The Food Sauce celebrated its third birthday with a Blogger’s Bake off last Sunday held at Mercato Metropolitano, a 45,000 square foot market space offering a mixture of Italian and London based artisan producers.

I hadn’t heard of Mercato Metropolitano therefore looked it up before going and discovered that they held a ‘disco soup’ a few weeks ago where hundreds of volunteers gathered to prepare soup and dance as part of global movement to inspire action against food waste. Well, they already had my vote. The space is beautiful too. Close to Borough station, Mercato Metropiolitano is located just a 7 minute walk away and is a beautiful space with outdoor seating, fairy lights, amazing mini campervan looking bars and so much fresh, locally sourced delicious food!

The Blogger’s event started at 4pm and I arrived to see fellow bloggers, some I’d already met before at other Food Sauce events and quite a few new faces too. Today we were baking from a choice of ginger biscuits, flapjacks or pancakes, using the mixtures from Sweetpea Pantry.

We were shown a demonstration of pancakes, which looked pretty simple and then set to work. It was fun to have everyone making different options and also great because it meant we’d be able to try a bit of everything.

We chose the pancakes which were very simple to make. We just needed to add an egg and some milk, heat some butter up on the pan and once the mixture was blended together, away we went. The mixture made four very thick pancakes which with Jim Jams hazelnut spread on were lovely and very filling.

Alongside our pancakes we got to try a new white chocolate biscuit bar called ConneXus. It’s basically a big bar of white chocolate with what looks like rich tea biscuit stuck to the back. Simple yet extremely effective. The bar was so moreish, I literally had three squares and then suddenly I’d eaten the whole bar. To add another layer of sweetness we were given Mr Sherick’s Shakes to sample. I made the mistake of sampling these at the last Food Sauce event and then taking 4 bottles home and drinking them all in a day. They are so delicious that although super filling you can’t just have a sip and put it back in the fridge, they’re too good, therefore you end up having the whole thing. The flavours we tried were Choco Latte and Pot au Choc with Belgian Chocolate Chips which are both delicious but as a chocoholic I think the Belgian chocolate wins slightly for me on flavour. They also have Cookies and Cream (probably my favourite), Strawberry Pavlova, Softly Banoffee and a A Hint of Mint. Tempted yet?

For refreshment Tg Green Tea were back with their different flavours of ginger and lemon zest and jujube and osmathus hot tea and we were also introduced toRiddles Tequilla Iced Tea. I loved this as I love tequila but wouldn’t be able to drink too much of it. Therefore a tequila iced tea at just 5.5% is a perfect combination to give you that flavour but water it down with the fresh taste of ice tea. I loved how they were described on the day, ‘you know how you go out, buy a 6 pack and wake up feeling hung-over the next day, well with these, you buy a 6 pack and wake up with a six pack!’

Last but not least Ten Acre were back with their healthy and unique flavoured popcorn. I’ve tried so many different flavours of popcorn but sweet n salty is still my favourite although lime and sea salt might come in as a close second. To finish off we tried Vanilla Beer flavoured ice cream from LittlePod. I love littlepod’s products, I have been using their vanilla paste in literally anything I bake lately and it makes such a difference therefore I was excited to see what product we would be sampling at the event.

Beer lovers you will love this, it literally tastes like beer but with cream. Ok that sounds pretty gross but somehow it really works! If you love an ice cream float you will love this. Funnily I don’t but still found myself eating half the tub.

All in all I had a great time again celebrating The Food Sauce’s 3rd birthday. The Food Sauce is a fantastic online platform connecting food brands and bloggers and I always love the events because they offer a chance to discover a new place, meet new people, get hands on with cooking/baking food and the best part, discovering new products and trying to think up recipes to use with them.

Next up, The Food Sauce’s Christmas party; I can’t wait to see what’s in store.