Tesco Real Food - How to make an Afternoon Tea

Last week I attended a Tesco Afternoon Tea Baking event at Food at 52, a cooking school in London. I love an afternoon tea and so I was looking forward to making some delicious cakes. I'm not a particularly skilled baker, I don't have a lot of time these days but I can appreciate a good cake and I would love to bake more.

I met up with a lot of other lovely bloggers (they were all of the foodie variety - so I did feel slightly deficient with my cookery skills!) who I know could whip up a Victoria Sponge with their eyes closed. I swooned at the gorgeous mint green Kitchen Aid we used - is it possible to fall in love with a kitchen appliance? I had a couple of glasses of delicious New Zealand sauvignon and finally after all the baking I scoffed what I thought was the most heavenly slice of Victoria Sponge AND a mini bakewell tart! Oh and as a reward for doing the bathing and bedtime routines for the kids I took home 3 different cakey items for the OH.

Me eyeing up the object of desire....

On the night we made: Victoria Sponge, Mini Bakewell Tarts, Salted Caramel shortbread, Black Forest Cupcakes, Fruit tarlets and scones. I decided to recreate the scones this weekend when it rained all day on Sunday. Isla always wants to help with cooking so I knew these would be nice and easy - much to her dismay though they didn't involve icing and sprinkles....

Perfect Scones - Serves 8

350g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
40g caster sugar
75g butter
175ml milk
1 egg beaten, for glazing

To serve: butter, jam, whipped or clotted cream, strawberries

* Preheat oven to 200c (180 fan)
* Mix flour, baking powder, caster sugar and a pinch of salt in a large bowl and then rub in the butter in your fingertips until it's like crumbs
* Add the milk a little at a time, bringing the mixture together until it makes a firm dough. Handle as little as possible but add a bit more milk if it needs
* Lightly flour the surface and put the dough out and shape it into a circle about 1.5cm thick (a finger and a half)
* Cut out the scones using a cutter, pressing firmly through the dough and twisting slightly as you pull it back out
* Put the scones on a non stick baking sheet and brush the tops with beaten egg. Bake in the oven for 12 - 15 minutes until risen and golden
* Leave to cool for a few minutes and then unleash the jam and clotted cream and GET STUCK IN!!!

Isla helping to make 'perfect' scones. They were lush.

The Tesco Real Food Baking Challenge is running for six weeks until 21^stOctober. They are asking customers to upload their best baking recipe to be entered into a weekly prize draw and a grand prize draw, which includes a luxury stay and cooking class at Eckington Manor, a KitchenAid mixer, kitchen utensils, an Eric Lanlard Home Bake cookbook and Persil washing up liquid products.

some of the lovely prizes.....

For more information on the baking challenge, visit the competition page:

http://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/customer-recipes.html


I received a Tesco goodie bag and travel expenses for attending the event.

Tesco Real Food Cooking With Kids Event

At the weekend Isla and I went to an event for Tesco Real Food at Maggie & Rose (yes, I know, lucky to go there twice in one week!) and we both had such a good time! The theme was 'Cooking with Kids' and we were going to cook two yummy, quick and healthy recipes together.

Isla and I have done some baking together, biscuits and cakes being what we've achieved so far. The only thing that puts me off cooking with her is the amount of mess it makes! So the idea that we were going to someone else's kitchen to make mess really appealed.

Our trip to London went smoothly and we arrived to meet the other bloggers and their kids, everyone was super friendly and once all had arrived we rolled up our sleeves and got stuck in!
First up was Super Spinach Filo Tarts (another post will follow with the two recipes we made on the day and some kids nutritional tips). These were so easy to make (especially when the onion is already fried, the spinach already cooked by someone else - hahaha!) and on tasting them later they were delicious. Isla got to spoon everything into her bowl and mix it up, she also crumbled the feta cheese (immediately wanting her hands cleaned!) and then finally used the brush to put the butter on the filo and wrapped it all up into a parcel and here she is proudly showing it off before it went in the oven....

Next up we made a beetroot and chocolate muffin and this was the tricky one. Not from the point of view that it was hard to make, but that it was difficult to stop Isla from constantly putting the spoon in her mouth or sticking her finger in the mixture knowing it was a chocolate cake we were making. The addition of beetroot to this muffin is such a great idea, chopped up really small (which ours wasn't as it was Isla doing the chopping!) no one would even guess it was in there, so a really good way of getting some five a day in your kids.

While we waited for the food to cook the kids got to make their own chefs hat:

Now I have to be honest and say that Isla didn't eat the Spinach Filo Tart. She's only just starting to venture away from her staple diet of pasta and I'm so proud of her when she tries new foods but this was just a bit too different for her at the moment. She did get stuck into the muffin though. For me, I loved both! Cooking with Isla was really fun and it's made me think that we can do a bit more than just biscuits and cakes. We could also make a few savoury things, homemade pizza is the first thing that springs to mind, we could make faces and really have fun with the toppings.

Tesco Real Food are encouraging anyone to upload their own recipes to the Real Food site and if you submit a Cooking with Kids recipe it at the moment you are in with a chance to win a cooking weekend at Augill Castle - it looks absolutely divine! I'm sure you've all got a recipe in you that could stand you a chance of winning such a fantastic prize.

Thank you to Tesco for inviting us to this event, I love getting to spend time with Isla on her own, a rarer thing now that Noah is on the scene and she really enjoyed the experience. She especially loved the little baking case that she was given at the end of the session:

And here are all the bloggers and kids looking happy after all that cooking!

I was invited to this event in order to help me write this blog post about Tesco Real Food. All opinions are my own.