The Sugar Plum Tearoom, Rhewl

Hello everyone! I'm sorry for the long gap between blogging this past two weeks, it's just Ive been totally consumed in the opening of our new tearoom 'The Sugar Plum Tearoom'. Ive been involved in so much, from decor, to preparing food, choosing crockery and adding final touches to make it extra special. Now that it has finally officially opened I will have more time to do bogging, art and cooking etc :) But for now, I have some pictures to share with you from this first week (We had a 'soft lauch' on Monday and were now at the end of the first week).

We wanted the tearoom to be a lovely place for all generations, and somewhere where you have the combination of beautiful surrounding's and delicious local food! The colour scheme is light and bright and I especially love the different coloured chairs and food tins that hold the plants :)

Scott has been wonderful, and spent so many hours helping my parents, myself and the staff at Homewoodbound out in making the tearoom possible, - so thanks Scott :) He's also head waiter and is a pro at the coffee machine already! (I'm still learning that part....)

The kitchen is open plan and all the fresh homemade local cakes are displayed on the marble counter.

Here are some blueberry cupcakes we tried on Saturday - they were so pretty and still tasted delicious and creamy.

Happy customers from this past week :) -

Cath is the lovely lady that makes the majority of the cakes - she's really talented and her St Clements mascarpone sponge cake is a real favourite already!

This was our welsh afternoon tea with bara brith and Welsh cakes, served with butter and a pot of tea for two.

My homemade 'Watercress' soup was going down a treat earlier in the week. (The same watercress soup recipe I posted a few weeks ago).

This was my grandma enjoying a cup of tea this afternoon, I love her too bits and she and my grandad have both been to sample various items from the menu.

I will post more as time goes on, but I'm also working of starting a blog just for the tearoom, so I will also post the link for that site as soon as I'm finished tweaking it...

You can find us on Faceboook - The sugar plum tearoom

And on twitter - SugarPlumTRoom

The website is also in development, but my mu Hazel has written a blog featured on Homewood Bounds site - Tearoom Blog

Chocolate tiffin cake

Chocolate tiffin is my go-to cake of choice when I'm out. Sometimes I fancy a brownie or a Victoria sponge, but generally I tend to edge towards a tiffin. I think it's because I am such a chocolate monster, that I sometimes get bored with all the sponge in cake. My friend Cecily, and boyfriend Scott think I'm quite irritating when I eat all the icing and filling of a cake but leave the sponge. I don't know about you, but to me that's the best bit! Tiffin however doesn't have sponge, especially not dry sponge, as it consists of a biscuit base, soaked in butter and syrup and flavoured with cocoa powder - YUM.

Sometimes it can have big chunks of biscuit, or can be finely crushed, sometimes it has nuts, cherries and dried fruit, and sometimes it's plain. But it HAS to have a lovely thick layer of milk (preferably milk, but dark will do) chocolate on top!

Recipe adapted from This page

Ingredients: 

110g (4 oz) butter

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons golden syrup

4 teaspoons cocoa

225g (8 oz) digestive biscuits, crushed (some fine and some chunky)

1 handful of raisins , and or glacier cherries, dates etc

225g (8 oz) milk chocolate

1. Melt the butter and syrup in a saucepan. Careful not to burn the butter. Now add the cocoa powder and sugar.

2. Crush the digestive biscuits. You can do this by hand or in a food processor. I place the biscuits into a freezer bag and use a rolling pin to crush them, which is good as it finely crushes some parts and leaves some good chunks too.

3. Now add  your biscuits and handful of fruit/nuts to your wet mixture. Give them all a good mix so the dry ingredients are all covered.

4. Pour mixture into a Swiss roll size tin and press down. Melt the chocolate and pour over the mixture in the tin.  Refrigerate for roughly and hour or until ready to serve.

 

 I like mine with a cup of tea. It doesn't really need anything with it as it's so delicious and rich as it is.

  This is also a lovely little plate I found in a box of things my mum had bought at an antiques fair last week. The colours of the flowers are really cool, and I like that their not just pinks and daintily coloured. The maroon works well with the dark green, and really sets off the cake !

 This cake doesn't last very long in our house! My mum is also a big tiffin fan, and my dad and Scott just like cake generally, so they regularly enjoy eating the concoctions I find myself making.