So, i have attempted to make jaffa cakes in the past and now it was time for jaffa macarons!
I got the idea from Yauatcha in Soho who has the most amazing pastries and macarons - and they do a jaffa mac which inspired me to try and replicate it.
I made the shells in an orange/yellow colour and made some orange jelly and a dark chocolate ganache which i piped onto the jelly discs and sandwiched them together. I also made some candied orange peel for decoration (not worth the hard work by the way) and then i dipped half the macaron in melted 70% dark chocolate and added some orange peel.
The gingerbread macs got a fetching purple colour with some bronze sprinkles on top. The filling was a simple white chocolate ganache with some gingerbread spices.
I first went to Avenue many years ago and now i decided to go back again - with the same friend i went with all those years ago. Avenue recently had a bit of a refurb and it has now launched itself as "Manhattan meets Mayfair".
The bar was buzzing when we got there and we had a warm welcome from the manager.
We decided to share a starter and to our surprise the kitchen actually divided up our salad of beets, buffalo ricotta and pistachio on to 2 plates - nice touch.
Service however was not great. The waitress kept on filling up water every 2 minutes - even though our glasses were full.. she was constantly popping up wanting to remove plates and generally just interrupting.
For main we both had the Stone bass with spicy kale and hazelnut butter. Fish was slightly over cooked and the kale was not very spicy - just a bit stringy.
Dessert - i had the DIY doughnuts with cinnamon sugar and an array of sauces, like bourbon hot chocolate, raspberry and whipped cream. I quite enjoyed this dish! My friend had the hot apple fritters.
When we asked for the bill we had a few additional cocktails on there which were not ours so we had to ask them to remove them.
All in all i would not go back again for dinner - maybe for drinks in the bar which was very buzzy - there are plenty of other places in London with better food and better value.
