fancy friday

The concept of fancy friday seems to have fallen by the wayside a little - although I am keen to get it back on board. It's great to be able to celebrate something beautiful on a regular basis.

This week food packaging gets the ff treatment - Lovely Package is a sort of website/blog which collates the best of packaging design ranging from agency commissions seen on supermarket shelves to student projects. To me packaging completes the experience - especially when it's in relation to anything sweet. Something thoughtfully designed and intuitively put together makes the sensation of comsumption so much more pleasureable - so feast your eyes thusly on the cream of the edible crop...

high street cakage: M&S cupcakes

Every now and then the urge for cake comes strong when you're in somewhere like, say, Liverpool Street Train Station and desperate as you might be to find some beautifully presented and artisanally baked confection the reality is that a hit of high street cake is necessary. Good old M&S comes to the rescue in the form of it's American style cupcakes (and the rest of the cake range is pretty good too - especially the fresh victoria sponge and the New York style cheesecake).

It just so happened to be the case that as I was passing through looking for wine and expensive pre-prepared food that the raspberry and white chocolate cupcakes were only a pound for two, so I knew it was time to give them a try and scoff them whilst catching up on missed episodes of Mad Men.

The cakes were moist as described, the frosting was tangy, but as with every cake purchased from the supermarket it felt and tasted a little too perfect - a fabulous bakin' boys deluxe if you will. For a pound I'm certainly not complaining but neither do they represent an exquisite and beautifully crafted treat. The icing was soft and the flavour was offset well by the dots of white chocolate and importantly it was plentiful - it wasn't too sweet and the base wasn't too vanilla-y (the way my baking always tastes, and pretty awful). I'd like to see some kind of additional levels of fun in side the cupcake itself - maybe some fruit or something moist to break up that great hunk of sponge and frosting.

Aoologies for the lack of any actual pictures - once the sun goes down my flat is so dark that anything seems to come out looking dreadful! I'm going to need to work on that.

Cyprus

The first lot of images from our recent sojourn in Cyprus - sea swimming, Troodos, Kolossi castle and street scenes in Phoini.

back

I'm back - I've been sunning myself in Cyprus for the past week. In truth I thought I'd accomplish a lot of great things alongside the sunbathing, drinking and swimming in crystal clear water but other than taking a lot of photographs I didn't do much.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I'd go back to Cyprus, there's too many British ex-pats and the beaches don't match the beauty of those in Sardinia. They also have no idea what a truly dry white wine tastes like!

On the plus side some bits of the Island are incredibly beautiful - one day we went on an off road expedition to the Akamas peninsula, the land rover took us up uneven roads on the ledge of perilously high mountains, we walked a gorge, saw wild goats and drove through a village so high in the Trodoos mountains that clouds blew across the road.

Still, whilst I'm glad to be back in some ways the weather has turned distinctly autumnal, and work looms large.

Once I've edited I'll share some pictures, and I have plenty planned for the next few weeks. For today, since we flew in over night, I'm snuggling down with Mr LROC and catching up on all the TV we've missed.

He has vowed to set up a somewhat less charming sounding blog called London Review of Toilets - I'm hoping it's not an indication of how he feels about this one!

In the meantime here's some Hipstamatic joy from Cyprus.

i love rococo

I'll start by saying that I wish blogging was more like the actual press, you rave about something and receive a whole load of it in return. Because if I was about to receive a large delivery of chocolate from the wonderful rococo (please note idiotic spelling mistake above, if it's any justification at all I have a stinking cold), I'd be a very happy girl indeed.

Whilst I am throughly in love with cakes, chocolate, especially the quality stuff has a big place in my heart too.

Not only are their chocolates delectable, and made in all kinds of weird and wonderful flavours (my favourite of all time is the sea salt, so much so that I can forgive them for making one using cardamon - yuk!) but the packaging is fantastic too.

Their store on the Marylebone road is a chocoholics paradise and offers truffle making sessions that would be perfect for a birthday or a hen do.

In the meantime enjoy the eye candy (pun intended!). The sweet chocolate cats are adorably twee aren't they?

http://rococochocolates.com/

the perfect getaway

By the time you read this, I may, or may not have booked a last minute holiday. Due to budgetary limitations it will probably be cheap and cheerful but in a perfect world I'd take off to the Perivolas hotel in Oia, Santorini and chill out in their infinity pool overlooking the Caldera and drink fine Santorinian wines.

Unfortunately a week in these this boutique hotel, formed out of Oia's traditional cave houses will set me back more than a fortnight in the Maldives. Still one can dream...

Check out their website for more travel porn at http://www.perivolassuites.gr/

macarons from paul

I had the pleasure and privilege of being in Paris for work on Monday, shopping no less. Although this sounds like a fun little jolly, it actually involves getting up at 3.30 am and parading up and down the main streets of Paris looking for inspiration. I can't complain too much though.

We all know that no trip to Paris is complete without macarons, and having carefully googled the locations of all of the branches of Laduree around town, we completely ran out of time and there was no choice but to buy from the Paul counter at the Eurostar terminal. Normally this isn't too much of a problem - the patisserie is pretty good and the do the best quiches and sandwiches to be found anywhere at Premier Vision and the macarons I have sampled in the past have always been good however, buying of their boxes of 12 minis this week, I was sorely disappointed.

The shells were chewy and cake like - the flavours odd and indistinguisable - one even tasted like bubblegum but was, I presume, intended to be strawberry. One of the fillings was a strange, thick jam. The overall experience was like eating macarons made by the Tesco bakery.

The most annoying thing was that there's a Pierre Herme in Galeries Lafayette - and we were even on the food floor. This has however given me the urge to take a little day trip of my own across the North Sea for cake eating and shopping