Mrs Birks Blogs

I loved watching Nadiya's British Food Adventure last year and after several weeks thinking 'I don't need another cookbook' I gave in and finally bought it (it was probably the crisp and chocolate peanut tart that persuaded me)  Since then, I've looked at it with a drooling mouth but not actually cooked anything. Until now... I needed a recipe to christen my new Bundt tin and remembered seeing one in the book called 'Caramelized White Chocolate and Hazelnut Bundt Cake'.  Now, for those not in the know, caramelised white chocolate has the brand name Caramac, a super sweet light brown chocolate that you might remember from childhood.  It can be a little difficult to get hold of, you'll find that not all the supermarkets stock it and if they do, it can be a bit pricey because it's not available in a large size.  Anyway, with this in mind, I headed to Tesco to buy the ingredients, not completely convinced I would be able to get everything but ver...

I have finally eaten Street Food!  Obviously that sounds incredibly uncool for those who eat Street Food all the time or for those who have the sort of job where Street Food for lunch is the norm.  For me and Mr B it was something of a novelty and we enjoyed it very much. On a quick trip into London recently, we visited Spitalfields Market.  It seemed a real mix of traditional shops and stalls and completely unaffordable shops and stalls.  It made for a colourful and exciting atmosphere providing lots of opportunities for people watching.  As well as having lots of nice chains to eat at, there were lots of yummy looking food vans, with food from across the globe.  The smells from some of the vans was amazing and the queues were testament to the quality of the food.  For my first taste of street food, I opted for The Duck Truck - a company which specialises in guess what? Duck!  I had a traditional duck salad for £7 which was delicious.  I...

Bundt cakes are impressive, especially if you've got a super fancy tin.  At Christmas time, Bundt cakes seem particularly festive covered in a little icing sugar.  In fact, that is one of the many impressive things about Bundt cakes - they can have as little or as much decoration as you want, the tin does the hard work, so you don't have to! Talking of Bundt tins, they can be a bit pricey.  I was lucky in that I was given a well used one from my Mum.  It is a bit battered and a simple design but it did the job for my first ever Bundt bake.  Choosing the recipe was a little more difficult, having overdosed on chocolate over Christmas, I wanted to do something different, so spent some time trawling Internet recipes. I decided on this Lime and Blueberry recipe by Mary Berry. After a Christmas with a few satsumas as the only fruit, I tried to convince myself that a punnet of blueberries made for a slightly healthier cake.  The recipe suggests that you ...

So readers of this blog will know that for my 40th birthday I went for afternoon tea with Mr Birks at Selfridges.  Well, last week I had an afternoon tea experience with my best friend Paula, which made the Selfridges one look highly boring in comparison even though it was served on a picnic bench!  On a Friday afternoon, we experienced the Science themed afternoon tea at The Ampersand Hotel in South Kensington.  The hotel's proximity to both the Science Museum and The Natural History Museum explains the science theme and it featured dinosaurs, fossils, planets and spacemen. When the afternoon tea arrived, I didn't think I could be any more excited, it had little jellies served in a petri dish, a chocolate spaceman and rocket ship, a planet balanced on chocolate cake and a series of test tubes with different toppings inside.  However, I was wrong.  When the waiter magically made the dry ice appear, I was like an uncontrollable child with excitement. ...

Afternoon tea is now a thing.  In fact, I think it has been a thing for a long time but, as usual, I've been late to the party.  But what a wonderful thing it is!  At the risk of becoming a 40th birthday bore, I wanted to tell you about my visit in March to Selfridges for a afternoon picnic tea. Afternoon tea is such a perfect thing.  Not lunch or dinner but an extra meal in between and it has a little bit of everything - cakes, savouries and of course tea.  With ours we also opted for a couple of glasses of champagne (did I mention it was a special occasion?) which made it extra decadent for a Tuesday afternoon.   We 'took' our tea at The Balcony, a restaurant at the top of Selfridges in the Bullring but we had done a significant amount of research beforehand and I also liked the look of the Gentleman's Afternoon Tea at Hotel La Tour which also threw a scotch egg and pork pie with mustard into the mix.  We found ...

With all our trips around Norfolk, you may be wondering if I've had time to do any baking recently.  The answer is: a bit! With the return of the Bake Off, who can resist a bit of cake baking and with a visit from friends a few weekends ago, I had the perfect excuse to bake something yummy. When I'm baking, I tend to stick to a few tried and tested cakes that I know everyone will like but this weekend, I decided to move away from the norm and try something from The Clandestine Cake Company Cookbook, which my sister bought me for my last birthday (I notice there is also a new book out).  Isn't the cover beautiful?  The recipes inside are too! I love the idea of a secret cake club where everyone bakes and shares their baking.  This book has a range of recipes from Lynn Hill and other CCC members, including classics, celebration and creative cakes.  Some recipes are themed, for example a Blue Velvet cake which was made to go with a film noir themed evening...

Earlier this week, a friend was writing her shopping list and moaning that her and her husband always eat the same food and that she was bored.  Everyone else sympathised and it reminded me of the time Jon and I had 'recipe week'. Out of sheer desperation not to spend another week eating Spag Bol and Jacket Potatoes, we decided to spend a week trying a new recipe each night.  Now this is not easy for everyone and it was a week when I had a bit more free time.  Also it can be expensive, so you might want to make some rules about what you can and can't choose. Anyway, I'll be honest, I can't remember everything we had but here are some of the recipes and some of my other favourites too. Recipe book 1: My Daddy Cooks We have had this book for several years and have cooked quite a few recipes from it.  The thing we like about it is the simplicity of the recipes - they're tasty but not too difficult to cook.  You also don't need masses of ingredients and ...

So my quest to write one blog post a month has already slipped.  March has blazed past and it's already April.  However, as this post is all about last month, hopefully it will make up for it, a bit! March is a marvellous month! The first of the Spring sunshine, daffodils out, the prospect of the Easter holidays and...my birthday. Yes, March this year saw me celebrate birthday number 38. Not a great number but, as my father in law would say, better than the alternative.  This year for my birthday, I decided to go out and do something.  In the past, I've been happy to let the day drift by and at times, I have been a bit of a birthday martyr - "I can't believe I have to do the hoovering on my birthday", "I can't believe I have to make my own lunch on my birthday" - that sort of ridiculous thing.  This year I noticed Leonie Dawson's page in her Amazing Year book (see my previous post) ages before the event and so started thinking about what I...