Restaurant Review: The Whispering Moon Wetherspoons, Wallington, Surrey

I used to really like Wetherspoons when I was younger – there was a huge one in Cambridge where I went to university inside a converted cinema, and when I was on my post-grad journalism course in London, we would regularly congregate around one giant table in a Wetherspoons in Islington. But I guess over the past few years I’ve gotten more used to nice gastropubs. I have nothing against the food in Wetherspoons and I think the choice of meals available, the fact that they were ahead of the curve at adding calorie counts to the menu, and the very accessible prices are great. But there’s something about the pubs themselves that I just don’t enjoy any more.

 

I reviewed the Grapes, a Wetherspoon pub in Sutton, in 2014 and wasn’t that impressed by the décor. This time I went to the Whispering Moon in Wallington, just across the road from the train station.

 

On Wednesday nights at the moment I’m taking a cake decorating course in Wallington, and don’t really have time to go home from work and then back out to college – usually I get to Wallington half an hour before the class, and either take a sandwich with me or pop into Tesco to buy something to eat on the way. This time however I managed to get an earlier train, and had almost a whole hour to kill. I didn’t see the point of sitting in an empty classroom, and we are not allowed to eat in the classroom anyway –plus, I’d only been able to have sandwiches for lunch as I’d been on a training course (I usually try to have something hot so I can then have a sandwich in the evening before class).

 

So I decided to treat myself to dinner in a pub and thought that the Whispering Moon would be quick (which it was), cheap (which it was) and a nice place to sit and pass some time (which it wasn’t).
 

 

I found a table and as there were no menus, I went to get one from the bar – and realised when I got back to my table that the menu was sticky, which wasn’t very nice. I went back to the bar to order my food; I paid less than £8 I think for a lasagne and a drink, which came to my table less than ten minutes later, delivered by a pleasant young waiter. The lasagne came on a plate with a side salad in a small bowl and a jug of salad dressing which I thought was good – to allow customers to add as much as they liked. The lasagne was pretty cheap tasting though – it reminded me of a ready meal and the edges had been overcooked so were inedible. It wasn’t actually a bad meal for what it was – if I had been able to make it home and back before my class, I would only have had time to bung a ready meal in the microwave, and this is pretty much what it tasted like.
 

The pub was quite noisy even for 6.30 on a Wednesday night with people shouting across the pub to each other – I was glad I was ensconced in a corner but despite still having some time to kill before the class I decided not to linger any longer and sit instead in the quiet classroom. As I said, I have nothing against Wetherspoons for a cheap meal, but I don't really spend much time in them any more.

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Meal Planning Monday Week 8

Last week's meal plan was changed several times due to me working late and my fiancé being ill for a couple of days, then instead of having his mum round on Saturday we went out for dinner instead - everywhere was doing set menus on Valentine's day but with nothing my fiancé particularly liked to eat and at double the usual cost, so we decided to go out for dinner on the 13th and spend the 14th doing something romantic - finishing off our wedding invitations! And also at the cinema watching Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - just to show what an awesome fiancé I am!

So that means this week's meal plan has several meals that I was going to cook last week but didn't.

Monday
Was planning spaghetti bolognese but after a long day at work I won't be home til nearly 10pm and dinner was a sandwich on the train.

Tuesday
stuffed chicken with pesto and cream cheese

Wednesday
with my future mother in law - Pad Thai

Thursday
vegetable/Quorn/chicken curry

Friday
chicken pie or burger and chips, salad for me

Saturday
Lunch Bacon and Cheddar scrolls from Sainsbury's magazine
Dinner Mexican spiced lamb chops with charred butternut salsa from Sainsbury's magazine (using steak for him as he doesn't eat lamb)

Sunday
Lunch Breakfast burrito with scrambled egg, bacon, hash brown
Dinner: Moroccan style chicken from Sainsbury's magazine

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Chocolate Brownie Valentine's Cake with Stencilled Hearts

It feels like it's been ages since I've made a proper cake so I decided to make one for my fiancé for Valentine's Day - I also wanted the chance to try out one of my cake stencils with a heart pattern that I'd never used before.

We'd just covered stencilling in my wedding cake decorating class and I'd written the blog post but forgotten to publish it so you'll have to hang on to read more about the technique - for this blog post I will concentrate more on the cake itself.

I used a recipe from the Great British Bake Off Big Book of Baking, for a "classic chocolate fudge sandwich cake". I filled it differently and decorated it differently, and both layers of the cake did sink when I took them out of the oven, which was odd as my cakes don't usually do that and I followed the recipe exactly. I thought the cake reminded me of a chocolate brownie in texture which is why I've given it this name; it was kind of chewy (in a good way) and tasted very good - I had a small slice just to try it, and think I will pack the rest of it off to my fiancé for his work colleagues (some of whom are coming to the wedding so there's no harm in trying to win them over!).

You can find the full recipe online here, so I won't repeat it. I didn't split my cake into four layers and instead just used chocolate buttercream to fill it and to spread over the top and around the sides, as I only wanted a thin layer of coating as I was covering the cake with fondant. I found that half the amount of the quantity in the recipe was plenty, and I actually used milk chocolate rather than plain as I generally prefer it, but I decided afterwards that plain would have been better in this recipe.

So I followed the recipe for the cake exactly and then for the buttercream used:
150g icing sugar
75g milk chocolate, melted
75g butter, softened
which I beat all together to make a buttercream consistency.

Melting chocolate and butter

 

Beating the mixture

Two pans about to go in the oven

And after baking - both sank in the middle

I covered the bottom layer with buttercream

The two layers stacked very neatly on top of each other - this is a good-sized cake

Crumb coating of buttercream around the sides and on the top

Covering with white sugarpaste

Mixing some royal icing with gel colour and getting ready to spread

Here's the stencil I used - it fits neatly onto the top of the cake. You have to stick it down with tape or it will move.

Spreading the icing over the stencil

And here it is! The icing was a bit thick in places because the top of the cake wasn't completely flat, which means there were some small gaps around the edge of the stencil shapes but I don't think it's too bad for a first attempt.

I added a pink ribbon and tied it in a bow around the front of the cake

 

And finally placed the cake on a heart-shaped cake board I already had. My fiancé thought it was cute and thought the chocolate cake was particularly good.

Do you fancy a slice?

I'm sharing this with We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme, as her theme this month is butter.

I'm also sending this to Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabberUK, where the theme is "the month of cake".

And also to Simply Eggcellent, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen, as this month "anything goes".

And finally I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen, as it's Valentine's day of course.

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Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream Truffles

 

Chocolate truffles are something of a must in my house for Valentine's day, but I've made them a few times before and wanted to do something different this time. By a stroke of luck, I was sent some Haagen-Dazs vouchers to review their Strawberry Cheesecake flavour ice cream and I found some recipes on the US version of their website for 'gelato piccolinos' - piccolino just meaning little tiny thing. These are basically chocolate truffles filled with ice cream!

I didn't use oil as in their recipe as I just wanted a crisp coating for my truffles. I also switched up the flavours so I could use the strawberry cheesecake ice cream, which I thought would be better coated in white chocolate, and I also made some with their Belgian Chocolate ice cream, which I coated in milk chocolate and rolled in cocoa powder. The strawberry and white chocolate ones are decorated with little edible butterflies but these would also be great with pieces of freeze dried strawberries!

The ice cream needs to be soft enough to scoop but still pretty solid. I took some scoops from each tub and moulded them into balls, placing them on a piece of greaseproof paper on a small plate (I only wanted to make a few). I returned them to the freezer for an hour to firm up again - the strawberry cheesecake ice cream seemed softer than the chocolate and had started to melt almost straight away.

After an hour, I melted 50g of white chocolate and 50g milk chocolate in small bowls, took the ice cream balls out of the freezer and quickly dipped them in the chocolate, decorating them as I have described. Then they went back into the freezer to firm up again!

 

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, the challenge created by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat the Baking Explorer, which is hosted this month by United Cakedom. The theme this month is Like It, Love It, Gotta Have it - which is how my fiancé feels about Haagen-Dazs!

 

 

 I'm also sending this to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen, as these would be lovely for Valentine's Day.

 

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Cow Valentine's Card

A few days ago I shared the Valentine's card I made for my boyfriend last year; as I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually look at my blog much I thought I'd put up the one I made for him this year! It's on a similar theme - cows - which I'm sure I will stop doing at some point but as we are getting marred this year I'm really excited about becoming a cow! Also, I had some cow-related craft bits to use up I'd bought to do with the wedding....

I had some small rectangles of cow print tissue paper that I decided to place in the middle of a square white card blank, leaving white space at each side. I then took a piece of cow print ribbon (which I bought for my wedding invitations then decided not to use) and tied a bow in it and stuck it across the front of the card.

I had a pack of 5 card toppers saying "for my wonderful fiancé" which I'm not going to be able to use again - I put one on his Christmas card and will use one for his birthday card as well! You can't see it too well in this photo due to the silver colour. As it's Valentine's day I put a 'happy Valentine' red outline sticker on the bottom of the card with two sets of lips on either side. I wanted to introduce a little more colour into the card as well so dotted a few mini red heart stickers across the cow print paper. I hope my fiancé doesn't get fed up with cow related things as I certainly haven't yet!

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How to Paint Flowers on a Cake

My so-called intermediate level wedding cake decorating class continued with a session of painting on cakes – or rather on a cake board as we still haven’t used an actual cake (even a dummy). It’s really very straightforward but I thought I’d share a blog post on the topic in case anyone wants to know how to do it.

 

 

 

Get some of the paste colour on the end of a cocktail stick and hold the cocktail stick over the artist’s palette. Pour literally just a drop of alcohol or lemon juice onto the cocktail stick and use the paintbrush to brush the colour downwards into the liquid. This will make sure you don’t have too much liquid as you want the ‘paint’ to be as thick as possible. You need to use clear alcohol or lemon juice so the liquid dries – water would start to melt the fondant that you were painting on.

 

 

Apparently there is no particular technique to the painting – you paint just as if you were painting a picture. We were painting on a covered cake board; most people in the class were using the same board we’d practiced other techniques on, so only had a little space. I had covered a new cake board so I would have a blank ‘canvas’.

 

The tutor knew I was thinking about a lavender design on my wedding cake so brought in a picture of a bunch of lavender for us to copy, which was really nice of her. I started with green to paint the stems as you can see above. Then I painted the flowers, using short brush strokes up and down the stems.

 

After that I got bored waiting for other people to finish and added some bunting as our wedding is going to have a bit of a village fete vibe.

 

 

 

Finally as I still had some extra time I added our wedding date on the bottom. I really like the way this looks and might actually use it at the wedding as a prop!

 

 

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Love Cows Valentine's Card

This is the Valentine's card I made for my boyfriend last year; I didn't want to share it at the time as he hadn't seen the card and by the time Feb 14th had passed I decided it was too late to post this.

The cow motif is because his last name is Cowe - which will be my name too from June!

I started with a square white card blank which I covered with pink paper that had swirly patterns. I cut out a large heart from another patterned pink paper and stuck that on top. The 'love' stickers all come from one sticker pack and the little hearts from another; the 'to my Valentine' sentiment in the top left is from a sheet of outline stickers, which are red rather than the more common silver or gold.

Finally the layered paper cow is a decoupage sticker which I bought in a little pack from Ebay; I often wonder how people make these sorts of thing to sell!

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