Afternoon Tea at The Angel, Abergavenny

Last week we took the trip up to Abergavenny to try the Afternoon Tea at The Angel Hotel.

The Angel has won several awards, including the Award of Excellence from the UK Tea Guild, so we were expecting great things.

We arrived at 3 o'clock and were the first to be seated in the Wedgewood Room where afternoon tea is served. We then were given a tea menu. There were so many teas to decide from it was a really hard choice! I went for the Mango Infusion which was served in a lovely china tea cup and tasted perfect. Of course if you're not much of a tea drinker there's also coffee and hot chocolate options.

Afternoon tea is priced at £17.80 per person.

Then came the best bit, the cake. Each stand is between 2 people and has 3 layers; sandwiches, cakes, and trifles. Once you'd finished the sandwich layer they bought out the scones with jam and cream. My single piece of advice is don't eat lunch before you arrive!

We had 4 different sandwiches each, one egg, one salmon, one cheese and onion and one ham. The salmon was my personal favourite.

Next up was the cake layer, each was a tiny little piece of heaven. I'm not going to describe each one or we'd be here for year, but I'll do a brief overview. There was a raspberry cake, coffee cake, custard slice, slice of a pavlova-esque dessert and a few extras! My only complaint about this layer is that it isn't one each. It gets a bit messy having to cut creamy, sticky cakes in half so that everyone gets a piece.

Then on the top layer held 2 mini trifles. These were your standard trifle, with cream, custard, a jam and sponge base topped with a fresh raspberry. Good, but nothing on my Grandma's trifle. 

The scones were also great, although by this point I was waving my white flag in defeat. Luckily, if you can't manage everything they are more than happy to pop everything in a box for you to take away.

Overall it was a really lovely afternoon. I think I'm slightly leaning toward favouring the afternoon tea at the Celtic Manor, although the meringue dessert and the salmon sandwich at The Angel could sway me. 

Recipe: Chocolate Porridge

Recently, I've been having porridge for breakfast most mornings. I find porridge on its own quite boring and it doesn't inspire me to get out of bed and start the day. I like to mix it up now and again with some cinnamon sugar, raisins or golden syrup etc but then I found chocolate porridge.

I was a huge fan of chocolate Ready Brek when I was little and this recipe bought back all sorts of memories.  It couldn't be more simple to make, which is perfect for me as I'm as far from a morning person as you can get.

All you need to do is make your porridge as normal on the stove. I use 1/2 cup of oats to 1 cup of milk, best to look on your pack of oats as no one wants overly sloppy porridge.

Once that's looking like it's almost ready, it's time to make the chocolate mix. In a cup I add a heaped teaspoon of cocoa powder, a teaspoon of sugar and then enough milk to make it a nice chocolatey liquid.

Pour this into your porridge, give it a good stir and ta-da! You now have chocolate porridge. I added some raspberries to the top of mine but it's just as good without. Let me know if you try it out! 

Tough Mudder Volunteer

So last month I volunteered with Tough Mudder at their London North event. 

I've been umming and ahhing over whether I want to take part in this event for about a year now so decided to volunteer before I took the plunge. I also wanted to pick up some tips for the Men's Health Survival of the Fittest in September!

After walking to the site surrounded by soon to be Tough Mudders (and a few wimps complaining about the rain) I found my way to the volunteer tent. I picked up my free t-shirt, bag of goodies and a cup of tea then waited to get going. After throwing away our British reserve and several loud tough mudder chants, it was time to go. 

We were all placed on registration to begin with. It might not sound too exciting but when you're signing in a bunch of very excited mudders, some in very interesting fancy dress, it's great fun!

Once registration was over we got moved to the finish chute. This was by far my favourite part of the day. I was given the job of crowning all those who completed the course with their orange headbands, was really good to see how much of a state everyone was when they crossed the line!

It was such a great and very muddy experience, I'd definitely recommend it to everyone. They have several more events in the UK this year, what have you got to lose?