Recommended by Miss R D (via her contact in the Afternoon Tea underground of Chicago…). This is now my official 'best afternoon tea in London bar none'!

High accolade indeed, but how can it not, when the jam and clotted cream arrive not in measly little dishes, but in gravy boats(!) and the (homemade in the kitchen in the back) cakes are on a stand where the handle is a pair of golden-shod ladies legs?

Where a tea comprising fresh, warm, scones, generous jam & clotted cream, a selection of brownies (blonde, chocolate and a nutty one), selection of meringues (cocoa, raspberry and plain) plus your choice of cupcake is all yours for £8!

I don't know if there is an Ottolenghi connection, the meringues and passion fruit tarts bear a remarkable resemblance, does anyone know?

If you have a surplus of over-enthusiastically bought clementines that aren’t quite as juicy as they once were, here’s an idea for a zesty, caramelised treat;

• Light the oven and set to gas mark 5
• Top and tail the clementines. Place top and tail slices into a pan with some sugar, cinnamon and water. Boil.
• Meanwhile cut the top and tailed clems into 5mm slices and lay out onto a baking sheet.
• Sprinkle a bit of sugar all over the clems and blob some butter around and about on the top too.
• After about 10 mins of boiling, drain the cooked peel, sugar and cinnamon mixture and pour the liquid over the butter and sugared clems on your baking sheet
• Whack in the oven until they are looking a golden brown; even a bit crispy.
• Use as they are to nibble on, make a dessert with (chop up and add to plain yogurt), add to muesli or whizz up roughly for some quick marmalade!

The annual Southwyck Christmas party went well yesterday; caught up with a lot of friends I haven’t seen in a while, ate and drank in a festive fashion, and even had an unprompted singalong!.

This year’s theme was to make a paperchain to be strung in the living room; each person contributing a link decorated and made however they wanted out of whatever they wanted. If people couldn’t be there yesterday, the link acted as Christmas card and they sent them along in the post. There were some fabulous ones made including the prerequisite one with cotton-ball snow, a sewn fabric one containing dried lavender, a möbius loop one from a scientific uncle (heh) and lovely crocheted link with a dangly snowball pompom! This one I confiscated from the chain and wore..

So this years gifts have been mostly handmade, including;

• Peppermint & Rose kind-of-creams*
• Frankincense / Clementine bath salts** (a bit fail, as most people have showers I found…)
• Fudge*** – supremo hit (if I may say so myself!) as it worked first time, is v tasty and easy to adapt. A tiny bit of fail was cutting it into star shapes for gifts, which meant that were lots of trimmings of peculiar sizes that – oh dear – had to stay here to be eaten by us!

* recipe hastily scribbled down from a cafe’s copy of Fresh magazine.
** Martha – Body Scrub; adapted scents and changed it from a scrub to salts using Dead Sea Salt.
*** Martha again – Foolproof Holiday Fudge; adapted to use veggie marshmallows (US import, try Sweet & Sara or Sweet Vegan in the UK) and G&B’s Maya Gold choc; seriously tempted to try another batch using their white chocolate. I’m guessing both these projects will be available on her site after the next issue is published?

ETA: Tried another batch of fudge using white chocolate and it failed miserably; it just stayed melty-marhmallowy and didn’t set.

Yayy… lots of cakes made and eaten yesterday and a bit of Phd research in the corner all equalled to a lovely afternoon and lots of cash…

Add to that the £145 donated online, and I’m very pleased to be able to pass on a total of £285 to the Macmillan charity…. thank you all

Tomorrow is the Macmillan Cancer Charity’s World’s Biggest Coffee Morning event. I’m holding one at ours in the afternoon and cakes have been planned..

• gingerbread ’shapes’; cos I love gingerbread
• chilli choc fudge cake; that Dan lepard is a genius
• beetroot cake; guess what was in the veg box!
• pumpkin pie; autumnal innit?

Still, I know it’s a work day, and not all of you who read my blog are even in the same country, so I’ve also set up a virtual Coffee Morning event too! You can still have your cake and eat it (boom boom) at work, or in a different time zone nonetheless…All amounts are appreciated; from broken Digestive to Black Forest Gateaux size

This is what a night of friends bowling / drinking / karaoke / drinking / cake and more drinking does to you kids!

Me and a pal, at the new PatVal…

Woohoo! I only discovered I had any beans ready to eat after my friend’s 1 yr old was rootling about in the garden yesterday… Had to lift up all the leaves but then, there they were, all 7 of them, hiding underneath… [beams proudly].

Had them steamed with our dinner tonight (tasty!), but disappointingly all the fire-tongue-iness disappeared during cooking.