Tea and Biscuits - London Review Cake Shop

Tea time - that most time honoured of English traditions. For me it's the great escape from the office when the lull of the dreaded lull of the afternoon sets in and the tummy is grumbling that the puny amount of leftovers from the night before was insufficient to see it through to an 8PM dinner. Sometimes I head to Sainsbury's and cheat myself into thinking some pre-cut fruit will be good for me (along with a chocolate bar or two), sometimes it's Starbucks and other times for a little injection of intellectualism it has to be the London Review Bookshop.

The London Review Bookshop is a great little place behind the British Museum, brilliant for browsing and keeping yourself to yourself with lovely whiffs of that delicious scent of books. Adjacent to the bookshop is the London Review Cake Shop selling lovely tea and cake in a woefully tiny bit of space. Today I had a pot of Keemun Mao Feng (described as black tea with sweet orchid notes) and a polenta and lavender cookie (I asked for a biscuit the Australian waitress insisted on giving me a 'cookie'). The tea was lovely, as teas go. The cookie was a little too buttery for my liking and thank heavens the lavender was hardly distinguishable - I'm not a fan of lavender in my food.

Now back back to the drudgery of an afternoon at the office.

London Review Cake Shop
14 Bury Place, London, WC1A 2JL

Tea and Cake ... with a Teaspoonful of Tolstoy and a Dash of Larsson

I don't think there's ever a bad time for a cuppa and cake. A slice? Oh go on, make it two. I actually got round to making a lemon and poppy seed cake a few weeks ago but I can't for the life of me remember where I got the recipe from. If I'm truly honest with myself, it was probably a recipe I boshed together myself and thank heavens on this occasion it turned out just right. I do remember I used oil instead of butter, which points to the dissection of a muffin recipe along the way and yogurt for moistness. Ahhh... and then there was the lemon drizzle - just in case the yogurt only did half the job. I really must go find the recipe!

On a more literary note, if you've been through my Flickr stream you'll notice the constant presence of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace by my lamp. I've been trying to get into the book for months and months (actually it's closer to years and years now) but that entry point just keeps alluding me. I seem to go backwards more than I go forward but I live in hope that one day I'll be determined enough to finish reading the darn thing. Until that day I faithfully dust off the covers every now and then before moving to more exciting books ..... like Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. I'm on book 3 at the moment and I can't believe how many other people I see on the tube and bus reading one of the books in the series. I actually had a full conversation with someone on the bus *shock horror .... really? In London?* about the books. It really is the little things that bring people to talk to each other :) For me it all started with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in a little corner of one of the many Starbucks dotted around the city with my usual brew - skinny latte with an extra shot, please.