Bourbon Biscuit & Lemon Cheesecake

The Bourbon biscuit is a curious thing: visually it is a manly looking biscuit, sturdy even. Brown, uniform and embossed. To taste, it is overly sweet and yet slightly salty (as all biscuits should be in my eyes); the chocolate cream in the center couldn’t be any further removed from chocolate if it were to be made of wax (it could possibly made of wax, for all I know) and yet it is moronically moreish. In fact, the first thing I do with a Bourbon is to remove one of the two biscuit bricks and lick off the so-called ‘chocolate’ cement centre. Mm.

The un-birthday birthday cake. – The Gentleman’s Cake: Coffee & Walnut

What happens when the birthday boy can’t eat his cake? Easy. I eat it and it becomes my birthday cake. Only, it isn’t my birthday, so it’s my un-birthday birthday cake – hence the title of this post. 

Sweet Tooth Cupcakery & Milk Bar

 

Cupcakes. They’re American. I’m always dubious when a British independent business swathes itself in an American cloak. America is America, big and balshy, their service is overzealous and their portions are large. We Brits tend be reserved and languid, we’re about quaint tea rooms and polite, unobtrusive service and that is why I like it here. Of course I’m making sweeping generalisations, but Sweet Tooth Cupcakery and Milk Bar haven’t forgotten that they’re British doing American, thank goodness, and they seem to have the balance just right. 

Raspberry & White Chocolate Muffins

Gorgeously sweet muffins, oozing with plump juicy raspberries and hunks of creamy white chocolate.

We chose this recipe especially as we had an abundance of raspberries whilst on the Isle of Skye, you could substitute the raspberries for other soft berries: blueberries, or blackberries, for instance – whatever you have.

We served our Muffins with more fresh raspberries, but they’d be as scrumptious with cream, or ice-cream, or even on their own, warm from the oven.

Fancy a brew?

North Tea Power in the Northern Quarter, Manchester

North Tea Power (@northteapower) is situated  on Tib Street, in Manchester’s Northern Quarter.  It also happens to be two doors down from my hairdressers. Having had my hair done yesterday, I needed a brew and North Tea Power was my first port of call.

My Top 5 – Teapigs Tea

I did it. I tasted every tea by teapigs in my cupboard. All 19 teas!

If you have been following ‘Operation Tea-rrific’ you’ll know by now that the aim of the project wasn’t just to drink lots of tea, but to choose the top 5 teas that teapigs have to offer (in my humble opinion). I rated seven out of nineteen teas 5/5, making this final decision trickier than I had first imagined. The first four were easy, clear winners in my mind, but choosing between the three teas remaining was so difficult, I had to try them both again – oh the anguish!

Operation Tea-riffic Day 7

I’d originally calculated eight days of tea tasting, but it seems that I have come to the last of my teas today (and yes, I’m rubbish at maths). Here we are then, my very last tea from the cupboard, the lowdown on teapigs’ silver tips white tea:

Operation Tea-rrific Day 6

As you might have guessed I didn’t write my usual post first thing this morning, I was busy putting together a healthy, stuff we don’t usually eat, menu for the coming fortnight and it took forever! So I’m tea drinking this evening instead. It’s OK though, because I’m drinking Rooibos teas and they’re naturally caffeine free, phew.

Operation Tea-rrific Day 5

Chilis - Delhi, India

The three teas up for tasting this morning are: teapigs’ chai tea, organic dragon well green tea (can’t seem to find on website) and chilli chai.

Operation Tea-riffic Day 4

I have decided to taste three ‘black’ teas today, all by teapigs again, we have: chocolate flake tea, tung ting oolong and darjeeling earl grey.

I started off with:

Chocolate Flake tea

Chocolate Flake Tea

I have a couple of chocolate teas in my cupboard and this is the only one I haven’t tried to date.  I’m intrigued to see how the real chocolate flakes will taste with the tea – I tend to steer clear of the choccy biscuits with tea, preferring instead to stick to malted milk or original hobnobs – because I don’t like the way the chocolate does that strange half-melting thing at the bottom of the cup.