Chocolate Tasting Evening at Cocoa

Since moving to England I have become addicted to tea.

When in Rome, eh?

I must admit it took me awhile to "get" what the British obsession with tea is all about.

But last night we went to Cocoa, 

a tea and chocolate shop with our new cougar club for a chocolate tasting evening.  

If only someone would've taken me to this place when I first arrived...

I would've jumped on the tea bandwagon much much sooner.

Isn't it the cutest?  

The adorable shop owner took us on a tasting journey 

from 100% dark chocolate all the way up to white chocolate.

I thought I hated white chocolate, 

but I realized I just have never been given the good stuff.

We also got a doggy bag of truffles.  

I am the annoying person who always eats half of each one....

In the front of the shop there were rows of candy and and tons of chocolate.  

My favorite was dark chocolate flavored with chili and lime... 

I never knew what my life was missing until I tasted that.

Delicious!

I have a feeling I will be taking American visitors here and helping them to get on the tea train.

Is it cheating if chocolate is involved?

Mallow Making : Take 2

After my last failure I've been searching high and low for a decent veggie mallow recipe.  One without too many weird ingredients and I came up with this.


I don't want to go into the details of the recipe.  But I followed it pretty much perfectly.  And I ended up what can only be described as a viscous milky liquid that resembles... well I won't say what it resembles because I am a lady you know... lets just call it stuff.

What I had was stuff.  With a crunchy layer of browned sugar on top.

Nothing even close to a marshmallow.  Just gross. Disgusting!  And now I'm sad.  Very very sad.

I just want a mallow!

My Peeps are Totally Failures!!

Hi Friends.  I need to apologize.  Last week I promised that I would have an amazing vegetarian peep recipe up and running.  Unfortunately, I've had a few pitfalls along the way.  I attempted to create vegetarian peeps using this recipe and this recipe, from who else - Martha Stewart of course!

Problem 1 : I needed to get my chubby little fingers on a candy thermometer.  Easier said than done.  After a couple days of fruitless searching, I ended up buying one off Amazon.

On Saturday it arrived so I headed to the kitchen with tons of enthusiasm!  I had purchased food coloring and a new piping set and I recruited the husband as sous chef and figured we would have great fun creating new peep animals.  I had an underwater theme in mind - peep octopus anyone???

First I used used my food coloring to color some sugar.  I only had red and yellow... But I do what I can.

Problem 2 : I added the gelling agent to the water.  I used agar flakes, to replace regular gelatin, and substituted them on a one to one ratio.  We didn't realize anything was wrong at this point, but looking back I don't think agar is a direct substitute for gelatin.

Next we boiled the sugar and water mixture, bringing it to the soft-ball stage as Martha instructs.

Check out our stove- how awful is that?

We took it off the heat, stirring, and then using a hand mixer to attempt to form soft marshmallowy peaks.

Problem 3 : Our hand mixer appears to have been made around the same time they invented electricity.  Thus, it doesn't move too fast, and no soft peaks were formed.  We transferred the syrupy mixture to our food processor with the whipping attachment in place, but no cigar.  We got a few bubbles in the syrup and thats pretty much it.

I'm totally devastated.  I feel like I lied to you, and I can't even eat my feelings with fresh peeps.  I just want to bite off their stale and delicious heads like the rest of omnivorous Christian society the week after Easter, but alas, I'm stuck with nothing more than a gooey pot of sugar water.  Martha has never let me down before, so I am blaming my appliances and agar gelatin replacement.  

I hope you can forgive me!!!

ps.  I found some gelatin free mallow recipes, but not for piping mallow, and none of them used agar.  I will be investigating this matter further.

Happy Easter!

Nick bought me a mini tripod the other day and today I insisted we take a family portrait when we took Heidi for her walk.  I put on a pretty top and skirt, and then realized it was freezing outside.  I think I do this every single Easter.  It's always colder than I want it to be.

But I still insisted we make an attempt.  We only got one shot before one of Heidi's friends showed up and she was totally out of commission.  Hopefully we can try again when it's warmer and we can wear pretty spring clothes!

We didn't think this was Heidi's best angle, so we took off her new gentle leader (great for stopping her pulling) and Nick took a picture of us and my new purple rain boots!  Love them!

Trying to set up a tripod and get into the picture before the countdown is over is pretty tricky.  We need to make a photographer friend to get a good shot!

We've been spring cleaning and eating egg salad in true Easter fashion the rest of today.  We also went on a wild goose chase yesterday to get lots of Easter candy for each other but didn't have much luck.  I was seriously missing Walgreens as we trolled multiple supermarkets and could ONLY find large stocks of Cadbury eggs (sister Dani, you would be in cadbury egg heaven).  I'm sorry but there is SO much more to Easter than cadbury eggs.... like peeps, for example.  Peeps are MY favorite Easter candy.  However, I have two major problems with peeps...

1. Peeps are nowhere to be found in England

2. Peeps are NOT vegetarian

But I found a recipe on Martha's website!! God love her, and I am going to make them myself.... except Nick won't let me until I get a candy thermometer.  (He says it will be a disaster and I kinda believe him).  I would love to go out and get one, but the bus only runs once an hour on Sundays, and the shops closed at 4pm... oh life in the country..  But my dear readers and vegetarian peep lovers, I promise you that I will be producing lots of peeps sometime before the week is up.  You have my word!