Jam tarts are a sweet and a simple British treat to bake yourselves and pop in your picnic basket. Buttery shortbread biscuits are also easy to bake with practically the same ingredients used to make the pastry for jam tarts, even if they do seem like a winter afternoon tea snack. 

For both the jam tarts and shortbread you will need:

255g plain flour

28g caster sugar

140g unsalted butter

6 tablespoons of cold water

12 teaspoons of jam for the tarts (whichever flavour you like)

Icing sugar for dusting the shortbread

Pre-heat the oven to 200C/fan 180C/Gas 6 and grease a muffin tray before rubbing the butter into the flour and sugar in a mixing bowl until crumbly.

Then add the water tablespoon by tablespoon until it is a moist dough. Roll out the dough onto a floured work surface (very floured) and use a cutter to stamp out circles to place in your cupcake tray.

After adding a teaspoon of jam into each tart, bake for around 12-15 minutes. 

Leave the jam tarts to cool properly before removing from the tray with a bit of help from a knife or the end of a spoon. These little delights taste so much better when you bake them from scratch with a buttery and crumbly pastry that tastes just like shortbread. If you don't want to make extra jam tarts you can use the remaining dough for shortbread. Roll the dough out again and cut into whatever shape you fancy.

Bake for roughly 12-15 minutes or until your biscuits are looking lovely and golden.

Wait until the shortbread is cool before dusting icing sugar on top of them.

Two quick and yummy recipes in one!

As a hopeless romantic, I've been wanting to have a vintage picnic for a long time and decided to make the most of the sunny weather.

I was in Bristol last weekend visiting my boyfriend and The Downs is the best place for friends and families to have picnics and BBQs. It's a huge grassed open space with plenty of room to spread out and enjoy the summer breeze.

Cloudy lemonade was definitely in our picnic basket as the perfect vintage summer drink.

Addictive homemade jam tarts with a crumbly shortbread pastry, recipe to follow shortly...

Chocolate swiss rolls and homemade strawberry cream cupcakes, the cupcakes were heavenly even if baking them myself gives me this opinion.

 

Traditional British snacks (a large scotch egg and sausage rolls), tiger bread loaf with cheese and tomato and quiche made up the rest of our yummy picnic. The floral party plates were bought from a Tesco Extra in Bristol and unfortunately they don't seem to have them online.

A lovely and romantic afternoon with another thing crossed off the little dream list!

Thanks to Cosmopolitan and its great offers, my boyfriend and I spent the night at the Cheltenham Park Hotel as part of a mini spa break last weekend. As a natural 'worrywart', I'm always in need of some relaxation time, so this wonderful package including spa treatments, afternoon tea, dinner, bed and breakfast was perfect! We had a pretty good room which unfortunately had no air conditioning but luckily it was spacious and cool with a giant fan.

Pamper time... After a 30 minute back, neck and shoulder massage and a 30 minute facial we were feeling very sleepy. I'd never had a facial before and loved the face and head massage, my skin had also never felt so cleansed.

I brought along these cute little bottles of white wine for a cheeky drink in our hotel room before dinner.

Not forgetting our traditional pre-dinner appetiser of cheese puffs, how sophisticated.

All dressed up and ready for dinner. We were pleasantly surprised by our well-presented, yummy and filling three course dinner. I went for the smoked and cooked salmon to start.

Followed by the chicken pie with puff pastry, mash, asparagus and parsnip.

And this indulgent sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream.

Breakfast was the usual variety of cereal, fruit, pastries and a cooked breakfast. I love hotel breakfasts, especially the mini croissants. We went for a walk around the centre of Cheltenham which mainly consisted of pretty parks and lots of shops, before making our way back to the hotel for our afternoon tea.

We were excited for tea and cakes but waited almost an hour for our afternoon tea to arrive, hence the silly photo.

Finally the goodies arrived!

Our massive afternoon tea definitely made up for the wait, but it was just too big for our bellies so we took the remaining treats home.

Overall we had a lovely, relaxing and indulgent two days!

My second year at Wireless festival in London... Will.i.am, Katy B, Jessie Ware, eating pizza and dancing to Justin Timberlake and Jay Z.

An amazing but hot day!