I quite like a spot of afternoon tea now and again - i mean, who can resist just out of the oven scones with lots of clotted cream and jam?
The best afternoon teas i have had in London would be the Langham and the Ritz - both with to die for scones :-)
This time i went with 2 girlfriends to the Sanderson hotel for the Mad Hatters tea party
What a popular place - when we arrived if felt like it was a Saturday evening at 10 pm - not a Saturday afternoon at 3:30pm. Lots of (mostly) women dressed up in cocktail dresses sipping champagne.
It was busy but staff were very friendly and organised. I loved the look of the afternoon tea and the lovely touches like the sugar box and tea choices but it was a little bit of style over substance. The sandwiches were not great - just lots of bread and hardly any filling - the best one was the salmon on rye.
Same goes for the mushroom marshmallows and meringue carrots.. looked great but lacking in flavor.
The mini sweet and savoury scones were great and the green tea /white chocolate mousse was also very good. I also loved the "drink me" potion.. :-)
The other good thing was that they happily refilled anything that you wanted more of - and you could also switch to a different tea/coffee if you wanted - nice touch.
We had a great time and the damage was £38 for the afternoon tea per person (or £48 with a glass of champagne or £58 for a glass of rose champagne)
Paris is such an amazing city - i love just walking around exploring and finding amazing little places along the way. Saying that - i also do research to know where to find the best places for chocolates and patisserie too. This time i focused mostly on eclairs since i have done macarons so much.
I had read about 2 places: L'eclair de Genie & L'atelier de l'eclair
We first went to L'atelier de L'eclair which was on a quiet little side street (top tip - great parfumerie a few doors down called "Nose")
They had lots of display cabinets with eclairs in both normal and mini size. I quite liked the idear of a smaller size since you can try more of them. You can also sit down and eat your eclairs over a coffee in comfy sofas.
We shared a salted caramel, Vanilla and 2 pistachio eclairs and they were good but visually they were a little bit disappointing - not as perfect as they are on the website.
HOWEVER - we then went to the L'eclair de Genie in the Marais.. surprise surprise - a loooooong queue outside which luckily only took about 15 min - and YES it was so worth it.. the finish of the eclairs was stunning and the fillings amazing. They win hands down.
We shared a Pistachio/orange, Praline/Noisette and a Vanilla/caramellised pecan.. all amazing.
I really recommend this place to anyone who wants the perfect eclair!
LOVE trying to make great desserts. This time me and my friend decided to get into the dangerous territory of chocolate tempering and transfer sheets.
After cutting up my transfer sheets to fit and nervously tempering the chocolate we went for it and created chocolate cylinders - we placed them in a muffin tray to keep them stable before letting them cool and harden.
We then made a banana & caramel parfait which was piped into the cylinder and then put in the freezer - which was amazing.. i just can't find the recipe anymore! Sigh.. also made a tuile, some mango coulis and some salted peanut brittle - voila - here it is. Not too shabby if i may say so myself!
It has been such a long time again since i have updated this blog so here is just a short update on what i have been doing!
Firstly we had a "cheesecake off" at work - i have a very competetive boss who loves baking :-) He made a NY cheesecake and i made a raspberry cheesecake with shortbread base (both were baked) and yay, i won with a very small margin. Here is my cheesecake:
In Sweden people have a "fika" at least once if not twice a day.. "fika" means coffee break really but with the difference that you can't just have a coffee - there has to be something to eat with it.. one of the most well known/retro cakes associated with a "fika break" is a "Dammsugare" or translated to english it would mean "Hoover" (well, another name is "Punsch roll")- apparently called this due to the resemblance to a hoover and also because you can use up a mix of stale cookies or sponge for the cake. Check it out here on Wiki.
I had a vanilla sponge that i used up for this - for a first attempt i think they turned out ok - tastewise they were amazing.
