Halloween Cupcake Decorating - That Cake, Guisborough

As my mum is a keen baker and cupcake decorator, when she spotted a session on in the local area to decorate cupcakes she was right on it booking two places for last Sunday. Now I don't ever pretend to be able to bake or decorate cakes very well, but I try my best... As I've never been to anything like this I didn't know what to expect.

The session took place at That Cake's Tea Room in Guisborough, if you are from the North East area you may have heard of them.

For £9 you received four cupcakes to decorate as well as two drinks (two cups of tea for me!). There are four tables in the tea room and they were all full of people ready to decorate their cakes. We were all given a piping bag and asked what colour/flavour icing we would like (although we all ended up having bit of each others as you can see from my cakes!). Then we were let loose with all the lovely decoration pieces we had on our tables as well as fondant, chocolate bones/skulls and sweets from the other table.

It was a lot of fun to get to decorate my cakes as usually mum does all this when she bakes so I never get a chance. I like to think I did well and that all my cakes look at least a little bit halloweeny/scary. If you can't tell what my cakes are - from left to right: a ghost, a graveyard, a cockroach and then a pumpkin.

That Cake did a great job running the sessions and I think they kept everyone very happy. After everyone had finished decorating their cakes they took pictures of each and posted them on their facebook page. The person whose cakes get the most likes wins tea and cake for two in That Cake's tea room! 

That Cake have decided to do Christmas cupcake decorating sessions due to the success of the Halloween ones. I would definitely recommend getting yourself booked up. It's something different that gets you out of the house for a couple of hours and who doesn't love cake?!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Baking Pumpkin and Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

I like cooking, making savoury meals rather than baking. It's not really my thing although I do love the delicious outcome. So why did I attempt to make cupcakes? Well, I'm a sucker for anything pumpkin, and with Halloween coming up I decided to give them a try.

So on the day of the big shop around Morrisons I was scouring the shelves for a tin of pumpkin puree in order to make my cupcakes. No such luck. Instead I bought a pumpkin thinking I could just puree it, oh no I had to cook it first.

Here is a simple guide to pumpkin puree, should you need it...

First slice the pumpkin in half, scoop out the icky stringy bits, cut into segments and place in the oven for 40-45 mins.

After they are cooked carefully peel the skin away with a knife and then put the flesh in a blender! Easy!

So now I had my pumpkin puree, time for the good bit! I found an amazing blog that has a recipe for pumpkin and chocolate chip cupcakes called Sally's Baking Addiction. She has soo many pumpkin recipes, you should check it out! I won't bore you with the recipe, you can go to Sally's website for that but here are a few pictures from my baking experience...

Here are the final cupcakes and I have to say they tasted really good! I was really impressed with my first attempt at making cupcakes. The pumpkin made the cakes moist and they didn't taste weird at all. Everyone at work has had only good things to say about these cakes so I am super happy!

Overall I would definitely make these again!

What do you think? Could you eat pumpkin cupcakes?

Off to Whitby for Fish and Chips - Trenchers, Whitby

Earlier this month after a trip to Saltburn Vintage Fair we were stuck as to where to go for lunch. Mum suggested we make the trip to Whitby for fish and chips. I was definitely up for fish and chips plus she was driving so it meant I could just take in the scenery. As we trudged down there it was raining, foggy and just plain horrid, however, when we arrived the sun came out and it became a lovely day.

We went straight for fish and chips to a place called Trenchers. If you have been to Whitby before you will have probably heard of this place as people regard it as one of Whitby's best fish and chip restaurants.

I got a small cod and chips and it still looked huge! I couldn't finish it all but had a good go at it. The prices are a bit expensive but I think you expect that for fish these days. The restaurant is lovely and posh, very tidy and spacious. Whenever I go back to Whitby I would consider visiting Trenchers again as it was a nice place.

Here are a few token Whitby shots for you to enjoy!

Have you been to Whitby before? Did you go to Trenchers? What are your thoughts?

Fancy a steak? El Gaucho, York

For my boyfriend's birthday we had a day trip to York. As we are major foodies when visiting new places, we decided to scope out where we would eat before we arrived. We chose a place for breakfast(brunch) and a place for tea. Unfortunately we arrived after the place we'd chose for breakfast stopped serving so had to find a cafe for a greasy English brekkie.

The place we chose for dinner was a suggestion by one of Matt's work colleagues. It was an Argentine steak house called El Gaucho. Me and Matt are lovers of steak and love to try new places so this was perfect for us.

As per usual we had a bit of trouble finding the place but that is just our bad sense of direction. It was down a street which had a lot of other lovely looking restaurants on. Inside it is quite small but there were a lot of tables dotted about as well as lots of random Argentine related art on the walls.

We both chose to have the sirloin steak - me choosing the 11oz and Matt choosing the 14oz! When it came it tasted lovely! It was full of flavour. I accidentally knocked all my salad off my plate whilst trying to cut my steak just after I took the above picture. I told the hostess and she didn't seem to mind too much...oops!

I should mention before the steak we were given a basket of bread with some sort of herby/garlic butter to put on. It was soo nice. I wanted more than one slice but didn't want to ruin my dinner.

If you are in York on a night time (it opens at 6pm) you should definitely try this out.

Have you been before? Do you love steak as much as I do?!

A day out to Runswick Bay

For a walkout, myself and my boyfriend decided we would take in some sea air and head to Runswick Bay. I didn't know much about the bay before I went down but I discovered that it is a beautiful place to visit. Although not much to do, the views are beautiful which means it is definitely worth a visit. There is a cafe so make sure to bring some pennies as we didn't, so missed out!

Excuse the fact that this is a picture heavy post but I just wanted to show you how pretty it was! Bear in mind we only visited a few weeks ago...there were children IN THE SEA! I have no idea how they were having fun, I was freezing just sitting about in my coat.

Have you visited Runswick Bay before? Do you fancy visiting now?!

Tea at 12 Harland Place, Norton

A few weeks back myself and my friend Danni (yes she has the same name as me!) went out for tea to a place called 12 Harland Place in Norton, Stockon on Tees.

For those of you who don't live up North you won't have heard of Stockton, let alone Norton but let me tell you it is a small town that to be honest, I don't visit often. I've heard good things from it and might get back there in the daytime.

Danni found this place online after googling somewhere we could meet up for food nearby. After reading through the menu we decided this would be the place. I didn't manage to take any pictures of the interior, only the food but I suppose that is what you really want to see! Inside it was modern and quirky, somewhere that I would definitely choose to go.

I ordered a grilled prime 8oz  steak burger, toasted brioche bun, homemade slaw, skinny fries which came on a wooden board as you can see on the picture. To be honest I wasn't all that impressed with the burger as it turned out to be an average burger with icky grizzly bits. The slaw, fries and salad were nice though!

Then came dessert. I chose some sort of hazelnut chocolate cheesecake and it was very yummy! If I hadn't filled myself on fries I could have finished the whole lot. Plus it came cutely decorated as you can see below.

I've been informed that they do a 'pudding club' every first Monday of the month. You get 10 desserts and then vote on which one should be on the menu for that month in the restaurant. I will definitely be going to this.

It is unfortunate that I didn't enjoy my burger but this wouldn't put me off from trying something else here as I really enjoyed the atmosphere and dessert.

Have you ever been? Do you think you'd like this place?

Tees Dock 50th Anniversary Celebrations. What was all the fuss?!

Last week marked 50 years since the official opening of Tees Dock in 1963. The company I work for are owners and operators of this Port and thought it would be a great idea to celebrate this milestone. To do this we had a week jam-packed with events for current employees, ex-employees, stakeholders and local schools. This took months of planning but finally came together. Although this is another boring work post I wanted to show you a few pictures of what this all looked like as I am pretty proud of what we achieved.

When the schools came in we talked about the journey of a tea bag from the source, through the port into your cups.

Then on to the dinners! We held three of these over the week inviting ex-employees and current employees that had over 20 years service at Tees Dock. Can you imagine working somewhere for over 20 years?!

For our stakeholder event, we wanted to cut a cake to celebrate the anniversary so we commissioned Middlesbrough college to bake us one. It was HUGE! They also baked us 800 cakes for our family fun day! So yummy.

This cake was baked by Betty's in Harrogate to be given away in the raffle. The person who won this let us share it between our colleagues and I can tell you it was so lush.

This was such a stressful event but I think in the end it paid off. Everyone enjoyed themselves and only has good things to say about the event.

What do you think of the event? Did we do a good job? Would you have loved to have gone?