Dessert Bar - Pudding Heaven

On a recent trip to London my friends and I took a little trip to William Curley's wonderful patissier and chocolate shop near Sloane Square for a little visit to the Dessert Bar.

On a Saturday and Sunday afternoons they host the Dessert Bar - a take on the traditional afternoon tea - not a cake or sandwich in sight - just lots and lots of desserts. Sugar overload it most definitely is.....amazing it most definitely is.....

Sorry the photos aren't that great - the light wasn't that good, but believe me the desserts were amazing.

First up, a white champagne and peach granita - an icy sweet dish that cleansed the palate. Oh and the glass of champagne was an added bonus...

Next came the most delicious chocolate ice cream on a buttery crumble base.

This was followed by a vanilla rice pudding with raspberry compote.

Apple tart tartin with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce was the next mouth-watering course.

The final dessert was the piece-de-la-resistance! Truly a heart stopping (almost literally), a chocolate and orange entremet with orange and vanilla sauce - their take on a jaffa cake....an amazing one at that.

Entremet is french for between courses or simply dessert, marking the end of the serving of courses. In patisserie terms they are a classic French dessert with layers of mousse, cremaux, cake and often a crunch. 

I certainly didn't want to eat anything sweet for at least 24 hours but it was a great experience.

More London

I went to London again....this time for work but we also had a day to have a wander before heading home. We wanted to go to BeanoTown. 

Dundee, my home town, was in the past known for the 3 J's - Jute, Jam and Journalism. 

• Jute - once the largest employer in the city, the manufacture of cloth and sacking from fibres grown in the Indian sub-continent. At the height of the city's industrialisation in the 19th century there were over 100 jute mills in the city employing well over 50,000 people, many of them women and children.
• Jam - Dundee was the home of marmalade, a jam made from Seville oranges by the Keiller Family. Keiller's Marmalade, mass produced and distributed around the world.
• Journalism - the only remaining J in Dundee, the home of DC Thomsons, founded in 1905 and still in family ownership. Besides publishing the city's daily newspaper, The Dundee Courier, the company is famous for its comics - the Dandy and The Beano. The Beano is the longest running weekly comic in the world, celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. The comics introduced the world to famous characters such as Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Desperate Dan and The Bash Street Kids 

As part of the comic's 75th anniversary celebrations, the Southbank Neighbourhood Festival in London has developed BeanoTown, paying homage to the comics of DC Thomson and the pranks and mischeviousness of it's main characters. We stopped by for a little bit of fun.....

The Beano Brand

Bash Street - Home of the Bash Street Kids

Me in my Dennis the Menace Outfit

 The Fan Club Badges that I had in the 1970a - I still have my Gnasher (Dennis' dog) badge somewhere.

We also wandered along the SouthBank where we saw the new urban allotments, another element of the Southbank Festival, where local people are growing a range of vegetables and fruits.

The Millennium Bridge and St Paul's Cathedral

We also managed early morning runs along the Thames, passing the Globe Theatre, Tate Modern, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London and over Tower Bridge - inspirational places to run.

London

The weekend after Oslo I was off to London to visit friends and celebrate my friend Karen's 40th birthday. It included a long planned trip to Heston Blumenthal's Restaurant, Dinner, in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, but more of that later.

My first day, after a lazy breakfast I headed into Islington to visit Loop. Can't go to London without visiting a knitting shop and this was my first visit to Loop. I would highly recommend it. In a new shop on Camden Passage, based over 2 floors, they have an amazing selection of yarns - Blue Sky Alpacas, Madeline Tosh, Shilasdair, Brown Sheep, Brooklyn Tweed, Isager, Habu, Quince & Co, Malabrigo, Rowan & Debbie Bliss etc. I, of course, had to have at least one embarrassing incident on any trip and this time it happened in Loop. I sat down on a chair to look at some of the knitting books and a leg fell off the chair and I fell on the floor.....oh well. 

But I would still recommend a visit to Loop, mishaps excepted. Yes they have lots of expensive yarn, but they also have lots of reasonably priced yarn and it is laid out beautifully and there are plenty of places to take a seat and be inspired. Camden Passage also has a lot of lovely little cafes you could visit, such as the lovely looking Issy's Milky Way.

That evening we headed to South Kensington and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel to eat at Dinner. It was a great dining experience, amazing food and great service in a lovely setting. We had cocktails in the bar before dinner and then headed to our table with a view over Hyde Park. I loved the light fittings which looked like old fashioned jelly molds. Karen's brother had bought a bottle of Prosecco for us all to share, which was lovely. For dinner I ate foie gras & liver pate that was made to look like a mandarin orange, an amazing steak withe mushroom ketchup and triple cooked chips and brown bread ice cream for dessert. Sorry - no photos, but take it from me, it looked as amazing as it tasted.

Saturday we wandered to the east end of London, to Shoreditch and Spitalfields, now trendy areas of the city with lots of bars and restaurants - and lots of vibrant street art.

Spitalfields is an old industrial part of the city, with particular association to the textiles sector, where Irish and Huguenot silk weavers settled in the 17th century. The 17th and 18th century saw the construction of a range of town houses where the master weavers lived, for example along Fournier Street. We had just missed the Huguenots of Spitalfield's Festival with lots of walks, talks and workshops. 

The houses in these streets and being returned to the original splendour, with traditional style street lamps, beautiful wooden windows, traditional wooden shutters and doorknobs. The houses form one of the most important collections of Georgian town houses in the UK. It is lovely to see them renovated.

Renovated homes.

Of course it hasn't all been renovated yet.

After our wander we headed to the English Restaurant, just opposite Spitalfields Market for afternoon tea, another birthday celebration and then onto the Commercial Tavern for drinks. 

And now time for some other random shots from London:

St Pancras Hotel

Kew Gardens

When I was in London in early June I took a trip (en route to my friends house for the night) to The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. It is somewhere that I have wanted to go for a very long time and I was not disappointed. The Gardens were founded in 1759 and became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2003. 

The Victorian greenhouses were amazing - the temperate house, the tropical house and my all time favourite the water-lily house. I climbed the spiral staircases to the roof terrace in the temperate and tropical houses and walked in the footsteps of many many people since the Victorian era.....

The giant tree ferns from the Victorian walkway.

The world's oldest pot plant (above) also resides in a glasshouse in Kew. It was collected by Kew Garden's first plant collector, Francis Masson, in South Africa in 1773 and after enduring a long sea voyage it arrived at Kew Gardens in 1775. It is a cycad, called Enchepalartos altensteinii and apparently in the wild (although rare now) cycads can live for 2500 years!

The water lily house was just stunning! I wish I could have taken a panoramic photo of it.

Lotus Flower

I climbed to the top of the Xstrata walkway, high up in the tree tops. I did wait till after all the school children had gone home and I climbed the 90ft into the sky and wandered along the walkway, wondering for a while why I was up there, when I don't like heights.

 Rhododendron Valley

 The development of pine trees.

Peacock feathers

Mr Peacock himself!

Cactus House

All in all a glorious day with plenty to keep all amused - places for family picnics, beautiful flowers, glasshouses, squirrels and birds.......

Heatherwick at the V&A

June was a great month (despite the weather doing its best to spoil it all). What with a trip to London to see the Queen (and I did - ok from the rooftops - but still it was the Queen) and a front row seat when the Dalai Lama came to speak in Dundee, it was a fun and interesting month.

Whilst in London, apart from seeing the Queen I also visited Kew Gardens and the V&A.

At the V&A I went to see the British Design 1948 to 2012 and the Thomas Heatherwick exhibitions. I loved elements of the British Design exhibition and the Heatherwick was just amazing. 

Perhaps before Friday night's Olympic Opening Ceremony, many people might not have heard of Thomas Heatherwick outside the design world, but after his glorious Olympic cauldron rose up in the Olympic Stadium on Friday night many more will recognise his name.  Here's another article from the Design Council about the cauldron with some beautiful photos. 

Many of the reviews of the Heatherwick exhibit suggest that the space is too small and cluttered to do justice to his work, but I liked the busy and dynamic approach which you felt might be much like being inside his mind as he worked. 

His designs include the British Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010, which was called the Seed Cathedral, exhibiting seeds from the seed bank at Kew Gardens in long glass tubes that also created the walls of the building. He has also designed the new double decker London Routemaster bus including all the interiors and the East Beach Cafe at Littlehampton. From the large scale to the small, I bought his book, 600 pages, called Making, which provides commentary and beautiful photographs of every project his studio has designed and I must admit that I thought his Christmas cards were truly amazing.

Here's an interesting article about the man behind the Olympic cauldron. 

London - Diamond Jubilee Weekend

I am just back from a long weekend in London. 

It was planned last September when my friend Karen managed to make a booking to stay a night in A Room for London - a project created as part of the Cultural Olympiad by Living Architecture and Art Angel - a small, exclusive architect designed space, perched high on the roof of the SouthBank Centre overlooking the Thames. Inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness the building was shaped like and named after the small river boat that sailed up the Congo in his book, the Roi de Belges. 

It would have been an amazing enough night but Karen had, unbeknown to us at the time, managed to book the one day/night when the Thames was going to be more than just its usual self. The day when the Queen's Diamond Jubilee pageant was going to sail down the river, 1000 boats to celebrate 60 years on the throne. A sight not seen for over 350 years. 

Whilst the weather was typically British i.e. cold and rainy......just mention the word barbecue and within 30 minutes the weather is bound to have changed.....it was still an amazing view! Can you see Big Ben and the London Eye in the background. Looking the other way was the National Theatre and St Paul's Cathedral and of course in front of us for over 2 hours were boats of every shape and size!

The Gloriana - made especially for the occasion powered by a team of rowers which included Sir Stephen Redgrave (British Olympian who won gold medals at 5 consecutive Olympic Games in rowing) and Sir Matthew Pinsent (another British Olympian who won goldmedals for rowing in 4 consecutive Olypmics) and Afghan/Iraqi war veterans. 

Some of the hundred or sow rowing boats, canoes, dragon boats and gondolas that made up the pageant.

Boats manned by Sea Cadets - 55 of them!

Some of the 700 "little ships" that took part in the evacuation of British soldiers from the beaches at Dunkirk in 1940. 

RNLI lifeboats from across the years.

The Queen's boat!

More to follow.

Hampton Court Palace

Whilst in London we went to visit Hampton Court Palace - originally built for Cardinal Wolsey who was a favourite of Henry VIII from 1514 and then in 1529, Henry VIII himself moved in. Then Sir Christopher Wren (architect of St Paul's Cathedral),  the most famous architect of the time, designed a wing for William III and his wife Mary in the 17th century, with much of the original Tudor palace being destroyed. Amazing to be surrounded by so much history, wandering the King's chambers....the kitchens....the gardens.

It was a gloriously mild summer's day - lunch outside in the sunshine in February - almost unheard of!!

We also took a wander through the maze.....planted sometime between 1689 and 1695....of course the hedges have been replaced, in the original layout, many times since!