Afternoon Tea Adventures - Do You Like Chocolate?

Hello there lovely readers,

I think we are all in agreement that the answer to the question in the title of this post is & always will be YES. Afternoon Tea is my favourite pastime (I know...I'll give you a moment to pick yourself up from the floor after fainting from the shock of this statement) Add chocolate to the mix & I'm pretty much Homer Simpson in that well known chocolate land heaven dream sequence.

When my buddy Ram & I arranged a long awaited catch up sesh, it was a no brainer that afternoon tea would be the order of the day. So I booked us in for the Do You Like Chocolate? Experience at the Kimpton Fitzroy in London. Upon arrival I knew we were in for a treat with our tea set in the stunningly flamboyant & retro vibed Fitz bar room complete with its own disco ball suspended from the ceiling!

Afternoon Tea Adventures - Dukes London (Vegan Friendly!)

Hello there lovely readers and a happy new year!

Its been quite some time since we have had some afternoon tea action in these parts, so for the first post of 2020 lets rectify that shall we?

2019 was filled with its fair share of downers let me tell you. But amongst the lows there were some magical highs too, one being finally meeting my beautiful online chum Georgie for the first time after "knowing" each other in the online universe for years. Truly one of the kindest souls I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, this is another reason why I will forever be grateful for blogging.

Afternoon Tea Adventures - Charlie and The Chocolate Factory at One Aldwych

Hello there lovely readers,

It has been a hot minute since I've done an afternoon tea review which is crazy as I've had SO much material to share what with it being my favourite pastime & all. But this year seems to have gone off kilter in a major way with a lot going on with work, health & LIFE, hence the huge backlog, 

So lets get back on track a wee bit shall we & what better way than with the help of chocolate to kick start things again.  Naturally as soon as I heard that a Charlie and The Chocolate Factory Afternoon Tea existed it immediately went on to the ever growing "must try" list, I mean who ISN'T a fan of the magical world of Roald Dahl AND chocolate?

Magical Sweet Treats from Fairy Tale Gourmet!

Hi there my lovely readers,

I'm excited to be sharing today's post with you as it contains a combination of two of my favorite things in life (other than nail polish)....sweet treats & fairy tale magic! Allow me to introduce you to the wonders of Fairy Tale Gourmet, an online confectioners I stumbled across on my Twitter travels & upon finding, have discovered a whole new world of magical sweet delights.

Fairy Tale Gourmet is a London based company & masters in creating mouth watering confectionery using classic fairy tale themes as inspiration, Snow White, Goldilocks & Alice in Wonderland to name a few. One dessert that they are famed for in particular is their award winning cake filled chocolates...that's right...CAKE...inside CHOCOLATE...I was sold before even browsing the wares. However once I did indeed do that, I literally went in to real life heart eye emoji mode. Wonderfully, luck was on my side & I was fortunate to actually win one of their twitter competitions, the prize being the Tiny Pieces White Rabbit Gift box containing 12 'Tiny Pieces of Wonderland' cake filled chocolates, which I could not wait to try!

The White Rabbit gift box arrived securely packaged in bubble wrap to protect the treasures within, but not for long, so eager was I to get to the treats inside! Once unwrapped you'll find a pretty ribbon-ed gift box (miss kitty was happy!) lined with a sumptuous white faux fur lining, giving the gift a truly luxurious feel & nestled within the bed of soft fur are 12 of your individually wrapped cake filled chocolates.

The decadent chocolate encased cakes come in a mixed selection of white, milk & dark Belgian chocolate, however you can opt to go for just one type if you're not a fan of all three. Moving on to the individual pieces, boy are you in for a treat, these specially created desserts with fun flavored fillings each sounding as mouth watering as the last, you won't know where to start!

It was a difficult task to be sure but for the sake of research I made my way through the 'Tiny Pieces of Wonderland' sampling each of the different flavours & I have to confess...there was not ONE I did not like. I don't know about you, but when consuming chocolate desserts/confectionery you can often find them to be overly sweet & after indulging in a few, immediately wish you could turn back time & rid yourself of that sickly 'overdone it' feeling. Not the case with these at all. A very good or very bad thing depending on how you look at it! ;)

The chocolate coating is the perfect thickness to bite into, cracking & melting on the tongue delightfully before revealing the scrumptious filling of moist sponge. Depending on the flavour you will either find a deliciously rich chocolate brownie sponge within or my personal favourite, the delicately sweet honey cake.

Each Tiny Piece of Wonderland is unique in flavour, you are bound to find something to your taste or if you're like me then just completely adore them all! Here's a wee rundown of the treats you will come across within this giftbox:

Caramel Craze - Milk chocolate coating & caramel studded brownie

Fancy Fudge - Dark chocolate coating, sweet honey cake & oozing caramel

Fruity Rhapsody - Dark chocolate coating and raspberry brownie

Sour Kick - Milk chocolate coating, honey cake & apricot compote (oh my god SO GOOD!)

Chunky Nutter - Milk chocolate coating & brownie with white choc chunks & pecans

Marsh Rush - Milk chocolate coating, honey cake & creamy marshmallow (another favourite!)

Lazy Rabbit - Milk chocolate coating, honey cake & Baileys ganache with walnuts

Nutty Delay - White chocolate coating, honey cake, praline & hazelnuts

Peanut Bunny - Milk chocolate coating, honey cake & crunchy peanut butter

Mallow Mania - White chocolate coating & marshmallow brownie

Looney Rasberry - White chocolate coating & red berries brownie

Salty Insanity - Dark chocolate coating & sea salted caramel brownie

*passes tissue to attend the inevitable drooling*...Pretty beautiful sounding selection am I right? It was hard but I managed to sample all of the delights, each one such a heavenly experience on the tastebuds. My personal favourites were the Marsh Rush containing smooth sweet marshmallow & the Sour Kick, with its lovely combination of sweet honey cake & tangy compote...AMAZING.

The Tiny Pieces White Rabbit gift box is priced £34.95 with all the treats freshly made on order. All of the range is suitable for vegetarians but a few will contain traces of nuts so do be aware. The whole concept of Fairy Tale Gourmet is just magical to me, indulging & satisfying both my love of fairy-tales & sweet goodness with its quirky uniqueness & supreme quality. You know your sampling something special.

I think these would make such a wonderful gift for someone this Xmas or any occasion, I know I would be over the moon to be on the receiving end! Go have a gander of their website & see what other magical delights they have to offer, you won't regret it! 

Thanks as always for reading!

Lotsa love to ya!

*Disclaimer - please note as mentioned I won the gift box in a competition & was under NO obligation to blog about it, I have only chosen to do so to spread the awesomeness!*

NOTD - Chocolate & Gold Magnum Inspired Nails!

Hello there my beauts! Happy first of the month to you!

So there appears to be a recurring theme when it comes to finding inspiration for nail art lately....FOOD. Maybe not THAT surprising considering my devotion to sweet foodstuffs;) With those rare glimpses of sunshine that we've been graced with of late, so comes the inevitable temptation of consuming a yummy ice cream treat. Remember the Raspberry Ripple Marble nails from a few posts ago? Well this time it was whilst I was indulging in a decadent Magnum delight, that I thought the combination of rich dark tones & gold in the packaging would look equally pretty on the nails. So this is what I came up with...

For my base colour I used the vampy I Sing In Colour by OPI which was one of the shades from Gwen Stefani's collection. This is an intensely rich, almost black red shade, so hot & vampy, I absolutely love it! And I thought it would be perfect to embody smooth velvety dark chocolate tones. This is two coats applied to a gorgeously glossy finish.

For the gold touch I decided to use China Glaze Cracked Medallion crackle polish. Aaah good old crackle polishes, remember those? China Glaze's offerings were particularly awesome, with the polish formula crackling extremely well, leaving a really pretty effect. 

I still wanted plenty of that vampy base on show, far too pretty it is to hide, so I just swiped the gold crackle across the tip in a quarter moon. 

For a final bit of golden decadence I simply added a row of gold glitter dots along the curve of the crackle before sealing it all with my trusty CND Air Dry topcoat! 

Mmmm...Magnum anyone? I can predict the chances of me speedy gonzalez-ing it down to the freezer after this post is up are quite high & I suggest you all do the same so I feel less guilty mwahaha! ;) Maybe I should do a food nail art series? Any requests? ;)

Thanks as always for reading dolls!

Lotsa love to ya   

NOTD - Mint Choc Chip with Dripping Sauce Nails...

Hello there lovely readers! Hope you're all having a good weekend!

Warning...the following manicure may incur hunger pangs & ice cream cravings...or maybe that was just the case with me. 

You see, food brings me a lot of joy...so does nail polish...& when those two glorious things mix well then I'm pretty much in heaven. Which brings me to today's mani I have to share with you...some mint choc chip nails with dripping chocolate sauce!