sugar & spice at somerset house

This December Rambling Restaurant was hugely excited to be invited to run a pop-up café at the Somerset House Super Christmas Design Fair (Emma and Mei are deep in concentration in the photo above, but believe me, they were bubbling inside).  Next to the skating rink, in the maze of rooms that makes up the East Wing, stalls were were manned by established designers and students from the Royal College of Art and Camberwell College. There were all sorts of original Christmas presents to be had, from the sublime to the silly, including hip flasks for two; chocolate battleships; i-pod cuckoo clocks; newsprint wallets; moustache brooches and my favourite – the share-faces-with-your-friends-and-relatives mirror. This is a hard one to explain, but hilarious and at least an hour of fun.

We teamed up with some students from RCA who were working on food design projects. Molly’s edible biscuit and chocolate cups were a big success and pie by the inch was a great idea, even if it wasn’t actually by the inch, but by the rather random centimetre and a half.

There was also a cream tea packaging set, designed by Mexican and Japanese students. Personally, I’d prefer to have more scone than packaging, but it was very pretty and they did give me a set for Christmas.

We sold cocoa, mulled wine and a selection of teas. We also made hot rambling cider – with fresh ginger, orange, star anise, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and a huge kick of chilli.

The banana, cardomom & poppy seed cake and orange blossom, coriander & polenta cake – both from Sugar & Spice by Kate Weatherall – went down speedily. Emma, of the inspirational ‘Mad And Sad’ made Christmassy ginger cake with clementine icing and ginger biscuits for Saturday and Sunday…

…while the lovely Emily made Swedish cinnamon buns for Tuesday. Marvellous baker Mei made rice crispy treats that reminded everyone of being small again; moreish chocolate biscuit brownie bars; chocolate chip cookies; gold bags of the richest, darkest truffles and spiced chocolate brownies. The fame of the latter spread throughout the market and one man nearly cried when they sold out. He came back time and time again with a hopeful “Has she made any more?” Michelle of the endless energy made delicious and filling baguettes, filled with chedder and caremelised onion chutney, roasted vegetables with rocket and bacon and avocado.

It was a fun few days – testing the cider for taste and temperature every few minutes was especially good. Unfortunately we missed our chance to go skating, but hope to be back in 2010 with more colour, cake, cabaret and dancing!