What better way to start your Friday than with our weekly round-up of some of the many sweet treats we’ve eaten this week in England and Australia. Here’s five of our favourites! Clockwise from L-R:
1. I’ve been cycling as much as possible to make the most of this glorious weather we’ve been experiencing throughout April. I take full credit for it as I did tell a friend just before I left for Australia that I would bring the weather back with me, and indeed I did! Today I whizzed over to Wickham, Hampshire and sat in the sunshine outside Lilly’s Tea & Coffee House where I had this very fresh and moist lemon drizzle cake. My cycling pal declined a cake and so I felt a bit of a piggy, but boy did it go down well.
2. This dessert, Dark chocolate ganache, strawberry sorbet & beetroot was from No.8 by John Lawson in Melbourne, Australia. Fine dining at its best. Helen was lucky enough to be taken there for Valentines Day by Brent.
3. By tomorrow I will have had three of The Hungry Guest’s chocolate brownies within 8 days, because they are the best! The first was from Artie’s Kitchen in Chichester, West Sussex (which was Artisan Café and has recently changed hands, same barista’s and thankfully hasn’t changed much), the second when I went for my annual ‘secret country walk’ last weekend in Petworth, we picked one up from The Hungry Guest’s Food Shop (along with some fresh bread and focaccia for the freezer) to take with us on the walk and ended up carrying it 9 miles in the heat and not finding that we needed it, so Geoff and I enjoyed it that evening instead. The third will be today when I’m going for lunch at Salt Café in Portchester with a friend. I may even make it four and take one home with me to have this evening, oops 😉
4. This delicious dessert was more of a trifle but was supposed to be some kind of brûlée or fool (I can’t for the life of me remember what, I just know it wasn’t really what it was supposed to be, or what it sounded like it was supposed to be). Geoff enjoyed it very much however so no matter, whilst I had good old sticky toffee pudding with ice cream. This was in the middle of our ‘secret walk’ at The Noah’s Ark Inn in Lurgashall, West Sussex where a cricket match was playing upon the village green. How very quintessentially English.
5. This looks a beautiful place, Eva’s Botanical Gardens Café, Darwin, Australia. Helen enjoyed this detox kale salad which ok, isn’t strictly a ‘sweet treat’ but who really cares? (The Sweet Treat police?) Helen was on her way to the cattle ranch she will be working on in the Northern Territories for the next few months. You can see her ‘photo a day’ on Instagram, some of which are beautiful. What an experience for her.
Living life, loving cake
A x