Crumbs to Crunch

The most famous literary tea party is the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland so where better to have tea than Guildford, the town where Lewis Carroll wrote Through the Looking Glass ?  Guildford has many links with Lewis Carroll who bought a cottage there for his six sisters. Throughout his life he was a frequent visitor to the town and is even buried in the local cemetery. There is a lovely statue of Alice through the looking glass which is just a stone's throw from where Carroll's sisters lived. On the riverbank, there is another fun statue of Alice chasing the white rabbit.  Delving into the world of Alice couldn't be complete without my own mini tea party! I went to Caracoli , a bright café with huge windows overlooking the High Street. As the weather was rather autumnal, I tried the buttermilk spice cake which was a rich sponge with a tangy icing. I was intrigued by the Monk pear tea, purely because of its name. This bla...

Why is it whenever someone opens a box of Jaffa Cakes, we have to have the old biscuit/cake debate? I assume this is just a fun British quirk that perplexes foreigners. However, I have discovered a Jaffa Cake in distinctive cake form at the wonderful Chapter One Books in Manchester's Northern Quarter. Chapter One is paradise as it combines my two loves, books and cake.  My Jaffa Cake was a wonder, a slice of delicate orange sponge with an orange curd centre and smothered in dark chocolate. There was also a lovely loose leaf tea collection. Unlike many bookshop cafés, the books and food are not separated but are blended seamlessly together. There are books all over the walls, bookcases dotted around and books even take pride of place on a picnic bench by an indoor fountain! One of my favourite parts of this space is a corner dedicated to typewriters in various states of repair, perhaps to inspire budding writers. The jumble of books and curiosity items provides lots of...

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of World Book Day today, I am going to share my trusty baking cookbooks. Linda Collister's Baking Bible This was my first ever baking book and it is the one I use the most often. It truly is my baking bible! This book is a great all-rounder as it has recipes for every type of bake - biscuits, cakes, pies, tarts, desserts, bread, the list goes on! With so many types of baking in one book, I have learnt so many different baking techniques and is a great go-to book if I am looking for inspiration. The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook by Tarek Malouf This book is based on the cakes from the Hummingbird bakeries in London so you can recreate them at home. Hummingbird specialises in great cupcake flavours that are so easy to make so I tend to use this book if I need to bake something en masse, such as for a cake sale. However, they don't just do cupcakes but also American-style pies, brownies and cookies. The carrot cake recipe is...

Books and tea are a winning combination. Our latest find is London Review Cake Shop , a tiny café part of the London Review Bookshop. It is just a stone's throw from the British Museum and is the perfect spot for a cuppa and a browse after visiting the museum.  This chic café takes tea ever so seriously and offers an extensive selection. I ordered the white peony tea with rose buds served on a gong fu tea set. I have to admit that I am not familiar with gong fu but from what I gather, gong fu is a Chinese tea ceremony which translates as 'the art of doing something well'. This means that the tea making process cannot be rushed in order to brew the perfect tea.  The tea set was a thing of beauty - a glass teapot, jug and cup served on a bamboo box. There were quite a few steps to follow, firstly I poured hot water into the teapot with the tea leaves and waited for the tea to infuse. The scent of the rose buds was divine. I then poured the tea into the glass jug ...

This is a Crumbs to Crunch first, today we are going to talk about poetry. Recently, I came across a little booklet called Ten Poems about Tea that explores how a simple brew can affect our lives such as inspiring love, memory and comfort. The collection begins with Carol Ann Duffy's poem Tea where Duffy makes tea for her lover. I particularly liked this line: I like the questions - sugar? milk?- This seemingly simple question creates a certain amount of intimacy as she learns something personal about her partner. Making tea becomes a gesture of her love and devotion and she is willing to do this 'any time of day'. In Thomas Hardy's At Tea love plays a different role. A married couple invite a lady for tea. Over a steaming cup of tea, the husband reflects on how their guest was the one that got away. The guest sits smiling and sips her tea, And he throws a stray glance yearningly. Instead of tea creating intimacy, in this scene, tea ...

All You Read is Love is one of those rare places where you can stay for hours and never run out of things to do. This quirky café-cum-bookshop-cum-radio station in Leytonstone is the ideal place to spend a relaxing Saturday afternoon or a quiet evening with friends.  The decor is rough around the edges yet teeming with interesting upcycled pieces. It feels like you're hanging out in your hipster friend's living room listening to classic tunes on vinyl or improvising on the piano. The bookshop part offers eclectic secondhand or new volumes. I was loving the Scandi Lit corner, a nod to Nordic Noir fanatics like me.  The café also did not disappoint. My friend an I polished off a simple yet delicious pecan and banana slice as well as a generous slice of coconut and nutella sponge. Strangely, what stood out for me was not the cake but the homemade hot elderflower. I had just been on a walk in Epping Forest therefore it was an ideal post-walk treat. Whilst enjoying ou...

"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." but what do you do if you don't have a fireplace? Nothing feels more cosy and festive than chestnuts so I was very happy to discover the delights of chestnut moelleux at  Le Bistrot à Lire  in Quimper.  You may be wondering what moelleux are and how on earth to say this peculiar French word. A helpful waitress coached me on the pronunciation - mweh-luh . I felt oh so very French attempting to say such a foreign word! These little cakes are baked for a couple of minutes so the centre is all gooey. The result is a silky smooth hot chestnut treat.  My moelleux was accompanied with the Italien Thé des Ecrivains (fig and quince tea)  as part of the cake and hot drink deal for €6.10.  Le Bistrot  à Lire is also a bookshop so I felt perfectly at home polishing off my chestnut dessert while thumbing through books from all over the world. You can't get more cosy than that! 

"Stop watching so much TV and get back into reading" is my mantra for the summer. It recently dawned on me that while I have watched three different adaptations of Jane Austen's beloved classic, Emma , I had never actually read the novel. So it was time to curl up on the sofa with a cup of tea and delve into the world of Austen. As I was reading about the famous, or perhaps infamous, 'badly done' picnic at Box Hill, I thought why not stage my own  (hopefully more successful) picnic at Box Hill. With this in mind, I and my Crumbs to Crunch counterpart donned our best bonnet and top hat and headed for the Surrey hills. For some reason, I could not convince my friends to also sport regency attire in public... While we were munching some cookies kindly baked by my friend, I realised that even though it was unlikely that Emma ate cookies at her picnic, very little has actually changed since the 1800s. The view from Box Hill was pretty much the same as Emma wou...

Too long have I been frequenting chains in London for a cup of tea so it was high time to discover some of the tea rooms that London has to offer. When my friend sent me a message saying literary enjoyment + tea room = time well spent as she suggested that we go to the Charles Dickens Museum, I was completely won over. What a fantastic formula! So firstly literary enjoyment: I really enjoyed reading Bleak House so it was incredible to see the very desk where Dickens wrote his many masterpieces. The house was filled with all his books and possessions that I could get a real sense of what it must have been like to live there in Victorian England.  Literary enjoyment check, now for the tea room! The tea room had quite a Victorian feel as they used lots of old fashioned furniture as well as selling ye olde drinks such as Dandelion and Burdocke. More importantly the cakes were simply divine! I wolfed down a gorgeously gooey chocolate and fresh raspberry brownie and my friend ...