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Archive for the ‘Food and drink’ Category
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
 Create a fruit pyramid In need of a fruit bowl? Why not make a talking point of your fresh fruit by using this fruit pyramid?
The impressive display is easy to create using a specially designed chrome pyramid (no more fruit falling down when you try and stack them creatively!).
There’s space to store 18 pieces of fruit and, as well as oranges, it works well with fruits such as apples, nectarines or peaches.
The design allows air to circulate around the fruit, so they’ll keep fresh and ripen well, without any pieces getting squashed below others.
It’s a clever idea, a fun design and a great new take on the traditional fruit bowl. The fruit pyramid is available for £16.99 from Mocha.
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Tags: chrome, creative display, display, fresh fruit, fruit bowl, fruit pyramid, Mocha, storage ideas
Posted in Food and drink | No Comments »
Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
 Delicious tea selection Thanks to everyone who took the time to enter our competition, to win a set of delicious tea from The London Tea Company.
A winner has been selected at random from all the entries received as comments on the blog and Tweets and the winner is…..
@SooperSandy who said, “I’d love to sit down and have a cup of Elderflower and Apricot tea with J K Rowling.”
Congratulations, Sandy, we will be in touch with you about your prize! We can supply the tea, but can’t quite manage J K Rowling…
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Tags: competition, drink, tea, The London Tea Company, winner
Posted in Food and drink | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 15th, 2011
Gorgeous tea to win! At Fresh Design Blog, we love a good cup of tea. So when the lovely folks at The London Tea Company offered us the chance of sampling some of their brews, we did what any discerning tea drinker would do – boiled the kettle and got our favourite china cups out.
The London Tea Company produce a wide range of tea, from classic favourites such as English Breakfast, Earl Grey and Vanilla Chai, to herbal teas such as Camomile and Peppermint, to a wonderful gourmet range of inspiring flavours, such as White Tea, Elderflower & Apricot, Peppermint, Spearmint & Strawberry and Red Berries.
We were lucky enough to sample a broad spectrum of teas – the English Breakfast tea did us proud when we ran out of standard tea bags, the Earl Grey is perfect for afternoon tea and many of the gourmet tea bags were surprisingly delicious. In particular, the surprise hit was the Peppermint, Spearmint and Strawberry (I’ll admit caution at the sound of this strange combination) but it works amazingly well and has just the right balance of the two mints and a hint of fruitiness.
As well as serving them hot, many of the teas also work well as iced teas – which is perfect for the summer months. We’d recommended trying iced White Tea, Elderflower and Apricot, or iced Peppermint, Spearmint and Strawberry tea. Just brew the tea for three minutes in a couple of inches of hot water, then top up with ice and cold water.
The teas are made from organic tea leaves (many of them are also Fairtrade) and both the boxes and pouches are biodegradable. Some of the teas are available as traditional envelope tea bags or loose tea, whilst others are in the form of pyramid infusers.
You can explore the full range of teas available over at the London Tea Company’s website and online shop, plus they’re on Facebook too. All of the teas are very affordably priced, with a canister of pyramid tea bags (which is great for storing teas in even when you’ve finished the first lot) priced at only £3.99 each.
London Tea Company Competition – Win Tea!
If you’d like to be in with a chance of winning a fabulous selection box of teas (shown above), with lots of exciting flavours to try, leave a comment below and tell us which London tea you’d most like to try and who you’d love to drink a cup of tea with.
For one extra entry, simply tweet the following on Twitter: “@FreshDesignBlog Put the kettle on! I’d like to win gorgeous London Tea Company tea”.
A winner will be selected at random from all entries received after the closing date (10pm on Tuesday 21st June).
The competition is open to those in the UK and ROI only (see full competition terms and conditions).
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Tags: classic tea, competition, giveaway, gourmet tea, herbal tea, review, taste test, tea, The London Tea Company
Posted in Food and drink | 198 Comments »
Friday, December 17th, 2010
  
If you love the idea of having special handmade biscuits hanging on your Christmas tree, or of giving them as gifts to other people, but are a bit pushed for time, then this kit is a real time-saver.
The biscuit making part is done for you, as the kit comes with ready made biscuits in the shape of Christmas trees and stars. The fun part of decorating the biscuits is down to you and you get everything you need to create stylish and creative decorated biscuits, including roll out icing, shape cutters, piping gel, a rolling pin, edible lustre dust, silver balls and brushes.
As the idea is to hang the decorated biscuits on a Christmas tree, you’re also supplied with small cellophane bags, red ribbon and elastic metallic thread.
This would be a great kit to do with children in the run-up to Christmas, and if 10 decorated biscuits isn’t enough for you, then the biscuit recipe is included in the set, so you can more yourself.
The Christmas tree hanging biscuit decorating kit is created and sold by Little Rose Bakery and costs £17.99. For more details, take a look at their website.
Related Posts
Decorated Cookies: 20 to Make
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Tags: biscuits, Christmas, Christmas tree, Little Rose Bakery, noths, xmas
Posted in Food and drink, Seasonal | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
  
I first came across Scarlet Bakes at a local Farmers Market, where it was hard to resist the delicious cookies they had available. As well as selling homemade cookies, they also produce a great range of cookie mixes.
The homemade cookie mixes are layered up attractively in glass kilner jars (which you can re-use) and come with an easy-to-follow recipe. All you need to do is add butter and eggs and, bingo, you’ve got cookies ready to bake!
The ingredients for the cookies are high quality, without artificial colours or flavours, and they use local organic flour, British oats and fairtrade vanilla. In most cases, they also sell gluten free versions too, which is a really nice touch.
The cookie mixes make a lovely gift, especially for anyone who’s a fan of baking. They’re available in a great choice of flavours, including rainbow cookie mix, triple chocolate chip cookie mix and the super yummy white chocolate and cranberry cookie mix.
The Scarlet Bakes cookie mixes are £12 each and each 500ml kilner jar of ingredients makes between 18 and 20 cookies, which seems good value for money.
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Tags: bake, Baking, biscuits, cookies, food, gift, Hampshire, homemade, Not On The High Street, Scarlet Bakes
Posted in Baking, Food and drink | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010
 Make whoopie pies One of the latest baking crazes to hit the UK is that of the whoopie pie. Not nearly so elegant as the cupcake, the whoopie pie is a mini American-style sponge cake that is sandwiched together with a buttercream filling and often iced or decorated with frosting on top too.
If you’re keen to unleash your baking abilities and have a go at making your own whoopie pies, then here’s a tin that will make your job much easier. The whoopie pie cake tin is the perfect size to make a whoopie pie – it conducts heat evenly, so your cakes will remain light and moist and won’t dry out – and it has room to make 12 whoopie pies in one bake off.
The whoopie pie cake tin is £7.99 from De Cuisine and they provide a recipe too, to help you get straight into cooking. For more whoopie pie cooking ideas and inspiration, you may like to check out the Whoopie Pies book.
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Tags: bakeware, cake, cooking, tin, whoopie pie
Posted in Baking, Food and drink | 2 Comments »
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
 Stainless steel bowl and spoon Serve olives in style, with this stainless steel olive bowl and matching spoon. Designed by Culinary Concepts, the 6″ bowl is lovely and shiny inside and comes ready to use with a spoon, with a trademark knot on the top of the handle.
Although it’s designed to be used for olives, the bowl and spoon set is the perfect size for serving a variety of nibbles or condiments in. As it comes gift boxed, it would be a perfect homeware gift to give as a present. Even when not in use, the bowl would make a stylish decorative accessory.
You’ll find the Culinary Concepts olive bowl and spoon set available from Beth Stevens, for £36.95.
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Tags: beth stevens, bowl, Culinary Concepts, gift idea, olive bowl, olives, stainless steel
Posted in Food and drink | 2 Comments »
Monday, July 12th, 2010
 Set of 0 to 9 bicusit cutters If you enjoy baking and like the idea of making shaped numerical biscuits or celebratory cakes with numbers, then this set of cookie cutters will get you set up with all the numbers you’ll ever need.
The set of 10 cutters comes complete with a full set of numbers from 0 to 9. Although described as cookie cutters, they work just as well with icing, which makes them ideal for use with decorating birthday or anniversary cakes with appropriate numbers.
The set of number cookie cutters is available from Cox and Cox. It was £20, but is now reduced down to the very affordable price of £8 for the set.
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Tags: Baking, biscuit, cookie cutter, cox and cox
Posted in Baking, Food and drink, Kitchen accessories | 5 Comments »
Friday, May 28th, 2010
 
These tiffin carriers are great for carting around all your goodies for a picnic, but you can also use them at home to store cakes or biscuits in.
Made from hard wearing melamine, the carrier features four separate sections that are clamped together with a stainless steel band. Just flip back the clips and, voila, the case is opened.
The bottom three sections of the tiffin are 6cm deep, so there’s a good amount of space available. The top layer is 4cm deep and divided into three useful compartments.
The tiffin box is available from John Lewis in a choice of two colours – Brights, which is pink, green, red and blue, and Woodland, which features more subtle shades of blue and green.
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Tags: box, cake tin, carrier, john lewis, picnic, tiffin
Posted in Food and drink, Kitchen accessories, Outdoor | 3 Comments »
Friday, January 15th, 2010
Hot drinks have been firmly on the agenda in recent weeks and if you’re out and about, then carrying a hot flask of coffee or tea is the perfect way of ensuring you’ve always got a hot refreshment to hand, even if you’re out in the cold weather.
We love all three of these quirky and colourful thermos flask designs. There’s a trendy owl design, a wordy ‘baby it’s cold outside’ flask or a totally dotty spotty flask. It’s a tough choice, but we’re opting for the cute owl.
The flasks are £15 each at Berry Red.
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Tags: Berry Red, bird trend, flask, hot drinks, owl, picnic, spotty, thermos flask
Posted in Food and drink, Kitchen accessories, Outdoor | 2 Comments »
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