Jane Brocket's Blog, page 53

capital cake: bea's of bloomsbury

6. Bea's of Bloomsbury

Although Bea's location on the busy, noisy Theobald's Road appears unpromising, once you step inside it's a delightfully different world. It could be a scene from an alternative Alice in Wonderland as the cakes and brownies, pies and cupcakes should all have 'Eat Me!' tags attached to them. The wonderland feel extends to the curvy, rococo chairs and the swirling wallpaper which create an atmosphere that is both bohemian and ladylike.

Much space is given over to the glass counter and stands that hold ultra-pretty cupcakes, gorgeously decorated layer cakes, dark, squidgy brownies, and fluffily tall American pies. At the back of the shop is the open-to-view kitchen where the team of skilled bakers produces all the baked goods (except the lunch-time sandwich breads). Squeezed in along the wall and in leftover spaces are the tables; Bea's seats about 20, with more chairs on the pavement. There's a thriving take-out business, but it is most definitely worth stopping at Bea's for a restorative tea and cake (such as Plum Frangipane Slice £2.60, glittery Chocolate Guinness Load £2.60, 'Killer Brownies' £2.40), or a full and very delicious afternoon tea.

The £12 per person 'Sweet Afternoon Tea' is a good introduction to the splendid range of cakes, as it provides a taster selection of the kitchen's baking prowess. Cake stands with bunny ears or ladies' legs popping through the top are filled with tiny macaroons, meringues, marshmallows, blondies, brownies, and even a minute loaf cake, plus a cupcake, all beautifully made from quality ingredients, with textbook textures and tasting delicious. Next to these miniature dainties, the cupcakes look like something Alice might enjoy after her 'eat me' cake which makes her grow enormous, such are their generous proportions of sponge and eye-catching and eye-poppingly sweet frosting. But the best part of the tea are the just-this-minute-out-of-the-oven scones (baked daily for the start of afternoon tea service at 2.30pm) which are the perfect soft and light, not too sweet and not too crumbly vehicles for transporting clotted cream and raspberry jam to one's mouth. In fact, if truth be told, so good are the scones, it's worth coming just for a simple scones and tea Cream Tea at £6 pp.

Bea's manages to combine a light touch and an easy-going charm with serious food credentials (it also does ace breakfasts, lunches and all-day food to go). So it's a Good Thing that there is now a second cakey Bea's wonderland in EC4 in which to escape from the real world.

Cake: £2.40 - £3.80

Cupcake: £2.50

Pot of tea: £2.50

Coffee: £1.50

'Sweet Afternoon Tea': £12 per person

44 Theobald's Road

London WC1X 8NW

Tel: 020 7242 8330

Website: www.beasofblooomsbury.com

Open: Mon to Fri 8 – 7, Sat 10 – 7, Sun 12 – 7

Now open:  St Paul's branch (the 'hip, younger sister') with more seating. Different opening times, reservations possible and recommended. 

ruby, violet, lime

Published today, but a long time in the making.

Words written in the spring.

Photographs taken over the last couple of years.

Subject researched since nursery school.

 

prairie radiance

 

The prairie meadow at Wisley has evolved over the summer and is still looking good.

I just like the place and the pictures. Much more uplifting and better value than the other sort of prairie radiance.

That's all.

devilishly good

Phoebe has been away for much of the summer holiday, and we have missed her and her baking. Now she is back, almost ready to return to school (but would still prefer never to have gone at all), and making cakes. This is Devil's Food Cake, the kind of thing that the likes of Leslie Phillips might declare 'devilishly good'.

green fingers

I notice my fingers and toes are getting cold in the evenings: this sad fact reminds me that it's time to knit some gloves and socks. These are the 'green finger' gloves from the book (now available in the US) which are a combination of sensible wool and flight of fancy, inspired by lady gardeners such as this:

Lady Birley (1900-1981), photographed by Valerie Finnis whose work as a plantswoman and photographer is the subject of one of my favourite gardening books, Garden People, by the ever-readable Ursula Buchan. It contains wonderful, densely colourful photos of plants and many more equally colourful gardeners (the ladies win by a mile in the style stakes).

My own thoughts are turning green, with my bulb order sent to Peter Nyssen and plans to sow annuals soon so that they can overwinter and flower earlier next spring. I know it makes sense, and follows nature as this year the garden is full of strong self-seeded flowers which grew up from seed scattered this time last year. We have huge fennel, tall sunflowers, swathes of marigolds blocking the path, patches of love-in-a-mist, and pink and yellow hollyhocks have popped up in all sorts of odd places, after years of refusing to settle here. They have all reminded me of the value of autumn sowing, so I'm going to dress warmly (I think I need a Lady B hat) and sow the the type of seeds that Sarah Raven recommends. (She's another formidable lady gardener who is often photographed looking inseparable from her amazing garden.)

capital cake: albion caff

5. Albion Caff

With utensils in recycled Lyle's Golden Syrup tins, daily newspapers, Brown Betty tea pots, formica-topped tables, red leather banquettes, and simple wood panelling, Albion is an upmarket and stylish reincarnation of the endangered, much-loved, humble British caff. The only things missing are grease, smoke, and steam.

Albion is in the historically fascinating Boundary Estate in the heart of Shoreditch, an area which is now attracting all sorts of creative types and businesses, many of which, like Albion, are housed in converted buildings. It's ideally placed for Sunday morning visits to nearby Columbia Road flower market, but also a haven of civilised café life all day, every day.

The kitchens are open to view, and the baked goods come out thick and fast, with large numbers of cakes, pastries, biscuits and breads cooling on racks before being despatched to seated customers, and to the large table laden with good things in the small shop area.

Although there is a French flavour to the breakfast baking, including the biggest, most richly filled almond croissant ever tasted (£2.90, could feed two), the rest of the line-up features impressively made, old-fashioned favourites fairly priced. Portions are generous: gingerbread men are truly mannish and not boyish, and a reworked filled Bourbon biscuit is the equivalent of a fistful of the tiny packet variety. Although there is the inevitable cupcake, the cakes are definitely what you would hope your mother would make: a rich, layered chocolate cake, a startlingly pink and yellow Battenburg with real marzipan and a pleasingly home-made appearance, and a creamy-jammy Victoria Sponge Cake that wouldn't look out of place at a village fete.

Albion has much to recommend it: smiley staff, plenty of seating including tables outside on the pavement, fish and chips, a hotel above should you want to indulge in a cake blow-out, a restaurant below should you wish to stay all day, and a wonderfully rich neighbourhood to explore. It has all the hallmarks of a carefully designed Conran enterprise which is why it does cake n' caff so well.

Cake: £1.50 - £3.50

Tea: £2.50

Coffee: £2.50

2-4 Boundary Street

London E2 7DD

Tel: 0207 729 1051

Website: www.albioncaff.co.uk

Open: 8 am – 11.30pm seven days a week

 

loose ends

When the August Bank Holiday is almost upon us, I know that it's the beginning of the end of summer (a summer that never really began this year). Now that Tom & Alice will definitely be leaving in a few weeks, I'm starting to tidy up after the unravelling of quite a few months with teenagers at home. I can feel the first stirrings of organisation coming from Tom & Alice : buying text books, making lists of stuff for halls of residence, applying for student cards, and this is making me take stock and sort out the loose ends of summer.

There are also a few blogging loose ends that need to be wound up into neat balls, like the skeins of tapestry wools I use to knit colourful edges.

:: There is a review of The Gentle Art of Knitting on Knitty which is a huge honour, as this was the first knitting website I discovered a long time ago, and it's still brilliant.

:: Amy Singer who is the brains behind Knitty is running what sounds like an excellent workshop in Wales in October with Brenda Dayne, the voice behind Cast On, the Podcast. Amy is one of the most yarn-committed people I have ever met - she is passionate about knitting and knows a thing or two about it.

:: Another friend with a textile passion, this time French linens, is Victoria who also knows a thing or two about her subject (she has taught me  plenty). She'd like help with what will be a fascinating project; I can't say any more about it, but I know it's something that a huge number of this blog's readers would find interesting.

 :: Yesterday, I put up then took down a post about discovering that someone who had been leaving long, long comments which have caused a kerfuffle (as they say on Little Britain) had done so under three different anonymous/pseudonymous names. The penny dropped when I looked up an IP number and I decided that I was going to play host no longer. I have deleted all his/her comments, and will now be less willing to leave suspect contributions where they can be read. Multiple-identity commenters make a mockery of blog discussions and keeping on top of the incoming comments could turn into a game of Splat the Rat - not something I want to play.

:: Here's a review of the second book in the 'Clever Concepts' series for children which is published on 1 September. The subject is colour ('color' in the book) and it was a delight to write and photograph. I'm very pleased it's called Ruby, Violet, Lime and not something like Red, Yellow, Blue because one of the most enjoyable things I did with Tom, Alice, and Phoebe when they were little was teach them lots and lots of colours, and I loved it when we found books that went beyond the predictable shades. Never for one moment thinking I would one day do it myself.

capital cake: national cafe

4. National Cafe at the National Gallery

Once a dismal, cavernous cafe where everyone looked as glum as some of the sitters in the paintings upstairs, this was transformed a short while ago by caterers Peyton & Byrne into a light-filled cafe with something of the Old Dutch style (black wood panelling, white walls above, plain windows) crossed with a seventeenth century London-coffee house. With one major difference: it looks as though an army of Women's Institute bakers has visited overnight and left all their prize-winning cakes, biscuits, and treats on display.

It's the type of display to make you gasp with delight, sigh with pleasure, hum and hah about what to choose, and talk animatedly about the joys of old-fashioned baking. It's also one of the most tempting you'll see anywhere in London, so hats off to P&B for reviving the ritual of a cup of tea and a bun after a cultural fix.

Cakes and treats are beautifully presented on a separate, glass-shelved, self-service counter with customers circling carefully in order to make wise choices - not easy, as all the great and good examples of British baking are lined up here [added: 'unashamedly British' it says on the website]. There are slabs of cake (fruit, banana, Dundee), slices of cake (lemon and poppyseed, chocolate, coffee and walnut), mini loaf cakes, cupcakes, rock cakes, scones, biscuits, buns (including huge, sticky Chelsea buns) and re-imagined classics such as home-made jammie dodgers, 'Jaffa cakes' and rich, circular, melt-in-the-mouth millionaire's shortbread. They taste as good as they look ie a work of art in themselves.

Prices are reasonable, and appealing to families. Access is possible via a side door so cake-eating is not restricted to gallery hours. There is a self-service area (be warned though, hot drinks come in unpleasant paper cups) and a waitress service area if you want your tea in china, a full, traditional  afternoon tea (the Lord Nelson option at £19.50 comes with a very civilised glass of port or sherry), or if you prefer to sample the full range of comforting, just-like-mother-used-to-make savoury dishes.

Various cakes: £2.30 - £3.40

Tea: £1.50

Coffee: £1.80

Afternoon tea served 3 – 5.30pm, £6 - £21.50

National Cafe at the National Gallery

Trafalgar Square

London WC2N 4DN

NB use the entrance on St Martin's Lane outside gallery opening times

Tel: 020 7747 5942

Website: www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Open: Mon to Fri 8 – 11, Sat 10 – 11, Sun 10 - 6

all quiet

[Geranium and begonia house, West Dean]

It's all quiet on the domestic front today. As quiet as a greehhouse, in fact. It's never raucous or hectic in a greenhouse, is it? A greenhouse should always be hushed and full of stillness and silent growth, although I do think Radio 4 in the background would add to the atmosphere.

I visited the spectacular Victorian greenhouses at West Dean at the weekend (does anyone else feel as I do that the plural of greenhouse should be greenhi?). These are quite unbelievably perfect; every plant equidistant from its neighbours, not a hint of muck or mould, not a stray leaf or a rogue colour. It's almost all too perfect; I think I prefer something a little more rackety and makeshift, a greenhouse that has the character of its owner even when he/she is not there. But it did remind me of one of my favourite Eric Ravilious watercolours, The Greenhouse: Cyclamen and Tomatoes (1937), the date of which proves just how anachronistic this pre-war, big house, labour-intensive level of greenhouse growing and maintenance is nowadays.

 

One of the joys of visiting gardens open to the public,whether they are big National Trust type properties, ramshackle allotments or privately owned, is having a look inside any greenhouse that might be there. I like seeing what people grow, how they arrange this private space, whether they create a thing of beauty or simply use the interior as a plant factory (the above has something of the production line, and the one in the painting reminds me of an aircraft hangar). It helps me plan my fantasy greenhouse: warm, inviting, and smelling of damp soil and tomato leaves, with trugs full of seedpackets, labels, secateurs and trowel, morning glories and melons growing up to to roof, and gloriously red and pink geraniums creating a colour storm. There would be a chair, an old crocheted blanket, bulb catalogues, muddy wellies, an old battered hat, a radio (of course), and plenty of hot tea.

Goodness me, it's so quiet here, I was in another world. One day I'll make it happen (the melons might be an ambition too far, though.)

Thank you for all your comments on the posts this week. It has been a huge pleasure to have such a full cyber post-bag, and I very much appreciate everyone's messages about A level results. We are relaxing nicely into the role of parents of soon-to-be university students, and have already had the calculators out to work the financial damage.  

 

done and dusted

[bright and cheerful Dahlias at West Dean last weekend - to match the mood]

Phew-ee. Thank goodness for that. The most horrible school year to date has a happy ending. Tom and Alice have both got the A levels they needed to do what they want at their first choice universities. So next month they will go off in different directions to universities 200 miles apart, one to do Geography and the other to do Psychology.

The waves of relief started at 6.20 when Alice bounced into our room having found out that her place was confirmed, and they haven't stopped. However, Phoebe has pointed out that we now have another three consecutive Augusts of exam results when the process starts all over again with her next year. But as Scarlett O'Hara might say, next August is another year.

The wine is chilling.