Strawberry picking in the sunshine!

Strawberry picking has always been a cute little dream of mine and the beautiful weather we've been having made this come true. I took a trip to the countryside with my boyfriend to Wotton Farm Shop where we were soon searching for ripe red strawberries.

We soon had enough strawberries and had a stroll around the shop which was full of flowers, fresh fruit, vegetables and other goodies.

The strawberries were much better than the ones we purchase in supermarkets as you could find big ones and freshly picked strawberries are delicious and juicy (so juicy that one spilt down my white top, oops). We had picked our strawberries just in time to have homemade cream tea and watch the Wimbledon final.

I spent last weekend in Bristol visiting my boyfriend and what a lovely sunny weekend it was! We decided to make the most of the heat wave by starting our weekend with breakfast in the garden (after removing several cobwebs made by determined spiders) and felt like we were on holiday. We then made our way to St. Paul's Carnival, an African and Caribbean street party located in the centre of Bristol. Neither of us had been before but it's simply Bristol's version of Notting Hill Carnival. A day of music, dancing and lots of jerk chicken...

Different music was pumping out from stereos all the way down each street with people dancing anywhere they felt like it.

Lots of houses were casually open to the public selling beer, rum punch and even charging to use their toilet. A casual and friendly environment, but I wouldn't stay until the evening when it gets a little dodgy...

We had no idea what this Caribbean pasty type food was but we bought one and it was good.

Jerk chicken was everywhere and we just had to have it, impossible to eat with a fork by the way.

A fun and crazy day!

After making several kinds of cupcakes and cookies from pre-made baking mixes in the past, I was yet to bake a cake from scratch and it was definitely on my 'things I really want to do' list. I adore afternoon tea; calmly sipping on tea without a care in the world surrounded by pretty traditional vintage cakes. So I decided that baking a classic Victoria sponge cake from scratch would a fun and messy activity and hopefully result in a perfect sweet treat for the weekend!

My boyfriend and I used a BBC Good Food recipe which consisted of these ingredients:

For the cake...

200g caster sugar

200g softened butter

4 eggs, beaten

200g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp milk

Icing sugar and strawberries to decorate

For the filling...

 100g softened butter

140g icing sugar

340g strawberry (or raspberry) jam

After pre-heating the oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5 and greasing two sandwich tins (ours weren't quite the required 20cm), throw all of the cake ingredients into a bowl and mix until you have a smooth batter.

As we knew we would have spare batter due to our smaller tins, we decided to also make two cupcakes. 

Bake for about 20 minutes until lovely and golden, then leave them to cool completely whilst you prepare the icing. It was tricky to get the sponges out of the tins and onto a cooling rack but they amazingly didn't fall apart!

The messy part... Beat the softened butter until it's creamy and then add the icing sugar. When using an electric mix be prepared for icing sugar to fly everywhere. Spread the butter cream onto one sponge and top with strawberry jam or spread the jam onto the other sponge and squish the sponges together. Feel free to spread lots of jam on the sponge to create the 'oozing jam and creamy' effect, you won't be able to resist a slice.

Sprinkle with icing sugar and place strawberry halves on top for decoration. It's meant to be cut into 10 slices but it depends how much of a piggy you want to be, I know our slices were huge!

And there you have it, a surprisingly simple but not so surprisingly yummy Sunday afternoon dessert. The start of my love for baking...

 If you haven't been to Brick Lane Market, you need to get down there right away!

Open every Sunday from 9am-5pm, Brick Lane Market in Shoreditch (nearest tube Aldgate East) is packed with stalls selling all kinds of food, clothes and bric-a-brac creating a lively atmosphere. We decided to take a Father's day trip to London after my Mum and sister had been to the market last month and loved it. The market is inside a big building with picnic benches, so it's the perfect day out when the weather is a bit on the gloomy side.

I was instantly drawn to the Pina Colada stall... Served in a pineapple, a simple but great exotic idea to make you feel like you're on a beach!

I'm not sure if there was actually any rum in these drinks, but the juice was thick and yummy.

The market has such a variety of food, from Chinese and Indian to crepes and cupcakes. It all looked and smelt amazing!

We started off with some spring rolls, crispy chicken and vegetable samosas selected from different stalls and then made our way onto the curries. I had a chicken curry with chickpeas and rice which was really tasty, but I just couldn't finish it all! The takeaway pots may not look like they have much in them but this regular size was crammed full, we know not to fill up on juice and starters beforehand. We clearly got too excited...

The market also has lots of stalls selling unique clothes, jewellery, posters etc. with a vintage market downstairs. I purchased a Levi's denim jacket for £25 and there were so many to choose from.

I just had to buy it...

My vintage cupcake heaven!

As our bellies were still too full to manage dessert so we took away a homemade cupcake each as they looked too scrumptious to resist. Before making our way home, we visited Petticoat Lane and Old Spitalfields as they were just a short walk away and then we were all marketed out.