Exeter Food Festival 2012 Part Two: The Purchases

As I mentioned in my first Exeter Food Festival 2012 post there were lots of samples at the food festival, and lots of these succeeded in getting me to make purchases! It wasn't until I got home and started taking photos that I realised quite how many things I'd bought. Slightly oops, but definitely delicious!

I was going to split my purchases into categories, but there would only be one, or possibly two, categories that would have more than one item in it. I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that that category is cake, so let's start with that shall we?

The first cake stall that I bought from holds a special place in my heart (corny, yes!). I knew I'd be buying here even before we arrived at the festival.

We first discovered Olivers Bakery at last year's food festival, and went to visit them a week later to discuss them making the cakes for our wedding. Despite the wedding cupcakes being amazing, I decided to buy a big cake this time instead. An apple and ginger cake:

Because I did end up buying so much cake, I froze half of this in Mum's freezer (must get all those things back now we have a fridge/freezer again!) and we've been eating the other half through the week...

This is such a nice cake. Really dense with a deep ginger apple flavour, and then a lighter icing with ginger pieces in it. Yum. I have to say that, whilst I do love all the pretty cupcakes, I do tend to find that the cakes from bakeries like Olivers, whilst perhaps not as visually amazing, do tend to have a much better taste/quality. I wish I'd bought more than just this one cake!

I did buy plenty of other cake though...! This next stall - Cakeadoodledo - is run by a woman who used to be a health visitor, who visited me a few times when I had Izzy. She's also has a range of books called the "Magic Baking Series", I own the Baking Magic book which has some really nice recipes and ideas in it.

I actually took these photos when I went round the festival the first time...

...and then came back to buy the cakes at the end. I must've known my own mind tastes though as the only two cakes I photographed were the ones I bought. A salted caramel cupcake for Liam, and some chocolate and lime macaroon slices for me (they were being sold for 2 for £1.50 instead of £1.50 each by the time I bought them, win!):

I loved these macaroon slices! When I bit into the first one I was a bit concerned that they weren't that fresh (understandable as we bought them at the end of the third and final day of the festival, and they were reduced) but actually, whilst the edges might not have been at their very best, the middles were still really dense and delightful (!), I gobbled both of these down in minutes and then was sad they were gone!!

One of the reasons I mainly bought non-cupcake cake items from the other stalls, was that there was one cupcake stall in particular that had caught my eye. I knew that Izzy and Liam would adore the decorations on these!

Get Cupcaked - the stall which also sold the amazing carrot cake I wish I'd bought - had lots of fantastic looking cupcakes - I spent ages standing there trying to decide what to buy! Not sure why I didn't end up buying the pink dolly mixture one for Izzy, but she was very pleased with the cookie monster one anyway!

Millionaires Cupcake, Cookie Monster, American Waffle and Choc Lime Tart. I had half of the choc lime tart and half of the American waffle. Both were...quite nice...these were the type of cakes I had in mind when I said about appearances being better than the actual cake. I liked the icing on both of them (especially the cinnamon maple syrup icing on the American waffle, yum!) but the cake itself was a bit dry. Something I might buy for a party to make an impact perhaps, but not a cake I would buy again just to enjoy eating.

The above were my main cake purchases, but I did also buy a slice of carrot cake with orange icing from Manna from Devon:

I only tried a tiny slice of this before putting it in Mum's freezer, but Mum also bought one and really enjoyed it. Another one I'm looking forward to getting out of the freezer!

The final kind-of cake purchase was from Cafe Om, where we also ate lunch.

I bought another of the amazing raw chocolate tortes, and also a raw energy ball which contained dates, pecans and wheat grass powder.

These too have gone straight into the freezer, so I can't tell you whether I liked the wheat grass ball. If the chocolate torte is anything to go by though, I'm sure I'll love it!

Whew, that's all the cake I bought! What can I say, I love cake! It didn't seem like too much though - I put quite a lot of it in the freezer so that I can enjoy it at a later date, and the things I did keep out, I've been sharing with Liam and the children. I love the food festival and part of that is buying lots of things to bring home with me, so I think the freezing/sharing works well to still get the enjoyment of buying lots but not then feeling sick from eating it all!

I did buy some other non-cake items too. Bread from Bread of Devon...

I bought a big loaf of wild garlic bread to share with Mum, a small roll with pumpkin seeds and raisins, and a apricot, almond and lemon zest fruit loaf...

I froze half of the fruit loaf, but the rest got eaten straight away (not just by me!) alongside some fresh fig and walnut conserve from Cranfields and 'Old Burford' cheese from Wootton Organic Dairy:

This was all wonderful. The bread was fresh and flavourful - I especially loved the roll as it was a bit different, I buy the wild garlic bread whenever I see it at farmers markets etc and love it. The cheese was stinky but not too strong for Liam to eat. He has refused to eat it after Sunday though, whereas I've happily been keeping it in the not-so-cool cool box and stirring it into pasta for a flavour injection. A little goes a long way! I also adore the fig conserve - it provided a really nice contrast to the savoury cheese and has big chunks of figs and walnuts in it. Yum!

Just a few more things left that I bought. A few more jars - this time from The Cherry Tree - passion fruit curd and pear & ginger jam:

I haven't opened these yet but did try the passion fruit curd at the festival. It has a really zingy flavour and instantly made me think of frozen yoghurt for some reason, so I think I will be using this as a dessert topping as well as spread on bread etc!

I couldn't resist buying some handmade in Cornwall Kernow Chocolate...

They had such a range of flavours, and I eventually chose to get Rocky Road slabs for Liam, and bars of sea salt chocolate and apple crumble chocolate for me:

I've just been looking at their website and seen that their turkish delight is suitable for vegetarians/vegans as it doesn't contain gelatine...I'll have to look out for that next time!

And finally, coffee. I've actually bought a few jars of instant Little's coffee before, but had never seen their ground coffee in shops so decided to pick up a couple of bags.

Chocolate Truffle and Bourbon Vanilla both sound amazing!

And that is me done. What with all the purchases above, plus the food I ate at the festival, I obviously spent quite a bit of money on Sunday, perhaps more than I'd initially anticipated. But it is a once a year occurrence and I was supporting local food suppliers <-- that's what I keep telling myself!! ;)

Have you heard of any of these companies before? What type of food do you think you would be most drawn to at a festival like this? One of the reasons I bought so many cakes, as opposed to more jars, is that they are lighter! It was a lot of food to carry around all day. Mum did, sensibly, bring a rucksack with her, but between us we filled that and several more bags! I also think that the cakes seem more "special" in a way. A lot of the jars, coffees etc are available to buy in shops whereas unless you live close to the bakeries, you probably can't buy the cakes very easily during the rest of the year. I think I managed to buy quite a good range of products though, and I also signed up for Riverford organic veg box deliveries whilst I was there if that helps balance it out at all?!! ;)

Exeter Food Festival 2012 Part One: The Sights

Well, this post took a few more days to write than I'd planned! I had a bit of a mental block about it because there is so much from Sunday that I want to share! So I've decided to split it up into two posts - today I will write about what we saw and ate at the food festival, and then next time I will show you all the products I brought home with me!

When you first arrive at Exeter Food Festival, you buy your tickets and then walk through the courtyard bit at the castle, where the cookery theatre for demos is, plus lots of food stalls to eat lunch. We arrived a bit before 11am and wanted to see a demo at 12pm, so we decided to first head straight down to the gardens to look around some of the marquee stalls. We also wanted to see if there were any food stalls down there that took our fancy for lunch more. The first stall we came across was run by a catering company called Posh Nosh...

They had a range of savoury tarts which looked fantastic...

I took a photo to remind us in case we wanted to come back for lunch, but in the end we found a couple of stalls that I liked the look of even more, as you shall see in a bit!

The first sample we tried was a really interesting banana ketchup by the Smokey Joe Sauce Company...

This had a great spicy flavour which I thought Liam especially would love. Mum and I have a "technique" to tackle the food festival that we go around everything once, trying things and taking note of what we want to buy, and then we go back round again quickly at the end to make the bulk of our purchases. These sauces didn't make the final cut in the end. I love the food festival, but there are so many stalls that you just can't buy everything. We noticed that we especially tended not to buy all the bottles/jars we saw as by the end our shoulders and arms were just too tired to think about carrying them all! Kind of a shame, but my purse is probably thanking me!!

I really liked the idea of the Blueberry Brothers...

They grow their own blueberries and then work with local producers to make blueberry products - beers, cheeses, muffins etc. They had an amazing looking blueberry tart, but unfortunately we only got to sample the blueberry cheese which neither of us were particularly keen on, but then we don't particularly like cheese with fruit added to it. I wish I'd gone back to buy some of the tart though - it looked so fresh & juicy!

This year the show had one more marquee than last year - a smaller one at the far end - which is where we started (above). We then managed to get time to look at about half of the first (of two) big marquee.

Chilli chocolate from South Devon Chilli Farm...

Ella's Granola...

We chatted to Ella for a little while. She is only 15, and started her company in 2011 when she was only 14! When she first started out she was making the granola at home, but now her school lets her use their kitchens to make bigger quantities at the weekend. At the moment she's only selling the granola in her local post office and at food events like this one, but still...pretty impressive for someone so young! She was really enthusiastic about her product as well which was great, and she was manning the stall all by herself at a really busy festival...tasty granola too!

We just had time to look at a couple more stalls before we went to the cookery theatre - one for goats cheese which I have to be honest and say I don't even know what their name was - I was more interested in the cute trays they were using to display their products, oops!

And finally Truly Treats. Last year I bought a chocolate whoopie pie from them, that you can see in the background, but this year is was the Neapolitan cake that caught my eye...such a fun idea!

Next it was time to grab a mango lassi and settle ourselves down in the cookery theatre...

After looking at the timetable of what was on, we decided to see the demonstration featuring Mat Follas (Masterchef 2009 winner) as Mum had been to his restaurant, The Wild Garlic, before. It turned out to be a head-to-head between him and Russell Brown (Sienna Restaurant) which was quite fun.

After Michael Caines introduced the demonstration and thanked the sponsors, said a little bit about the festival etc...

...it was time for the chefs to get to work! They both created a dish using turbot and asparagus, but with very different outcomes. Last year I spent most of the demonstration taking notes on the recipes and then later found that they were on the website anyway. So this year I didn't take notes and have now discovered that these recipes aren't up. Haha, typical. This is what I remember anyway...

Mat Follas created a ceviche with his turbot and served it with pickled asparagus and some other leafy greens (samphire and micro herbs were mentioned I think) You can see his dish part way through plating up on the screen...

Russell Brown, on the other hand, griddled his asparagus, pan-fried his turbot and served it with little clams (? I think!) - as seen after taste-testing...

It was really interesting to hear about both the chefs' different approaches to cooking and food sourcing. Mat Follaseg French butter and clams in this dish) if they offered better quality, and seemed to have a more "fine-dining" style of cooking.

Michael Caines came back to taste-test the dishes...

and then the audience voted on the winner. Russell Brown won this 'contest' which I thought was the right decision on this occasion. I actually preferred Mat Follas' approach to food, and would prefer to visit his restaurant, but not if it meant eating raw fish!! Haha, no, I think the pan-fried turbot dish just had more going for it and seemed a bit more approachable if that makes sense.

After seeing the food being cooked in front of us, Mum and I were hungry! There were so many stalls to choose from and Mum, bless her, offered to eat vegetarian for the day so that we could share two dishes rather than only having one each. Lunch #1 came from The Hungry Gecko. I've actually just discovered, from reading the link I've just put in, that The Hungry Gecko is owned by Jackie Kearney, who is mainly interested in vegetarian cooking and got into the top 4 of MasterChef 2011, but for this food festival she also teamed up with the 2008 winner of MasterChef, James Nathan, who is currently working at Rick Stein's seafood restaurant in Padstow. We wondered why the man serving us was wearing a Seafood Restaurant apron!

I couldn't decide between the Indonesian curry with tempeh or the veg shashlik skewer in cauliflower flatbread, but as it turned out they had run out of the latter option anyway...

We both loved this! It was our first time trying tempeh and we really enjoyed it. I imagine that, like tofu, tempeh probably doesn't have a lot of flavour on its own (?) but in this spicy Indonesian sauce it was wonderful, and had a lovely firm texture. I also loved the fried onions on top, delish!

Washed down with some pear juice as it really was quite spicy!!

Lunch #2 was from Cafe Om...

I'd actually identified both The Hungry Gecko and Cafe Om beforehand as places I'd like to get lunch from, but I hadn't realised that neither of them had a permanent premises - both cater at festivals etc and Cafe Om will also come to you to host dinner parties.

From Cafe Om we shared the vegetable/cauliflower curry which came with brown rice and a choice of salads. We had the quinoa salad and the less spicy of the two sprouted salads, plus some soya yoghurt raita...

This was delicious, I adore cauliflower curry and it went really well with all the salads too.

Despite being quite full, we couldn't resist also getting dessert from Cafe Om...

Amazing chocolate torte using pecans, dates and coconut oil for the base and avocado, dates and cacao for the top...so so good! I actually bought a 2nd torte to take home with me which is currently in my Mum's freezer until our new fridge/freezer arrives on Friday, yum, can't wait to have this again!! I did think whilst eating it that I could make this myself. The base is effectively a version of fudge babies, and I've made chocolate avocado pudding in the past, I've just never put them together before. This was so delicious that I think I will have to make it at some point. I'm not sure Liam would like it as he doesn't like nuts so wouldn't like the base, but Mum loved it and you certainly couldn't tell that the topping was made with avocado. Probably one of my favourite things of the day, although there were plenty to choose from!

After lunch, we mainly went around buying things, so I will write about those, and the stalls they came from, in the next post. Here are a few more things that we didn't buy though. Not surprisingly, I seem to have mainly taken photos of cake!

Delicious cupcakes and chocolate lollies from The Cherry on Top...

I'd have loved to have bought some of these as they looked great, but I just couldn't buy everything! As it was I already bought things from 4 different cake stalls, 2 of which I had some kind of personal connection to, so unfortunately these got left behind. Hopefully they will be there again next year!

This last stall - Get Cupcaked - I did buy some really cute cupcakes from which I will show in the next post, but looking at this photo I wish I'd bought some carrot cake as well!

How fantastic does that look?!! In fact, I've just emailed the above photo to my Mum as she has agreed to make me a carrot cake for my birthday (less than 4 weeks away, yey!) so I've called this her inspiration! Haha, I do love a carrot cake with lots of cream cheese icing...delicious!

Whew, I am glad to get this post written. It was actually relatively easy (albeit time consuming) to write once I started as I was so enthusiastic about what I was writing...it was just the idea of such a long post that was a bit daunting! Hope you managed to read it ok anyway!

Have you ever been to a food festival before? What did you think?? This was my third time going to Exeter Food Festival, and I just love it. I'm already looking forward to going again next year! Back in October, I also went to a Love Food Fest Festival in Bath which was quite nice, but nowhere near as big as the Exeter one. I just love the range of stalls at the Exeter Food Festival. I still feel there were more things I could have looked at which makes it interesting to go back again year after year. Plus it's nice to have a day out with just my Mum - I definitely get my interest in food from her! :)

A Few More Tasty Treats From Exeter Food Festival

I think it's quite obvious from the purchases I made yesterday (full review of my fantastic day at Exeter Food Festival here) that I have a very sweet tooth. With the exception of the delicious bag of nuts from Mr Filbert's, everything I bought was sweet. Which means I've eaten a lot of cake and chocolate in the last couple of days!!

This afternoon I couldn't resist trying the chocolates from Shute Fruit...

These truffles are made by mixing their homemade jams/preserves with melted chocolate. First up was the raspberry one, covered in coconut...

This had a great tangy raspberry flavour and a rich, fugdy texture. The coconut coating also provided a nice crunch to cut through the richness. Loved it!

Next was strawberry...

I'm not a huge fan of strawberry flavoured things, so wasn't expecting to completely love this (hence only getting one of this flavour to try) but actually it didn't taste much of strawberry at all! The lack of strawberry flavour was, for me, a good thing, as it allowed the incredibly rich chocolate flavour to shine through. Like the raspberry, this truffle also had a fudgy, almost sticky, texture. So good.

Finally, ginger...

My Mum had already tried this one, and said that while it had a nice texture, it didn't have a particularly strong ginger taste. I have to agree. It had an interesting texture - with pieces of ginger in it as you would get in a ginger preserve, but apart from when you bit into the ginger bits, you wouldn't necessarily know you were eating a ginger truffle.

Overall, these were all really good quality chocolates. I adored the raspberry one. 10/10. I could eat those over & over again! It took me a while to decide on my second favourite, but I think, for the flavour of the chocolate, the strawberry won it - although not necessarily for strawberry lovers! The ginger truffles were also nice but could've done with a stronger flavour. Yum.

This evening  (and indeed last night!) I also tried the white chocolate chip chocolate brownie tray bake from Olivers Bakery in Crediton...

Last night I ate some of this warm with double cream...

and this evening just room temperature on it's own...

Both versions of this were absolutely amazing. However surprisingly for me, lover of all things rich & creamy, I think I actually preferred tonight's version of the brownie as is. It's delightfully gooey and fudgy as it is, that covering it in cream is unnecessary. Plus when heated it seemed to thin a bit, and I preferred the rich firmness of it at room temperature. Delicious. I wish they were online! If anyone lives near Crediton I definitely recommend both their cupcakes and their brownies!!

Despite how it may seem, I have also eaten some savoury-ish foods today. Earlier on I posted about the smoothie I had for breakfast and the peanut butter & banana muffins. I ended up having two muffins, spread with blueberry jam, as "lunch" (as well as 2 slices of white toast with the huge leftover chunk of Taleggio cheese mid-afternoon, ahem).

Dinner was an easy but popular dish in our house - Cheesy Mustardy Broccoli Pasta Bake...

the top is normally slightly browner than this, but we were too impatient/hungry for the cheese to brown properly! This was my first portion...

I inevitably went back for a second portion almost the same size! I love this - the slight tang of the mustard cuts through the cheese sauce, and the pasta overload gives lots carby goodness! The above pasta + the brownie tray bake = a very good end to the day! :)