Scrumptious jewellery

Let the world know about your passion for tea and cake!

Mama San in Brighton is very special boutique. They sell adorable women's clothing, including some very scrumptious jewellery.

Berts

The days are getting shorter and the weather's getting colder which means Christmas is just around the corner!

I thought I'd make cookies as gifts for my friends this year to add a nice personal touch.

After a long search in Brighton for cookie cutters and plenty of misunderstandings from confused shop keepers who don't know what they are (one man in the 99p Store took me to the Pet Food aisle when I asked if they sold any)I found some in Bert's Homestore.

Bert's is all part of the current fascination with all things retro and homely. They are also the only place in Brighton I can find that sells cookie cutters, and they've whipped out their festive shapes just in time for the holiday season.

I bought a Christmas tree, an icicle, a snowman and a generic gingerbread man shape as these seemed the most clear in shape and the easiest to decorate. I plan on keeping decoration reasonable simple and elegant, i.e. the opposite to my Fireworks cupcakes.

Other than selling cute cookie cutters, Bert's also sells a wide range of housewares from cooking supplies to rustic decor and some wonderful storage baskets I had to buy made from Chinese newspapers.

This Saturday I will be baking some test run cookies and will post the recipe and some dos and don't that I'm sure will arise too.

Fullertons Brighton

Brighton stationers Fullertons puts the soul back into occasions that buying a Hallmark card from Clintons can take away. They sell a wide range of cards for all tastes as well as decorations, balloons and those kinds of necessities.

But what we're interested in are their cake tins for hire.

It was my boyfriend's milestone 18th birthday, so I decided to bake him a cake. I went to college around the corner from Fullertons and remembered their cake tin hire service.

You can order tins in the shape of numbers from 0-9, which was perfect for me.

There's a £10 deposit for hire and a £2.50 charge for each tin, so even if you somehow destroy the tins, it's still cheaper than ordering a cake from a bakery. (I know this from working at one). Plus it's so much fun to do!

The tins come with a recipe for sponge cake or chocolate sponge cake (which involves adding cocoa powder to the sponge cake recipe).

This is the first cake I've ever baked for anyone else and I had a limited budget so it's far from perfect.

However, it tasted wonderful! I added some white hot chocolate powder from Whittards for my own twist.

One thing that was annoying was their the fact that the bottoms weren't flat.

They look like this, but as they've been used before they were slightly bent and didn't sit flat on the baking tray.

This resulted in half of the cake mix escaping...

One advantage of this was being able to try the cake by eating the parts that had seeped out, but this is outweighed by having half as much cake.

Nevertheless, it's still great value and no one else knows about this little catastrophe unless you tell them!
















There were red smarties on the metal balls in the 8 holes, but they were eaten before I could take a photo!

Find Fullertons at: 151 Dyke Road, Brighton BN1 3JE / 01273 325508

NEXT TIME: FIREWORKS CUPCAKES

Parklife Cafe

I found this gem by chance whilst on work experience at the Worthing Herald last week. Since then I have not stopped talking about it!

I was walking down Montague street and saw a vintage bicycle tied to a lampost next to a sign about the Parklife Cafe. How could I not pop in after such a curious way of advertising.

Serving amazing cupcakes and milkshake/smoothies this cafe reminds me of a mixture of ShakeAway and Angel Food Bakery in Brighton (more about the latter later).

They also sell delicious paninis, sandwiches and another favourite of mine, bagels. I recommend the ham and cream cheese toasted bagel.

But back to the cakes!
They are stunning! See for yourself...


I love Halloween so I adored the giant orange cake! Unfortunately I couldn't buy it due to lack of funds and the fact that I would eat it in a day quite easily... so I settled for a delicious orange butter icing cupcake decorated with chocolate eye balls. The icing was fabulously rich and I had a green version the next day.

If you have no other reason to go to Worthing (and let's be honest, there probably isn't except for the new H&M), go for the Parklife Cafe! Then join the Facebook page afterwards.

Find it at: Bath Place, Worthing.
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NEXT TIME: Fullertons in Brighton

I love tea, I love cake...let's make this happen!

So I've set up about a million blogs this week, but this one is particularly close to my heart. All my friends know I adore tea and cake and so I thought I might share some of this with some lovely readers.

I'll share some recipes for cakes that I've tried, where to go for tea, amazing cake artists that I can only dream of being and some stylish crockery to sip tea/scoff cake off.

Enjoy!



TRACK TO MAKE CAKE TO:
It's autumn, a day before Fireworks night infact, so today we love Sleep Wale. Nice and chilled out like the best autumn days.