When I was in America a few weeks ago my sister took me to the grocery store and I immediately noticed the different varieties of Greek Yogurt available and the amount of products that incorporated Greek Yogurt. I thought this was fabulous! I have long been a lover of Greek Yogurt (and Greece) and it’s been featured many times on this blog.

The labeling of the products caught my attention in the US.  Everything irrelevant of where it’s made was labelled as Greek Yogurt. In the EU there are strict rules, only Greek Yogurt made in Greece can be labelled as Greek Yogurt. All other yogurt has to be labelled Greek Style Yogurt. I have eaten a lot of Greek Style Yogurt as well, it’s tasty, but it’s not quite the same as the real stuff. I find it slightly less thick and less tangy. If you can find the good stuff made in Greece it’s worth the little bit extra that it costs.

Total Greek Yogurt was one of the first supporters of my blog and I still love making desserts with it. The Greek Yogurt Cheesecake I made way back in the early days has found a new source of popularity in the last 2 weeks. Two of my personal favorites from my archives are the Lemon and Basil Frozen Yogurt and Strawberry and Lime Frozen Greek Yogurt.

This is the first time I’ve made donuts with yogurt and I was pretty impressed. They’re very light which is why I paired them with lemon and vanilla. They were a little bit more delicate than the other baked donuts that I’ve made so be gentle when removing them from the pan.

adapted from Heather Christo

I received a few pots of yogurt at a party hosted by Total (I also ingested numerous cocktails and Greek Yogurt canapes)

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I had a wonderful vacation with my sister a few weeks ago and I wanted to share all the amazing and fun places that we went. This trip we went around Boston, New Hampshire and Maine. I didn’t do much shopping at all this this time, we spent most of time eating and exploring. I’ve only just come back but I can’t wait till our next trip to visit the rest of New England. Make sure to read my other post from this trip about New Hampshire Breweries and my posts from a previous vacation about Boston, Portland, Vermont and New Hampshire.

We didn’t waste anytime this trip. As soon as I landed in Boston it was only just after lunchtime and we went straight to Belle Isle for the biggest lobster rolls in town and a bowl of chowdah of course! Since we were nearby we stopped off at Georgetown Cupcake for some cupcakes to go. Kayla and I both liked the milk chocolate birthday cake cupcake the best. I’m not a huge fan of their TV show but the few times that I’ve gone for Cupcakes (in DC and Boston) the cupcakes have always been good and they were particularly nice at the Boston shop. I found those watermelon measuring cups at TJ Maxx for $8. They are just too adorable.

One night we went for dinner at The Common Man. I went the last time I visited but we had an even better meal this time. I couldn’t resist the Lobster Mac & Cheese and ordered it again this time. We had Crab Dumplings, which were lobster versions of Crab Rangoon. One of my favorite dishes of the whole trip were the Blue Cheese Chips. Amazing homemade potato chips with blue cheese melted on top. I’m not a huge cheese lover but this was the best dish I’ve had in a long time. We also checked out a few places on the Concord Main Street and we liked the Crust & Crumb Bakery. They had excellent fresh loaves of bread and slices of cake.

No trip to New Hampshire is complete without a stop at the Red Arrow. I had a deep fried burger and a slice of brownie cream pie. A new frozen yogurt shop opened in Concord. Dips makes their yogurt using local ingredients. I loved the machines. Each machine has 2 flavors and an extra leaver in the middle to swirl the two together. I tried a red velvet and cheesecake on our visit.

We spent a whole day in Boston and started off with breakfast at Flour. Their breakfast sandwiches and sticky buns are absolutely to die for. It was a beautiful day and we strolled around the south end and stopped of at South End Buttery for a glass of iced tea and a soft and chewy peanut butter cookie. I insisted we go to Figs for dinner. Kayla raves about it to me all the time and I was dying to go. The pizzas are huge so one is big enough to share. We order half asparagus and half with onion jam. We may have stopped off at Georgetown for more cupcakes…we also stopped at Sweet. I wasn’t super impressed with Sweet. They weren’t nice when we went into the shop either. They also cost about .50 cents more than the cupcakes at Georgetown.

Kayla took me to Mr. Mac’s in New Hampshire for lunch one day. I loved the concept. They only serve different variations of Mac and Cheese. I ordered the chicken bacon and ranch mac and cheese and Kayla had a taco one. I enjoyed it. It’s nice to see something different.

We drove a few hours to Portland, Maine. It’s a city worth a visit. It was 90 degrees the day we went and not a lot of places had AC but the lunch we had at Duck Fat made it all worth it. It’s a tiny little cafe that serves the most amazing panini’s and fries (fried in duck fat) with different dips. We had a meatloaf panini, a duck confit panini and fries with a lemon mayo dip. On our way to see a real working Maine Lighthouse we stopped at one of Maine’s best bakeries, The Standard Baking Co.

Can’t wait for our next adventure!

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Leftovers by Stella Newman is the latest selection for Cupcake Book Club. I’m so glad that I chose this book and it was a bargain for 99p on Amazon. The book is all about Susie and her job at a PR firm. She feels like a Leftover. Single, over thirty and unable to get over her ex-boyfriend Jake. She’s consumed with counting down the days until she gets the promotion she deserves and the big bonus that comes with it. Finally she can finally quit the job she detests and do something with her life that she really wants, work with food!

Anyone that’s ever had an office job can relate to this novel, some of the characters in it and the nuances of office life. The suits with their endless power points full of office jargon and big buzz words (I like my job but it still makes me laugh. I do love a good power point presentation). The joy of finding the best colored post it’s at the back of the stationary cupboard, finding where they hide the good tea bags in the tea room and the woes of cut backs and when they stop ordering the good pens.

If I were still single then I think I would find myself and Susie have a lot in common. Sometimes she seems to be on auto pilot at work and then finally switches “on” when it’s time to grab a burrito for lunch, make dinner or whip up a good dessert. Unlike me however, Susie’s real passion is Italian cooking and specifically pasta.

I started Leftovers on the plane from London to Boston and easily spent a few hours of the flight occupied with it. I enjoyed the characters and the story. It’s funny and it cleverly portrays office life and living in London.

If you’ve had the time to read Leftovers make sure you drop a comment into the brand new Book Club Forum!

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Fresh off my vacation high I came back to London with a crashing low. I had a run in with a bicycle last week on my way to work and it was pretty scary. I was walking from Monument to Liverpool Street like I do every morning, listening to my music and thinking about the million things going on at work, and then BAM! Next thing I know I’m on the middle of the pavement. It happened so fast. I was crossing a one way street and checked for traffic but a bicycle whizzing down against the traffic got me.

Luckily, I was not seriously hurt. My hands are really scraped up and my knee is purple. One of the perils of city living I suppose! A nice lady stopped and helped me up. My hands felt like they were on fire. I didn’t know what to do so I walked to work and went straight to the nurse. I’m fine but was feeling pretty sorry for myself and my bandaged mummy hands. I hit the pavement hard enough that there is a small dent in my engagement ring!

I very rarely dedicate or shout out brands in their own posts but sitting down at the end of that horrible day with a box of chocolate from Hotel Chocolat certainly helped my mood that evening!  All I can say is that these chocolates arrived at just the right time.

I had planned to give my box to Kayla for her birthday but they didn’t come in time. The day I landed in Boston we took a stroll down Newbury Street and low and behold there is a Hotel Chocolat. Even better once we went in store they were having a sale! Which is mostly unheard of in the UK stores. I snagged Kayla an H Box for $7.50 (70% off, she didn’t mind that it was a branded Mother’s Day box). In the end it was win win. Kayla loved her cake and chocolates and I got to enjoy an H box when I got back to London. She was most fond of the salted praline chocolates.

My box of chocolate was a product sample and I asked Hotel Chocolat specifically for the Summer Selection H box. I’m so pleased with my choice. I love the fruit truffles! They taste very refreshing. A nice tarty fruit flavor and not overwhelmingly sweet. Some of my favorite Trillionaire’s shortbread are thrown in there too. I love the oozing caramel and crunchy shortbread pieces.

Hotel Chocolat provided me with 1 sample box

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While I was in the US it was my sister Kayla’s birthday! Even on vacation I manage to find time to bake :) I told Kayla that I would bake whatever she wanted. I tried to temp her with cheesecakes, amazingly tall layer cakes, birthday cakes in jars but in the end she decided that I could not sway her with my pretty Pinterest boards, she wanted a classic birthday cake.

She decided on a classic yellow cake with fudge frosting and don’t forget the rainbow sprinkles!  Kayla made a great choice. The cake was super fluffy and moist. A thousand times better than the kind of yellow cake that comes from a box. I was dubious of the method, it combines the flour in with the sugar, but no need to worry the cakes comes out like perfection. We whipped our frosting and it came out rich and fudgey.

We halved the recipe and made it in two 6 inch pans. You could go further and slice the two layers to make a 4 layer cake or bake for less time in 4 pans. Kayla cut a stencil out of greaseproof paper and poured the sprinkles over it.

This is Macaroni’s favorite kitchen trick. He sits ever so quiet trying to catch a crumb while I bake the cake. He never sits still for more than a minute! When I was taking the cake out of the oven I had to open the dishwasher and let him have a sniff in there to distract him from the hot oven.

adapted from Completely Delicious

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I made my second trip to New England in May to visit my sister. I’ve been once before so on this trip we went and visited some different things. The weather could not make up it’s mind while I was there. It was warm, cold, snowing and blazing hot all in the space of one week!

There were a few days that it rained and we had to come up with a few indoor activities. It was hard because especially in New Hampshire a lot of fun things are outdoors. We decided to do a mini New Hampshire brewery tour. Before I left I came across a whole variety of food maps, live free and savor, from the New Hampshire tourism board.

We ended up visiting three breweries. A micro meadery, a craft brewery of medium size and a giant American brewing icon. We didn’t visit them all in the same day. It would have been a little too much drinking for one day!

We hit up The Moonlight Meadery first. I’ve heard of mead before, it’s what they drank in the middle ages. Mead is a fermented beverage like wine but made with water and honey instead of grapes. The Moonlight Meadery is a small scale operation open in 2010. The Moonlight Meadery make a range of amazing flavors with romantic names like Blissful, Smitten, Indulge. My favorite was the Apple Pie mead. A tour and tasting was $15.

Red Hook brewery in Portsmouth, NH was up next. Red Hook is actually from Seattle and was one of America’s first “craft” beer makers. It’s grown over the last 30 years and purchased the brewery in NH during it’s expansion. During the tour we learned about the different types of beer which include IPA, lagers and ale. We also had some tastings. My favorite was the Longboard and the Wisecracker. The tour and tasting were $1.00!

Last is the Anheuser Busch brewery in Merrimack, NH. This factory has 2 miles of conveyor belts and is actually the smallest factory they have in the US. We visited the famous Budweiser Clydesdales but sadly their other mascot Bud the dog wasn’t wandering around while we were there. The factory is huge and the day we went they were making Bud Light. The bottling room is the most fascinating. The bottle wizz around the factory at incredible speeds. The tour and tasting was FREE. I hardly ever drink beer but I found myself partial to the Bud Light Lime.

For comparison The Moonlight Meadery bottle at a rate of about 400 an hour, Red Hook bottle 400 a minute and Anheuser Busch bottle beer at 800 bottles a minute. The difference in scale was fascinating and we enjoyed each brewery and tasting.

If you’re interested in brewing there is a plethora of breweries and wineries all over New England. Next time I definitely want to visit a winery that makes fruit wines. Don’t forget your ID!

This was my own personal vacation

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This is probably one of the strangest foodie novels that I’ve read so far. (Dis)comfort Food is a strange combination of appetizing, unappetizing, dark and gruesome. The story of how one woman goes from being painfully average to a witch living in Arkansas.

The story starts with Rosie living a very average and mediocre life when suddenly she finds herself caring for her terminally ill husband. Suddenly a mysterious friend of Rosie’s mother, Vera Caldwell, shows up with a delicious Cheesy Chicken Delight casserole. Circumstances change and Rosie finds out her marriage is not what she thought it was and finds herself plunged into a world of ancient witchcraft.

Like a lot of the foodie novels I read food and “magic” are often intertwined themes. Food brings out a lot of emotions in people. What I liked about this book was that it explored a more sinister side. Some parts verge on grotesque but more in an almost comical way.

A large part of the book focuses on a magical recipe journal. I don’t want to divulge too much but the book cooks up such “homemade” casseroles as Cheesy Chicken Delight and Ranch House Chicken Roundup.

I received a copy to review

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The following is a true story. I woke up early one Saturday morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I gave up and got some coffee brewing and put some laundry on. The phone rings. Who would be calling at 7am?

I ran to answer it before it woke up Alex. I would be seriously annoyed if it was a telemarketer this early. For the last 6 years we’ve been getting wrong number calls asking for Mrs. White. I answer the phone and someone says, “I’d like to place an order for breakfast in bed please and make it muffins”. Ha, ha, ha, very funny Alex!

Since I was up and I was planning on making waffles anyway I said I’d look for something that was coffee cake like. Then I spent 10 minutes explaining that coffee cake doesn’t have coffee in it. Alex was firm that he wanted coffee muffins.

Thanks to Une gamine dans la cuisine such a muffin does exist! The only change I made was to use a Speculoos spice mix and I made a vanilla glaze instead of a maple glaze.

These are some of the best muffins I’ve made in a long time. Seriously soft with lots of flavor.

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I’m continuing in my quest to use up my American baking supplies. I still have about 10 bags of various chocolate chips, some with just a handful of chips left.  I always think I’ll save them for something exciting or I just can’t bear to throw them away. I see a lot more cookies in my future. I used up the last of my marshmallow bits for these delicious pretzel marshmallow cookies.

I got back from the US on Sunday and since I’ve been gone a week there aren’t any baked goods in the house, sob! I probably stuffed my face more than enough last week but just looking at the picture of these cookies is seriously making me drool.

I love these cookies because salty and sweet is one of my favorite dessert combinations so I couldn’t pass up these amazing cookies from Bree.

adapted from Baked Bree

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I’ve just spent a week in the US and like I always do I came back so full I felt a little queasy on the plane ride back. I ate some amazing food in New Hampshire, Boston and Maine, which I’ll post about later. To recover from my foodscapades I’m on a self imposed diet of oatmeal for breakfast and salads for lunch.

Oatmeal can be pretty tedious and has all the texture of wall paper paste so I’m always on the lookout for ways to liven it up. Infusing earl grey tea bags in the milk before adding the oats imparts the bergamont and black tea essence.

The recipe is from A Better Happier St. Sebastian. I didn’t simmer my oatmeal for 20 minutes. I did around 10 minutes instead. I don’t like my oatmeal too dry. If you’re a big tea lover like me than you will love this oatmeal. Next time I’m going to try a few Chai tea bags for a spicy oatmeal.

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