelatine


For the lychee and rose ganache:
200g white chocolate
200g lychees (preserved in syrup)
30g double cream
2g rose essence

To finish:
Silver dust

Start by preparing the raspberry jelly. Soak the gelatine leaves for 15 minutes in cold water to soften.

Using a hand blender, blend the raspberries and sugar to a purée. Strain the purée to remove the pips. Heat a quarter of the purée to 45°C. Drain and dry the gelatine and add to the hot purée. Stir and add the rest of the raspberry purée.

Pour it into a gratin dish lined with clingfilm up to a depth of 4mm. Allow to cool for 1 hour at room temperature then put the dish in the freezer for 2 hours. Turn out the jelly and cut it into 1.5cm squares. Return the jelly squares to the freezer.

For the lychee and rose ganache. Drain the lychees well (squeeze out as much of the liquid as you can). Blend then strain them to obtain a fine purée. You will need 100g purée. Chop up the chocolate and melt it in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water.
Pour the ganache into a gratin dish and press clingfilm over the surface of the ganache. Set aside in the fridge for the ganache to thicken.

Spoon the ganache into a piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle. Pipe a mound of ganache on to half the shells. Lightly press a square of frozen jelly into the center and finish with a dot of ganache. Top with the remaining shells. Use a brush to lightly swipe the top shell with some silver dust. Cover and chill for 24 hours.