Sweet evening with Canderel

The lovely ladies from Canderel invited me to an afternoon tea party to test out some recipes and after being stuck in London traffic for one hour - to go a distance of 4 miles, I finally made it to their lovely and peaceful kitchen! When I finally made it I was treated to lovely cocktails, amazing olives and a mini cooking lesson with Canderel. For those of you that enjoy sweetners instead of sugar (less calories for those of you watching your weight), Canderel has some great recipes that you can make (that are very easy!) I missed the walnut bread making but made it for the brownies, mini strawberry trifle pot, (easy & yummy) and the chicken tagine (divine).

Below is the recipe for the uber delicious walnut bread. I think I am just big fan of bread and anything with added nuts or seeds is always a healthy bonus. Thanks to the Canderel peeps for such a lovely evening and check out their site for more recipes and vids. Bake away!

Walnut Bread (Serves: 8)
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 40-45 minutes at 180C or Gas Mark 4

Ingredients:

•  8 tablespoons Canderel
• 225g plain flour
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp bicarbonate soda
• Pinch salt
• 50g half fat sunflower margarine
• 1 large egg
• Grated zest from 1 medium orange
• 150ml fresh orange juice (use the juice from orange in this recipe and compote recipe)
• 100g roughly chopped walnuts
• 4 tbsp skimmed milk

Grease a 2lb loaf tin and line with non-stick parchment paper or pre-formed liner.
Put the Canderel, flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a bowl and stir together.
Beat the butter and egg with orange zest until creamy (the mixture will look curdled, this is OK). Add the orange juice and stir well. Add the dry ingredients and walnuts then mix until just combined. Add the milk to give a soft consistency. Spoon into the tin and bake in pre-heated oven for 40-45 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning onto a rack to cool completely.

Enjoy with jam or butter!

It's Brownie Month!

And we have been busy working with lots of lovely chocolate in our kitchens! The lovely peeps at Hackett were treated to some of our brownies last week and more lucky recipients are getting deliveries -maybe you are on our list?!

 

GO Chelsea
I was lucky enough to win tickets to a Chelsea game a week or two ago, seats were in the executive suite which included pre game drinks and dinner, half time drinks and dessert and more food and wine at the end of the game. Not a bad way to see the game indeed, although I may have overindulged a little on the brownies, cookies and mince pies at the end!

I wasn't too impressed with the actual dinner, I ordered a curry which wasn't too tasty, but the desserts and wine were superb. There were some Chelsea players around for pre-game people watching and some interesting characters seated at our table who made the night entertaining.

It was my first football game in the UK and was quite an experience, I think it was a Premiership game? It was similar to the games that I went to in TO for the Toronto FC, but 100x more raucous, rowdy and fun. You can feel the passion of the fans here much more. Fans from opposing teams are seperated and made to use seperate gates; with lots of riot police, police on foot and police on horses you can feel the excitement and tension in the air, I never knew we had that many police in the city?! Quite an experience and a great game that went to penalty kicks. We even sat a few rows behind the glitzy and glam German footballer, Michael Ballack - he's quite the pretty boy.

Our wine was a 2004 Rioja from Spain called Dinastia Vivanco. The wine ages for 16 months in French and American oak barrels and then spends another 6 months in the cellar. I recommend trying it as it was fab, you can also visit the Vivanco family's website to find out more.