British Cream Tea : Delicious British Felt Food Sculpture

Jaffa Cakes

Jaffa Cakes...an essential part of any lucky British child's lunchbox!

A little spongy chocolatey cake with a hidden tangy orangey bit...Jaffa Cakes are circular and consist of three layers: a sponge cake base, a layer of orange flavoured jam and a coating of dark chocolate. The orangey bit forms a bump on the top of the cake under the chocolate and the chocolatey top is stamped with a crisscross pattern.

McVitie and Price first introduced the Jaffa Cake in 1927 following the success of the chocolate digestive. Its creation is largely credited to John Langlands, a director of McVitie and Price at the time. The cakes were named for Jaffa oranges. Under UK law no VAT is charged on biscuits and cakes — they are "zero rated". Chocolate covered biscuits, however, are subject to VAT, currently 15%. McVities classed its Jaffa Cakes as cakes, but in 1991, this was challenged by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise and the case ended up before the courts. McVities defended its classification of Jaffa Cakes as cakes. In doing so it produced a 12" Jaffa Cake to illustrate that its Jaffa Cakes were simply miniature cakes. McVities argued that a distinction between cakes and biscuits is that biscuits would normally be expected to go soft when stale, whereas cakes would normally be expected to go hard. It was demonstrated to the Tribunal that Jaffa Cakes become hard when stale. The Jaffa Cake won the day and is still sold with no VAT.

I love Jaffa Cakes, especially the orangey bit. I am certain that the sponge layer used to be harder and crunchier when we were children...or maybe they were always staler when we ate them then? Or maybe I am imagining it? Who knows??!

French fancies and new biscuits!

 

French Fancies are a colourful favourite of the traditional British tea party and form the centrepiece to many British children's parties. Nothing makes me think childhood more than a plate of yellow, pink and brown french fancies in their little paper cases!

Little cubes of sponge topped with a dollop of buttercream, covered in fondant and drizzled with icing they are sweet, bright and beloved of the nation's children.

I have read that they were originally called Othello cakes with the name and the colours being inspired by William Shakespeare's plays Othello and As You Like It, with different coloured icings to represent major and memorable characters in the plays. Othello was represented by the chocolate cake, Desdemona the white cake, Iago was coffee, while the fourth and final cake was coloured pink after Rosalind, the highly popular, blushing, aristocratic lead in As You Like It. Now they come in pink, yellow and brown but are still a mouth watering feast for thespians. But I have no idea whether this is true...the origins of the little french fancy seem shrouded in mystery...

I love the pink ones, a preference that seems to be with me from my childhood...as an unbiased adult I would have expected the chocolate one to be my favourite ;)



The Custard Cream...Britain's favourite biscuit immortalised in felt, complete with two layers of vanilla custard cream.

Custard Creams are made up of two biscuits, the top one sporting a fancy lattice of swirls and a double diamond surrounding the name, sandwiching a vanilla cream filling.

First made in 1908, the swirly baroque design of ferns harks back to Victorian times and indicates that the custard cream was then seen as a much fancier nibble than it is today.

Custard Creams even feature in the Harry Potter series as one of the joke products that Fred and George Weasley invent. Canary creams look and taste like custard creams, but when eaten, they transform the eater into a large canary...hence the name...

Voted Britain's favourite biscuit in 2007, the humble custard cream entered the Oxford English Dictionary in March 2008.

I love custard creams. They may be simple but they are moreish...



Party Rings...A fun biscuit from my childhood!

The party ring was introduced in 1983. It is a circular biscuit with a central finger-sized hole, covered in hard coloured icing with "wiggly" lines in a different colour. The five colour combinations are:

* Peachy orange icing with white lines
* Pink icing with white lines
* Pink icing with yellow lines
* Purple icing with yellow lines
* Yellow icing with pink lines

We loved the bright colours, the hard crisp icing shell and the holes! We used to wear them as rings and eat them off our fingers as well as holding "ring races". These involved each child taking five rings and placing one on each finger of a hand. They would then proceed to eat them as fast as possible, with the inevitable danger of biting a finger a bit too hard. I used to also try to eat along the lines along the base...but then I was, indeed, a strange child...

In the late 1990s Fox's decided to remove the purple and yellow biscuit because the dyes used had been linked to certain health problems. But due to public (and particularly university society...we were all by that stage grown up but with long memories) outcry, they reinstated them using safe dyes and the party finger family was once again complete!

This is my first set of party rings...I have sold them singularly before ;)

I hope you enjoy my new pieces!

Gift Guide and new food!!

I discovered yesterday morning that my cornetto is in the children's gift guide on Etsy. Etsy describes them as "hand picked by Etsy staff from hundreds of thousands of items available".

So happy ;D

I have also done quite a bit of new work this week...

Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese Volauvant (part of a new series I think!)

Scotch Egg

Pink Party Ring with White Squiggles and
Yellow Party Ring with Pink Squiggles (The last one coming soon...)

Purple Party Rings....and a food treasury

I love party rings!!

they may be overly sweet, worryingly crispy and much much smaller than they used to be...but I have a soft spot for them ;)

So this morning I sewed one.

The purple one with yellow squiggles.

Complete with the lines baked into the bottom that I used to try and eat along as a child (yes...I know I was odd!!)

And now I have partly complete party rings all over the dining table...there are 5 colours in all so I am aiming for a set!!

yum yum.

And yesterday I managed to bag an etsy treasury...and filled it full of felt food.

Not such a good marketing strategy methinks, concentrating on and highlighting other people's felt work, but I couldn't resist!!

Bourbon

Billy loves Bourbon biscuits...so when he was working on Wednesday night I spent my evening watching the "La Princess" television programme and designing & stitching a chocolatey sandwich biscuit for him.

I'm not sure how happy I am with it. I don't think it works as well as my other two pieces, but it may grow on me yet...

He loves it though, which I guess is the most important thing ;)

Jammie Dodgers...

I love Jammie Dodgers, in fact I love biscuits as a food group, so it was to one that I turned for my first attempt at felt food...

...and I am really pleased with the result, so much so I have decided to sell them and future creations in a new etsy shop ;)