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Monthly Archives: November 2013

Super easy banoffee toffee cake..and sort of healthy right?

30 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by Fiona in Food, Recipes

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

banana bread, banana cake, banoffee toffee cake, bbc good food recipes, chocolate and banana, easy recipes, soft sponge cake, toffee cream sauce

Sticky Banana toffee banoffee cake113 (1280x853)Banana cake may not be one of the most exciting cakes but it really is so delcious especially when you can add other exciting flavours to it too. It is also really simple to make and that is another reason why I love it so much. Banana cake always brings back memories of travelling for me too as it is my friend Marie’s favourite cake. I always remember a day in Chang Mai, Thailand, where we did a cooking course. The course was absolutely fantastic and we made three courses plus a dessert all made from local produce from the farm. We had the choice of  could which curry to make therefore not everyone was cooking the same thing and then we could all try each others at the end. For dessert we made an absolutely delicious Mango and sticky coconut rice dish. I have tried this dish in several thai restaurants in the UK and none have ever come close to the freshness of the mango on that day or the sweetness of the rice.

So it had been an extremely indulgent day, we were all ready to explode on our way home or in dire need of a lie down. As we walked passed markets and food places  on our way home, Marie mentioned how full she was and couldn’t it another thing, she suddenly spotted a bakery where she went in and came out with four slices of banana bread. Someohow she managed to eat the whole lot while at the same time saying she was stuffed! It was incredible that she could eat so much and still be so tiny! Then again we could say banana is somewhat healthy, it counts as one of your day doesn’t it?

This banoffee toffee cake is a twist on your traditional banana cake. I found the recipe on BBC Good Food about eight years ago and I have probably made it more than 10 times. It is one of those cakes which every time I have made, I have received positive comments to which I tell people it is so easy to make. All you need is:

Ingredients

  • 200g caster sugar
  • 200g softened butter
  • 4 eggs, beaten
  • 200g self-raising flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 tbsp milk
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 2 mashed, ripe bananas

024 (1280x853) Method:

1) Heat oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5. Butter two 20cm sandwich tins and line with non-stick baking paper.032 (1280x853)2)  In a large bowl, beat all the cake ingredients together including the vanilla extract
039 (1280x853)042 (1280x853) 043 (1280x853) 045 (1280x853) 046 (1280x853)3) Mash your bananas up either in a bowl using a fork or place your bananas in a plastic bag and use a rolling pin to squash the bananas.
035 (1280x853)052 (1280x853) 4) Add the bananas to the mixture and beat until you have a smooth, soft batter.053 (1280x853)054 (1280x853)057 (1280x853) 5) Divide the mixture between the tins and use the back of a spoon to smooth the tops067 (1280x853) 6) Bake for 20 mins until golden and the cake springs back when pressed. Turn onto a cooling rack and leave to cool completely.074 (1280x853) 075 (1280x853)077 (1280x853)For the filling

  • 284ml double cream
  • 4 tbsp Banoffee toffee (Merchant Gourmet Banoffee Toffee, from major supermarkets is ideal) this is what bbc good food recommends but I have never actually bought it instead I used:
  • 4oz Butter
    4oz Soft brown sugar
    2tbsp Golden syrup
    1 Small tin of evaporated milk
  • 1 banana, sliced
  • 1 packet of Cadburys Crunchie Clusters

082 (1280x853)1) Place all the ingredients into a pan on a medium heat.085 (1280x853) 088 (1280x853) 2)  Melt the sugar and bring to a gentle boil stirring occasionally, simmer for 7 mins. 091 (1280x853) 3) Take off heat and leave to cool. When ready it should resemble a toffee colour. 4) Whip the double cream until nice and fluffy. Wait until the toffee sauce is cool and slowly mix in with the cream. Tip: Do not pour this in quickly because it will curdle with the cream and you will be left with an unusable soggy mixture!097 (1280x853) 101 (1280x853) 4) To serve, spread half of the cream over one of the cakes.103 (1280x853) 5) Top with a sliced banana.104 (1280x853) 106 (1280x853) 6) Sandwich together, then cover with more cream then decorate the cake with an elegant drizzle of toffee cream sauce and some chocolate clusters!108 (1280x853)115 (1280x853) 116 (1280x853)

This time I made it for work but as my friend Marie lives close to where I work decided to save some for her and her family too so swung by afterwards. It just so happened to be Marie’s mum’s birthday the same day so rather than swinging round for 30 mins to drop off the cake and say Hi, I ended up spending most of my night there, sharing lots of lovely food, more cake and celebrating a wonderful birthday.

Give it a go and let me know what you think.

117 (1280x853)

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Take a sneak peek into BBC Good Food Show 2013!

21 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by Fiona in Food

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

BBC good food show, churos amigos, edible presents, fiendish and good, jack horner, kensingotn olympia, make your own ice cream, maple smoked olive oil, masterchef, meringue girls, oysters, paul hollywood, supertheatre, tasty treats, tim anderson, two rivers wine, whipped lightning, wine tasting

014 (1024x683)

Lick the spoon- Chocolate Salami

114 (1024x683)226 (1024x683)Last weekend, Kensington Olympia was home to,once again, the BBC Good Food Show. Hundreds of exhibitors worked all hours of the weekend to promote their products and take the opportunity of selling their merchandise with only 5 weeks to go before Christmas. I went to last year’s show and didn’t stop raving about it for weeks after so was super excited to be going again this year. I even coaxed my mum into coming who couldn’t wait to see what exciting food she could sample and new kitchen appliances she could buy!
Press room treats 005 (1024x683) 009 (1024x683)017 (1024x683)One of the first stands I noticed belonged to Meringue Girls. I first came across the Meringue Girls at the Feast festival in Brick Lane this Summer. The stand was so colourful, it straight away drew me in and I ended up buying a jar of meringue kisses as a present. I’m not a lover of meringues but these kisses definitely made me reconsider eating more meringues in the future. 021 (1024x683) 023 (1024x683) 024 (1024x683) I absolutely loved this stand and my mum was lovely enough to purchase one of the incredible patterned rolling pins as well as the foam matt which u need underneath in order to get the best result for your print. The rolling pin, which comes in different sizes and patterns, makes an imprint on the icing sugar, enabling you to have a beautiful designed cake. This can be used for large cakes or cupcakes and once you have printed the design on you can colour it any way you like after.  The cakes they had on show were painted so beautifully and it is so easy to transfer the print onto the icing sugar, you just roll it along slowly whilst firmly pressing down. I most definitely recommend them and make sure to keep checking out the blog as I will soon be demonstrating it. 026 (1024x683) 030 (1024x683) 031 (1024x683) 036 (1024x683) 042 (1024x683) 043 (1024x683) Fiendish & Goode These guys were the friendliest bunch of people . Their lovely little cakes made for the perfect present where you could mix and match the cakes, which included the classic Victoria sponge as well as salted caramel and chocolate. Delicious!Fiendish & Goode Fiendish & Goode-- Dainties 048 (1024x683) The name alone made me stop and want to learn more about what this whipped cream had in it! Whipped Lightning were selling a range of different flavoured alcoholic whipped creams from Hazelnut expresso to Chocolate mint flavour. To sample the whipped cream there was four different bowls containing brownies, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. The staff were unbelievably friendly and extremely passionate about their product. They let us try every flavour and in the end I just couldn’t walk away without buying some. The normal retail price is £15 however they were selling two for £15 at the show so I picked up two and can’t wait to use them. The alcohol content is 16% and you can really taste it!Whipped Lightning 054 (1024x683)Whipped Lightning061 (1024x683) Abel & Cole 066 (1024x683) This stand was at the show last year and they do the best Maple Smoked Olive Oil. We must’ve tried it 6 or 7 times and then when we went back to buy it, it was all sold out! We didn’t make the same mistake this year and bought a bottle of it straight away.Artisan Smokehouse This is the Supertheatre where the delightful Paul Hollywood shared stories of time spent with Mary Berry or Bezza as he likes to call her! He showed us how to make puff pastry and later made ice cream from scratch. It was a great way to sit back and watch him talk and work live and he was also kind enough to let the audience sample his creations. 072 (1024x683) Paul Hollywood Supertheatre The Strawberry Company 083 (1024x683)Little Jack Horner's These lovely pies are recommended to be put in the oven for 15mins to get them nice and crispy!091 (1024x683) 093 (1024x683) 096 (1024x683) KanKun make incredible cheese, it is so soft and this spreadable one was extremely addictive. The white cheese was the original whereas the slightly orange one had a big spicy kick to it. Their mexican Chipotle sauce is also not for the faint hearted!098 (1024x683) 099 (1024x683) 103 (1024x683)117 (1024x683) 119 (1024x683) This stand was amazing and I regret not trying it now! We said we would come back and ended up getting distracted by the wine tasting however we did see him make it. It takes a little time but then he is making what ever flavour you like so that in itself is pretty darn cool!  125 (1024x683) 126 (1024x683) 164 (1024x683)168 (1024x683)169 (1024x683)131 (1024x683) 134 (1024x683) 136 (1024x683) 137 (1024x683) 144 (1024x683)152 156 (1024x683)173 (1024x683) 179 (1024x683) We bought the Mooshie burger due to the incredible truffle mayo and smoky ketchup that came inside it. One of the staff let us sample the dips with tortilla chips and they were amazing! The sauce was a mix of bbq sauce and ketchup together and added an incredible flavour to the burger. I spoke to the exhibitor who informed me that he was working on getting the sauce on the market which I was extremely excited about. 180 (1024x683) 181 (683x1024)Mooshie BurgerBelow are pictures from the Pop up restaurant and Street Food Experience where customers had the opportunity to buy food from some of the top chefs and from the best restaurants in the UK. This included: Roast, Blue Elephant, Mr Todiwala’s Kitchen, James Martin Dessert Kitchen and BBC Good Food Kitchen.Blue Elephant Grilled Lamb ChopJames Martin's Dessert Kitchen

198 (1024x683) 202 (1024x683) 208 (1024x683) 209 (1024x683) 210 (1024x683) I walked backwards and forwards past this stand as I desperately wanted to try the truffle slabs but didn’t know whether to in the case I didn’t like them. There were a lot of fudge bars and Guinness glasses made out of fudge for sale too but I’m not a big lover of fudge. My eyes were drawn to the shape of the truffles and the description of what was inside them, double cream, cadburys milk chocolate, on top of more chocolate- how could I not like them! After passing, without buying, five times, I decided to take the plunge and bought both the kinder bueno and death by chocolate ones. I was so excited and unfortunately I was a tad disappointed with the result. Although the chocolate was creamy I didn’t feel that the flavour was strong enough to either love or dislike, rather it just fell in between. I’m sure I will eat them both at some point, or share them for that matter considering the size, but in this case I felt they looked better than they tasted. 220 (1024x683) 223 (1024x683) 225 (1024x683)227 (1024x683)230 (1024x683) 243 (1024x683) 248 (1024x683) My mum always raves about the incredible oysters she had as a child in Ireland. We took her to The Delauney for lunch last year where she ordered oysters and although enjoyable, they didn’t compare she said. This year at the show they had oysters which my mum most definitely did not walk past. Rather, she went right to the front of the que and ordered three oysters which she pretty much downed, if you can say that about oysters, and seemed pretty happy afterwards. I asked her if they were as good as the ones from Galway, which she replied. “They were good but I don’ t think I’ll ever find ones as good as those.” I must say I’ve only tried oysters once and wasn’t a fan but I would be up to the challenge of searching for better, tastier ones!252 (1024x683) 253 (1024x683) 258 (1024x683)271 (1024x683) Here we sat down and watched the winner of Masterchef, Tim Anderson, give us some tips and insightful knowledge about Japanese cooking. The two dishes he made were Ramen and Ice Cream. We watched him prepare the chicken Ramen  but left before the ice cream as we were running out of time and still had some more stalls to see. As mum was quite interested, we figured she could fill us in so we dashed off and finished off looking around.285 (1024x683) 295 (1024x683)Wild About 304 (1024x683) I loved the colour of this stand and the staff were extremely lovely. I bought the celtic roots chutney as it contained Guinness and tasted delicious. We also tried nettle syrup which was added to fizzy water and elderflour cordial- it was so refreshing and can also be used in cocktails, especially mojitos!305 (1024x683) 309 (1024x683) 311 (1024x683) 314 (1024x683) 316 (1024x683) 317 (1024x683) 318 (1024x683) 320 (1024x683) 322 (1024x683) 323 (1024x683) 330 (1024x683) 338 (1024x683)345 (1024x683)

146 (1024x683)We rounded off the day by going around the wine stalls upstairs and sampling some nice and not so nice wines. They didn’t have the bargain £2 wine tasting this year where you paid £2 for an empty glass and could go round getting quite generous amounts of wine from the different stands and then in the end you deposited your win glass back and had your £2 returned also. Craig and I absolutely loved it. We didn’t have that option this year but we did come across an amazing white wine which was called Two Rivers and was from New Zealand. Before we knew it is was 5.30 and the day was drawing to a close. With our hands full of bags and bellies stuffed to the brim from all the samples, it was time to head home. I thought I wouldn’t be able to fit in dinner but somehow still managed to as well as scoffing some lovely treats from the show, one being an apple and cinnamon cake from the little round Company. The BBC Good Food Show really does make for a fantastic day out and was fantastic in sourcing out ideas for Christmas presents. I would definitely advise anyone who didn’t get a chance to go this year to look into going in 2014 but until then check out all the exhibitors on the website and look at their sites: http://www.bbcgoodfoodshowlondon.com/Content/Exhibit/5/  I’m sure you’ll find some amazing treats to buy, if not for others then definitely treat yourself!

 

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Halloween special at Bea’s of Bloomsbury

10 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by Fiona in Film, Food

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

american diner, Bea's, Bea's of Bloomsbury, chili dogs, deep fried brownies, duffins, film and food, Itsu half price, London Bridge, mac and cheese, Nightmare on elm Street, Pop up cinema, warehouse cinema

Bea's of Bloomsbury

I loved Bea’s of Bloomsbury before I’d even been there. A café that shows films is my idea of a perfect venue so to learn that Bea’s were putting on a Halloween night, I couldn’t wait to see what it was like! Craig and I had already been to a big Halloween event the previous Saturday at Scala which was incredible. There were 4 floors of different entertainment from bands, hair and make up, contortionists as well as a very impressive actress dressed up as Miss Haversham. A corner of a room was decorated to perfection as Miss Haversham’s work desk and she would creepily hover around girls and tell them to break their boyfriends hearts. She was also however giving out some rather delicious home made fruit bread/cake which compensated for her creepiness.
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Scala was great for a night out to celebrate Halloween but as Halloween itself fell on a Thursday this year we wanted to do something fun but chilled and therefore watching a horror film at Bea’s sounded like the perfect recipe. I’d heard about Bea’s of Bloomsbury through a friend and have been meaning to go to one of their events for ages. If you look at their website you can read about all their up and coming exciting events from a thanksgiving feast to a screening of the amazing ‘Stand By Me’ http://www.beasofbloomsbury.com/events/ There are four Bea’s cafes located around London in St. Paul’s, Farringdon, Maltby Street and Bloomsbury. The film screenings are held at Matlby Street and this is where we watched Nightmare on Elm Street. We arrived at 7p.m and the cafe was almost packed to full capacity already but luckily we found two seats near the front. The cafe consists primarily of a big screen, some fold away chairs and behind the screen is a mini canteen where they serve chilli dogs, mac and cheese, deep fried brownies and duffins!

Bea's Mac and CheeseBea's Brownies & DuffinsBea's Chilli Dog

We opted for the chili dog and a beer and if I wasn’t so full I would’ve tried the brownie but I will just have to come back and try that at another screening. The chili dog was huge and the cheese on top tasted like sweet mash potato, it was delicious. The staff were all so warm and friendly and it really was such a fun evening watching Nightmare on Elm Street with 40 other people and realising just how much horror films have changed! I remember trying to watch Nightmare On Elm Street when I was about 15 and turning it off because I didn’t want to be freaked out however watching it ten years later, I couldn’t stop laughing. From the mother’s acting to the special effects and seeing Freddie Kreuger running with his huge gangley arms it was just priceless and it made it even better watching it with others who were laughing along too.Bea's of Bloomsbury

At one rare tense point in the film, the chairs that had been stacked on the side suddenly fell, crashing to the ground, causing quite a lot of people to literally jump out of their seats, but again it just added to the comic factor of the night.

I would definitely recommend Bea’s to others highly. With the film beginning at 7p.m it gives you enough time to get over there after work, grab a delicious bite to eat, watch a film and still have a good couple of hours to enjoy the rest of your evening. We had a lovely stroll along the river after, passing an Itsu where we managed to grab a bargain of a half price salad (this never happens as it closes at ten) and a few people dressed up for Halloween too.

Looking on their website I will definitely be coming back to try the American breakfast and will make another visit fir the afternoon tea. It’s only fair to try out all four locations, wouldn’t you agree?

beas

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Comfort food at its best

06 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by Fiona in Food, Recipes

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

bacon recipes, bbc good food, Chicken and Mushroom pie, comfort food, easy pie recipe, Jane Hornby, puff pastry

Chicken and Mushroom PieChicken and Mushroom Pie

The clocks have gone back, the nights are crawling in and it’s only 48 days until Christmas which means it’s the perfect time of year for some comfort food. And what better comfort food is there than a nice warm pie? Ok well obviously there’s cake but I’ve consumed far too much cake in the past week including delicious pumpkin slices, banana cake and ginger loaf so I was in need of something savoury.

I’ve been really rubbish lately with home cooking and usually just whip up a simple dish for dinner so this Monday I cleared the night, found a pie recipe and decided I would cook dinner for the boys. The pie dish I found which was highly recommended belongs to BBC’s Good Food, Jane Hornby, and it is a chicken and mushroom pie.

For this you will need:

·         1 tbsp vegetable oil

·         8 skinless boneless chicken thighs

·         8 rashers smoked streaky bacon, cut into large pieces

·         1 onion, halved and sliced

·         250g pack baby button mushrooms

·         handful thyme sprigs

·         2 tbsp plain flour

·         400ml chicken stock

·         200ml milk

·         500g pack fresh puff pastry, or frozen and defrosted

·         1 egg, beaten

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About Me

Hi I’m Fiona, a twenty something foodie living in London who loves nothing more than cooking, eating, listening to stories and exploring. I created Tea and Takes as a way of bringing my two loves together: food and film.
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