A summer of afternoon teas

Before last month, I'd only been for one afternoon tea in 2018. Can you believe it?

Thankfully, this precarious situation has been rectified over the last few weeks and I've been for two afternoon teas with lovely people. The first one was a brand new experience and the second was in one of my favourite haunts, so I thought I'd blog about them both to give you a bit of a flavour!

Sarah bought a voucher for a Mad Hatter's afternoon tea in Llety Cynin for my birthday back in June. We decided to book it for a Saturday in mid August as a mid point between both our birthdays. I stayed in Sarah's house on the Friday night to make a proper weekend of it, and we drove to Llety Cynin on the Saturday afternoon with high expectations.

From the minute we arrived, we definitely weren't disappointed. The function room was smaller than expected and only had about six tables, but this was a good thing as it meant our food was brought out quickly and it was nice and quiet. The room was perfectly themed and we even had photo props on our table. It was immediately clear that a lot of thought had gone into the whole afternoon tea experience as well as the food itself.

I had a peach iced tea to start which was tasty and refreshing. We were told we could have tea, coffee or iced tea to drink, or all three if we were so inclined! Unlimited drink refills were also made available for us if we wanted them, free of charge. 

The food came out within about ten minutes and it was a very impressive sight, to put it mildly. I loved the effort that had gone into the presentation, mostly because it made it very instagrammable. We had a selection of sandwiches, chive scones with cream cheese and parma ham, and an amazing selection of cakes.

The cakes were all homemade, including the Jammy Dodger, and the macaron was one of the best cakes I've ever had at an afternoon tea. I didn't need to eat anything for the rest of the day which is always a good sign that they didn't skimp on the portions. 

A few weeks after my great experience at Llety Cynin's Mad Hatter's afternoon tea with Sarah, Liz came to visit for a few hours on a lovely sunny day. We booked a table at Pettigrew Tea Rooms as it's one of our old favourites, and Liz also brought Abigail along (her 8 month old baby) for her very first afternoon tea experience!

One of the many plus points for Pettigrew Tea Rooms is that you have loads of choice when it comes to your drink, sandwiches, scones and cake. They have a great choice of flavoured teas on offer, as well as coffee and hot chocolate. I went for the Mango Noir tea as I'd never tried it before, and I managed to drink an entire teapot of it. 

We chose egg mayonnaise, brie and fruit chutney, and cheddar and tomato on mixed bread for our sandwiches, and we also had fruit scones with all the trimmings. And, as is customary at Pettigrew Tea Rooms, we had a massive slab of cake to finish. We both opted for the Passionfruit, Lime and Coconut loaf cake to take away and it was scrumptious. I was a little bit gutted that I offered to share it with Neil.. that'll teach me for trying to be thoughtful. 

I'm on a mission to make sure I book in a couple more afternoon teas before the end of 2018, and I've already got one booked in tomorrow with Amy which I'm very excited about. As always, keep an eye on my Instagram for updates. 

Do you have any afternoon tea recommendations for me? Let me know in the comments! 

Afternoon tea at Llanerch Vineyard

Did you know that going out for afternoon tea is one of my favourite pastimes? If your answer is 'no', you must be new here!

After visiting Llanerch Vineyard a couple of times for Sunday lunch (read my review here), I decided I really wanted to try their afternoon tea. As my friend Sarah's 30th birthday was rapidly approaching, I had a lightbulb moment and bought her a voucher for traditional afternoon tea at Llanerch Vineyard. Two objectives in one - an excellent birthday present and an opportunity to go for afternoon tea at a new venue!

We booked our afternoon tea for a couple of weeks ago, and our table was in the Cariad bistro which is a beautifully decorated room overlooking the vineyard. We were given a menu to choose our pots of loose leaf tea, but the rest of the afternoon tea was a standard fixed menu. This suited me fine as I'm not very decisive, particularly when it comes to food! I went for the delicious Strawberry and Kiwi tea and was very excited when it came with its own egg-timer to guarantee the perfect brewing time.

After sipping on our teas for a while and catching up on all the latest news, our magnificent three-tiered spectacle arrived...

Obviously there are sandwiches on the bottom tier, but I never tend to photograph those as they're my least favourite part (no offence, sandwiches of the world). The sandwich flavours were cream cheese and cucumber, chicken and tarragon, ham and mustard, and salmon and creme fraiche. They were all lovely, but let's move on to the most exciting parts... I was hugely impressed with the second tier in particular. Scones, Welsh cakes AND banana bread! The scones came with the usual clotted cream and strawberry jam and were among the best I've ever tasted, and the Welsh cakes and banana bread were amazing too. Definitely the best and most unique second tier I've ever had. 

Moving on to the cakes on the top tier... as you can see, there were four little cakes for each person rather than one big slice. The offerings on this particular day were raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake, strawberry macaron, lemon curd meringue tart, and peanut butter and chocolate brownie. They were all exquisite and I could have eaten them all twice over! The raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake was my absolute favourite, closely followed by the strawberry macaron.

The traditional afternoon tea at Llanerch Vineyard is £16.50 per person. I think this is very reasonable considering the quality and quantity of the food, along with the beautiful setting and the excellent service. You can also pay a little more to opt for the sparkling afternoon tea or the Cariad afternoon tea if you fancy a glass of Prosecco or Champagne with your food for a special occasion.

After this excellent afternoon tea experience, I can't wait to go back to Llanerch Vineyard again. Have you ever visited the vineyard for afternoon tea? What did you think?

Bank holidays were made for eating

I love food... I assume you already know this by now if you follow me on any kind of social networking channel. I usually manage to be relatively healthy during the week and have been known to display some strong willpower, but I'm not usually so disciplined over the weekend.

Bank holiday weekends are no exception. Liz and Pete came to stay with us over the most recent bank holiday and it's fair to say that we ate ourselves silly. I obviously took photos of everything so this post focuses on some of the best things I ate (and drank).

We started off the magnificent weekend of indulgence by visiting Penarth's Villa Napoli restaurant on the Saturday night. Neil and I hadn't been to Villa Napoli for over a year and Liz and Pete have never been so we were all very excited. I had the goat's cheese bruschetta to start and the tagliatelle ragú for my main meal. Not the best quality photos due to the lighting in the restaurant, but definitely good quality food! We also shared a bottle of Pinot Grigio between the four of us and it was a really lovely evening.

After we got home, we cracked open a bottle of Ice Wine. After bringing a few bottles of this wondrous discovery home from Canada, we've now found out that it's sold in our local Lidl restaurant! We're introducing it to all our friends because it's that good. Unfortunately Ice Wine bottles are half the size of a standard wine bottle, so of course we had to move on to normal wine next. Liz had also made her legendary Rocky Road for their visit so we had that for dessert! I feel I must warn you that this is only the beginning if you're already silently judging. 

Sunday was a hotly anticipated day as we were all going to Pettigrew Tea Rooms for afternoon tea! We bought Liz and Pete a voucher for two for their wedding a few weeks ago, so obviously we had to accompany them because it would have been rude not to. 

We headed into town a couple of hours before to do some shopping, then collectively decided to have a quick stop in Caffé Nero before our 3pm reservation at Pettigrew Tea Rooms. I know I know, coffee/hot chocolate before afternoon tea doesn't really make sense, but we were tired and I'm powerless to resist the temptations of a small skinny hot chocolate. 

As usual, afternoon tea at Pettigrew Tea Rooms was everything we dreamed of. I usually have hot chocolate rather than tea as I naively used to think I disliked every variety of tea. However, I've recently discovered flavoured teas so I thought I'd try a simple organic peppermint tea. It was really refreshing and meant I got to have a pretty teapot and cup and saucer like everyone else! Bonus. 

When it came to making our cake choice at the end of the afternoon after scoffing the above, I chose the raspberry and white chocolate cake. It was a bit of a risk as I usually stick to either the carrot cake or the lemon drizzle cake because I know how amazingly good they are. However, the raspberry and white chocolate didn't disappoint! I sincerely hope it's still there when I visit again at the beginning of next month. 

After getting home, we complained about being full for approximately an hour before eating more Rocky Road, Doritos, mini savoury eggs and some tiger bread. There was also a lot more wine. We were all in quite a serious food coma by midnight ('are you surprised?!' I hear you say), and yet I still couldn't stop thinking about that one last mini savoury egg. Snacks are dangerous little beasts!

After Liz and Pete left on Monday morning, Neil and I had a leisurely day of pottering around the house and garden, doing the food shopping (our lives seem to revolve around food in one way or another) and catching up on a few TV programmes. In amongst all this, we finished off the tiger bread and had a fairy healthy berry smoothie!

What did you get up to over the bank holiday weekend? Did you also use it as an excuse to eat EVERYTHING? Please send me your links if you've written similar posts, mostly so that I can console myself with knowing that I'm not the only one! 

Guest post #2 - Home made scones

My second guest blog post is from Cheryl who blogs over at Peppermint and Pearls. 

Ingredients

350g self raising flour

¼ tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

85g butter, cut into cubes

3 tbsp caster sugar

175ml milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Squeeze of lemon juice

Beaten egg

Jam and clotted cream

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees/180 degrees for fan ovens.

2. Put the flour into a large mixing bowl along with the salt and baking powder, mix together.

3. Add the cubes of butter and mix together with your hands until the mixture resembles crumbs.

4. Put the milk into a jug and microwave for 30 seconds, the milk should be warm but not hot.

5. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and the vanilla.

6. Put a baking tray in the oven – the scones need to go onto a hot tray to bake.

7. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour in the milk.

8. Combine the dry and wet mixtures together with a knife.

9. Scatter flour onto your work surface and place the dough on top of it.

10. Pat the dough out – do not knead it. Once you have worked it out so it is smooth, pat it into a round that should be about 4cm deep.

11. Using cutters cut out the scones, re-work the dough until you have as many scones as possible.

12. Brush each scone with some beaten egg and place onto the hot baking tray.

13. Bake for 10-15 minutes.

14. Serve with jam and loads of clotted cream, seriously, go mad for the clotted cream.

15. Enjoy warm or cold with a nice big mug of tea.

Café review: Pettigrew Tea Rooms

If you've read my latest blog post on my hen weekend, you'll already know that I have a new favourite place in Cardiff... Pettigrew Tea Rooms!

I'd never heard of Pettigrew Tea Rooms until a few months ago when I started researching the best places to go for afternoon tea in Cardiff. It had excellent reviews on Trip Advisor and was rated the 9th overall place to eat in Cardiff (out of 873!) so I thought it was definitely worth a try for my hen weekend.

Liz booked a table for afternoon tea last Saturday at 3pm and we were seated upstairs. As I mentioned in my last post, I walked in to find a beautifully decorated table with lots of Disney Princess goodies, confetti and bubbles!

The lady who served us was very friendly and accommodating right from the start and explained what came with the afternoon tea package when we were all settled in - a drink of your choice, a selection of finger sandwiches, a scone with cream and jam, and a slice of cake of your choice. So much food!

It's well documented on my blog that I don't like tea or coffee so I went for a gourmet hot chocolate. I was not prepared for the sheer volume of cream on this beauty...

I'd like to think the others were jealous of my spectacular drink but they all seemed to be enjoying their vast array of exotic teas. I've never seen such a big selection of tea in my entire life.

Back to my hot chocolate... I was starting to wonder if there was any actual hot chocolate in the mug when I hit the copious layer of marshmallows underneath the cream!

The hot chocolate was so beautifully indulgent, rich and delicious... I'll probably never have one quite like that ever again (until I go back to Pettigrew Tea Rooms, of course). In the meantime, I should probably go back to ordering my regular skinny hot chocolate with no cream or marshmallows for the sake of my waistline. I do have a wedding dress to fit into, after all!

Around ten minutes after our drinks were served, the finger sandwiches were brought out on little tiered stands. We had three different stands between us, along with one stand of gluten free sandwiches. I sampled a beef sandwich and a ham sandwich... I didn't want to eat too many as I knew I needed to leave room for my scone and slice of cake! The sandwiches were very elegant with a generous filling and tasty dressings. We couldn't finish all the sandwiches so the waitress boxed them up for us so that we could finish them later in the day. A nice touch!

Our scones were on the top tiers of the stands, so I eagerly tucked into mine as soon as someone else started theirs. The scone was lovely and light with a generous helping of currants (just the way I like them), and the jam and cream were just perfect. There actually seemed to be two types of cream on the table... one was more runny than the other. They both tasted great so the consistency didn't bother me in the slightest. Are you a 'cream then jam' person, or a 'jam then cream' person? I'd genuinely like to know.

I didn't think I'd have room for cake, then I remembered that my stomach always has room for cake. The waitress showed us the wide range of cakes they had available and again I was really impressed with the variety of choice on offer. I eventually went for the lemon drizzle cake after being extremely tempted by the carrot cake and changing my mind at the last minute. Who isn't tempted by carrot cake whenever they see it on a menu? Anyway, when my cake arrived I was very pleased with my choice. The lemon curd and buttercream filling was absolutely out of this world, and the sponge itself wasn't bad either. I also loved the 'bride to be' icing detail on my plate... so thoughtful! Again, a few people couldn't finish their cakes so they were boxed up so that they could take them away.

The afternoon tea was £14.95 each which was well worth the price. Just look at the sheer volume of food we ate! The experience was so lovely and we were made to feel very welcome throughout. We stayed there for three hours and weren't made to feel rushed at all. It's worth noting that I also love the cosy atmosphere and decor at Pettigrew Tea Rooms. It won't surprise you to find out that I'm a big fan of pink floral bunting!

I'm already trying to figure out when I can justify my next visit to Pettigrew Tea Rooms... I can't recommend it highly enough!

My hen weekend!

It was my hen weekend last weekend... I don't think I've ever eaten that much food outside of America. I had a really lovely weekend and I was very touched that everyone put in so much effort so I thought I'd try to summarise it in a blog post!

On a side note, as well as being my hen weekend, it's the weekend I finally mastered the art of applying eyeliner (subtly). It only took me 28 years!

I decided to stay in Cardiff for my hen weekend as it's somewhere we all know and, very importantly, we know all the good places to eat. Amy, Kirsty, Laura and Liz arrived on Friday evening so we went to the Gatekeeper for some food and a few cocktail pitchers. Can't go wrong with a good old Wetherspoons panini! The cocktail pitchers were also of a surprisingly high quality and much better than I remember, particularly the Mojito.

After finishing our food and drinks and chatting for a few hours, we walked back to our hotel. We stayed in the Nos Da budget hotel/hostel near the Millennium Stadium and I'd highly recommend it if you're planning a group trip to Cardiff. It was very reasonable, immaculate, spacious and in a fantastic central location. It was certainly much cleaner than any Travelodge I've ever stayed in, and even nicer than some higher end chain hotels I've been to. We had two rooms next to each other between the seven of us. How's this for a hotel room view...?

Nos Da serves a free breakfast every morning until 10am so we made the most of that before walking in to town. Again, the breakfast was much better than I expected with toast, a vast choice of spreads, lots of different cereals, tea, coffee and orange juice. We were all already extremely impressed, and the weekend had hardly started by this point!

We walked into town and went to a few shops to finish off our fancy dress costumes for the evening before meeting Fee, Jenna, Nicola, Sian and Sarah for the next leg of the weekend. Liz had booked afternoon tea at Pettigrew Tea Rooms for 3pm and I was VERY excited about this, to put it mildly. Believe it or not, I've never been for a proper afternoon tea! Very civilized for a hen weekend, but it's something I really wanted to do. 

We all got a bit dressed up before walking over the tea rooms, and I was given a personalised pink hen weekend sash with 'Beth's Disney Hen Do' emblazoned on it. Perfect! 

I'll be writing a separate blog post on Pettigrew Tea Rooms so I won't go into too much detail in this post, but let it be known that it was AMAZING. Liz had bought lots of Disney princess goodies such as tiaras, wands and confetti which meant the experience was extra personal and special, and the staff made us all feel very welcome. Does anyone else feel like a real Disney princess when they're wearing a pretty dress and a tiara? No? Just me?

Here are a few photos to whet your appetite before the more detailed blog post on our experience at Pettigrew Tea Rooms... my hot chocolate felt like a meal in itself! 

We stayed in the tea rooms for three hours and had such a lovely time. I really thought I'd have to be rolled out because I'd eaten so much, but I somehow managed to get myself down the stairs and out of the building. Even in my (small) heels!

We had a quick drink at the Nos Da bar before going upstairs to get ready for the evening celebrations. Their bar has an outdoor seating area which was perfect for such a sunny day. 

The theme for the evening was... you guessed it, Disney fancy dress! I decided to go as Minnie Mouse as I thought she was a very appropriate character for the bride-to-be. We also had a few princesses in the group (Belle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White), Russell from Up (best costume ever), Esmerelda, Neytiri from Avatar and a character from the Incredibles. Again, everyone put in lots of effort and I genuinely loved being Minnie Mouse for a few hours. My only regret is that I didn't take enough photos!

We'd booked a table in Bella Italia for 8pm... in hindsight, we should either have booked the table for much later or just had something light. Although I never thought I'd be too full for an evening meal, I was still pretty full from the colossal afternoon tea so I didn't manage to finish my spaghetti meatballs. It was still a very tasty meal and my two glasses of Prosecco also went down very nicely! 

Before we left Bella Italia, we played a game of 'Mr and Mrs' which Fee had prepared by secretly asking Neil to answer a few questions in the lead-up to the weekend. I loved this idea! I also did quite well with the questions and didn't get too many wrong, so I think this definitely proves that Neil and I are a good match. Obviously I'd have had to re-think everything if the game had gone badly. To ensure continuation of the Disney theme, I was given a Disney tattoo for every question I got wrong... 

Bella Italia is always a great place to eat and this time was no exception. The staff were accommodating as always and the food was up to its usual high standard. A great meal (and drinks) was had by all! 

After leaving Bella Italia, we got accosted by a few overly enthusiastic people who seemed extremely desperate to get us into their tiny and/or dodgy clubs... I started to get fed up of hearing 'free fish bowl for the hen!' I didn't want to go somewhere too loud and cramped where we couldn't sit down and have a chat (how old am I?), so we went to Charlie Browns for a few hours and played a lengthy game of 'I have never', among other things. A classic drinking game, I think you'll agree. I don't see my university friends very often and it was also the first time this particular group of people had all been together so I wanted to make sure we made the most of the opportunity to catch up (and embarrass each other during the drinking game). 

We were back at the hotel by 1:30am so it wasn't a wild night by any means, but I don't think it's important what time you stay out until on your hen night as long as you have a good time, make the most of the opportunity to catch up with people and laugh a lot. I did all these things so I was very happy!

We all had breakfast again on Sunday morning, checked out of our rooms, then sat outside the hotel bar until it was time for people to catch their various modes of transport. I had such a lovely weekend and just wish it hadn't flown by so quickly. Thank you to everyone for coming to Cardiff and for making it such a fantastic weekend (I hope you're all reading this)... see you all at the wedding!

I'm now mentally preparing for round two... my work hen night. Watch this space!