Romance is the icing, but love is the cake

Moving on from my lovely holiday I thought it was about time to get my head out of the clouds and replace my feet firmly on the soil of the North East and what better way to do that than enjoying one of my favourite hobbies, afternoon tea.  Can I really call afternoon tea a hobby?  Yes I think I can!

The Great British Cupcakery opened many months ago close to the Quayside, it's a very short walk from my office so I stumbled across it pre-opening and from a very quick look through the window (I am a nosy neighbour!) I knew it was right up my street.  Since then I've had the very difficult task of keeping myself away during lunch hours as I wanted my first visit to be with Simon.

I was very excited to discover that Travel Zoo were offering a local deal on the afternoon tea at the Parlour so with no hesitation I claimed the offer and on Saturday we finally got ourselves into gear and booked a table.

If I was going to open my own tea room it would look just like GBC, the crisp white interior and shabby chic furniture is right up my street and the massive tables make it an ideal location for afternoon tea with a large group of friends.  GBC offer their space to book your own vintage tea party and it would be a fantastic place to have a gathering.

The afternoon tea was so delicious, the cakes were huge and very satisfying.  We had to take some of our tea home as it completely defeated us.  That's not something that happens very often so a sign of a very good and filling afternoon tea.

The bottom layer of sandwiches consisted of tuna and cucumber, cheese and pickled chutney (Simon's personal favourite) carved ham and egg mayonnaise with cress.    It was nice to have such classic sandwiches on an afternoon tea.  I've been to many afternoon teas where overly fancy sandwiches have lead to people needing to play swapsies.   No problems here, we both munched every sandwich put in front of us.

The next layer was the all important scone, at most afternoon teas you get two but at GBC they provide you with the largest scones I have ever seen so you really do only need the one.  The scone also arrived ready filled with a huge dollop of jam and cream which I liked - no need to be polite to Simon when helping myself to the cream.

The most important tier is, of course, the ones containing the cakes.  We had a lovely varied selection, a mini chocolate éclair, a treacle tart and the all important cupcake which was strawberry cheesecake.  It was worth the wait - beautiful soft sponge and a really delicious strawberry icing and filling. I know I'll be wanting to head there again soon to try some of their other cupcakes.

So, yet another fantastic afternoon tea to add to our list and, who knows, maybe a potential place to win my lunchtime Winter hideaway challenge.

I'd really recommend you get yourself down there for a treat, they offer a cream tea for £3.95 per person and afternoon tea for £19.95 per person (advanced booking required) or if you can't quite manage all that food then just pop in for a cupcake cake or a slice of something lovely.  It's also worth mentioning that they make cakes to order including really beautiful wedding cakes