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!
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.  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.  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! 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! 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. 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.  These lovely pies are recommended to be put in the oven for 15mins to get them nice and crispy! 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! 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!   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.  Below 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.

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.  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! 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. 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!

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!