Prêt-à-Portea: Tea at The Berkeley

Right so, as I said, I went to the Berkeley Hotel in London, for afternoon tea a couple of weeks ago, which of course was amazing! Although before I went, I did have reservations about spending over £40 on afternoon tea, I can honestly say this was worth every penny, it was that good.

Before the main stand itself came out, we were presented with these little plates of sandwiches. I can't remember exactly what they were, but I remember being really impressed with the bread, as I think each was flavoured with something different, although, let's be honest, I was just trying to eat them as fast as possible to get to the main event!

 

On the bottom tier of the stand, there were some savoury tasters and my favourite were these shot glasses of gazpacho, which were actually pretty spicy, but I also enjoyed the salmon, and the feta cheese and wasabi with crispy pitta bread.

 

 

But obviously the best bit was the cakes. I have literally never seen anything like them, and the they tasted just as good as they looked. It was also nice that once a tier was finished, the waitress would come over and ask if we wanted any more and of course we said yes! At the hotel itself we must have got through over a stand worth of cakes each...

 

 ...and then when we were finished for good we were asked if we would like some cakes to take away, and we were given these cute little boxes.

 

Finally, as we went for afternoon tea, it only seems appropriate to mention the tea itself, I loved the Pear Caramel flavour I had first, as it was just sweet enough but wasn't so flavoursome that it overpowered the cakes. I then moved on to the Vanilla a bit later, and I have to say was a bit dissapointed, it just didn't really taste special. Luckily, my sister was happy to finish it off, and I had her Funky Fruits, which was probably the best fruit tea I've ever had. The ones I've tried before didn't have a very strong taste, but this was just right.

If it wasn't obvious enough I would definitely recommend this. It's definitely not something that you're likely to make a habit of, but for once in a while or even for a one off it's a nice treat - I'm already eyeing up the special afternoon tea they're doing for the Jubilee!

Homemade Pizza

Pizza is probably the meal I eat the most. Not actually through choice, but because it's my boyfriends favourite, and we have 'Pizza Friday', every week without fail we make our own. Here I'm going to give you some advice on what I find works best when making homemade pizza, but the great thing is that it can all be customised to suit your taste.

For the pizza dough, I've tried out quite a few recipes but I've found the best one to be this by Jamie Oliver. Every two weeks I make up half of this recipe, use it to make two pizzas that same day, and then freeze the rest in portions for two pizzas the next week. I roll the dough out as thin as possible, with a rolling pin on a floured surface, and then I transfer the dough onto baking paper to finish with sauce and toppings. As you can see from the picture below, I don't really worry about getting a rounded shape...hey, it's rustic!

When it comes to sauce, I've tried making my own using chopped tomatoes with oregano, basil and garlic, and while it tasted good, it made the base quite soggy. The same happens with passata, so normally I just use tomato puree on it's own, which is good for me as I like the intense flavour it adds to the pizza.

Toppings are a personal thing, but my favourites would have to be pepperoni, olives, prosciutto and onion, but you can add anything you want. Normally I like to experiment with recipes, but in my opinion pizza is one of those things you want to keep simple. At the end of the day, it's comfort food, and I want to use things I know I'm going to like. When baking the pizza, make sure to preheat your oven to the highest setting possible, and this way it should only take around 5 minutes to cook, but be sure to check regularly.

Off To London

Yep, I'm off to London this weekend so I won't be blogging until next Tuesday probably. Whilst the main reason for visiting is to go to the Harry Potter Studio Tour (!), I'm also hoping to eat some good food while I'm in the capital. I'm going with my sister, and on the Friday we're already booked in to have afternoon tea at The Berkeley Hotel...I'm so excited, it's something I've always wanted to do. Apart from that, though, our food plans are pretty up in the air...I'm thinking maybe Wahaca? MeatLiquor seems to get really good reviews? I really have no idea to be honest, but it has to be somewhere affordable, and not too out of the way, any good ideas?

Scones

Last weekend the weather in the UK was SO NICE! Apparently it was hotter here then in some places in the Med, and for me sunny weather means one thing: scones. There is nothing better to me then sitting outside in the warm, with a cup of tea in one hand and a scone with cream and jam in the other, and I don't get to eat them very often so it always feels like a real treat. The recipe I used is just for a batch of plain scones, though some dried fruit such as raisins and sultanas could be added if wanted.

With these there's always the controversy over what order the toppings should go in: should the jam go on first or the cream? Apparently in Cornwall (where I was born) it's jam first then cream, but in Devon (where I live) it's cream then jam. To me it doesn't really matter, it tastes the same either way, and actually with these I used cream instead of butter as that's what I had to hand, it was still delicious. They only use ingredients that most people have in their stock cupboard so it works out really cheap (I got 8 scones out of the recipe), and when lots of cafes near me are charging £5+ for a cream tea, it's pretty handy to be able to whip a batch of these up at a moments notice. I'm actually about to make ANOTHER batch of these for tomorrow, as part of a homemade afternoon tea, hopefully they'll turn out just as well again!

Recipe can be found here