Ok, so I can definitely see the irony in the two blog posts following my ‘healthy lifestyle’ post being about dessert… however, as I said, I do not believe in cutting out all indulgence!
A couple of weeks ago, I went to the London Dessert Festival in the Old Truman Brewery.
It was set up in two big rooms, with individual stalls dotted around.
They definitely put in effort to ensure maximum Instagrammable-ness! The place was decorated with giant ice creams, balloons, and upside-down umbrellas filled with multi-coloured packing peanuts (I promise that looked cooler than it sounds!)
I went with my mum, and our very tactical plan was to do a full tour of both rooms, and then narrow down the HUGE number of desserts to the ones we wanted to buy. The first thing we tried was a mini Japanese pancake/cake kind of thing (admittedly not the best description, so I’ve put a photo below), filled with Lotus spread. It was so nice!
Let’s just take a minute here to appreciate Lotus spread, otherwise known as Biscoff, and also otherwise known as Speculoos. It is literally the best thing ever, and if you’ve never tasted it, I recommend pausing your reading here and going out to buy some!
Between finding desserts to buy, we walked around every stall, tried a lot of samples (obviously), and watched some cool desserts being made. Even though I must have seen at least 30 videos of this on Facebook, I still love watching ice cream rolls being made (and I filmed it too, so if I become Facebook famous, we’ll all know why!)
We also came across some ‘zero calorie chocolate’, which involved basically breathing in chocolate flavoured air through a straw. An interesting concept, but I can’t say I'll be ditching real chocolate for it anytime soon!
The next dessert I decided to try was vegan lemon meringue pie cookie dough. It was definitely delicious, but almost tasted a little too… healthy?! I know that using healthy substitutes in desserts and baking is very 2019 (and obviously much better for us), but I think it can sometimes compromise the taste a bit! That being said, I wouldn’t say no to having some more…
Walking around all the different stalls definitely gave me some baking inspiration, especially for the next cake I make! There were some real works of art going on!
We finished our day by going to a dessert making lesson, hosted by pastry chef Nicolas Rouzaud and my favourite contestant from The Great British Bake Off 2018, Manon Lagreve. The dessert they demonstrated was a cherry candy floss with almond mousse, cherry juice and meringue. It was SO stunning and very intricate, and somehow they made it look so quick and easy to make!
All in all, the sugar overload (and the slightly overpriced ticket!) was worth it for the amazing desserts we saw and ate!
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