Food

We all love home made baked goodies.  I do quite enjoy making them at home, but often time and life get in the way.  If you are busy getting ready to host friends for the weekend, other jobs may take priority.  Wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to buy a homemade cake or some brownies?  Unless there’s a convenient cake sale or you know a good local baker, you probably can’t unless you make it that cake yourself.  Then Sponge Cakes Ltd got in touch and told me about their new brownies range.  I really loved the idea of ordering brownies and having them delivered by post.

Sponge Cakes Ltd’s new brownies range is full of wonderful things.  I tried out the Chocolate Orange brownies because chocolate orange is one of my favourite flavours.  The brownies had a great texture with just the right amount of gooey ness and crumbliness. It’s an orange flavoured brownie with orange chocolate chunks throughout the mix.  It’s topped with a white, dark and orange chocolate drizzle effect.

We tried the brownies out and home and I also took them around to a friend’s house for her family to try.  They went down very well with everyone.  I’d have liked them to be ever so slightly less sweet, but that’s a personal preference thing.  The proof is in the eating and the brownies certainly didn’t last long.

I love the brownies are full of good things: free range eggs, gluten free flour and natural flavourings. They arrive well packaged and mine were undamaged in transit.  Unusually the brownies come in a circular shape like a cake, rather than the square shapes that we have become more used to.  This works well for me as I find it easier to cut a round cake into equal pieces.

If you aren’t sure which flavour to buy, maybe try the Four Sharing brownie, which has four quarters each a different flavour.

As well as trying out the new brownies range, I tried a Coffee Cake from Sponge Cakes Ltd too.  For someone who isn’t a coffee drinker, it’s perhaps surprising that coffee cake is one of my favourites. Again the cake arrived well packaged and looking fabulous.  It was very moist and did have that lovely homemade taste to it, whilst being a very professional looking treat.  It got a lot of compliments and I’d certainly get one again, especially if I was entertaining or celebrating a birthday or similar.

I liked to idea of using coffee beans on top of the cake to add some crunch instead of the usual walnuts.  Once again good quality ingredients are used in the baking, such as free range eggs.  We had no trouble eating it all whilst it was fresh, but you can freeze left over slices.

Sponge Cakes Ltd have 14 flavours of cakes available so there should be something to tempt you.  If you prefer you can have a sharing cake with either 14 flavours in one cake so you can have a slice of each one or a cake with four flavours that can be cut into slices.

Brownies are one of my favourite treats.  I do like making brownies myself too. There’s something very special though about having a delicious box of brownies pop through your letter box without any effort on your part.  The other advantage of getting them delivered is that you can pick a range of goodies.  If you make a batch then, they will all be the same type. This is a perfect gift to give to a lover of brownies.  Great for these pandemic days too because you can send them in the post. You can avoid the need to go to the shops to pick a gift.  Scrumptious by Lucy got in touch recently and Lucy offered me the chance to try her fabulous brownies.  I opted to try the Pick your own box of 4 as I loved the idea of picking out my favourite flavours. I picked out Chocolate Orange, Signature Chocolate, Lemon Blondie and a Bakewell Blondie.  These were the varieties that appealed most to me and I liked the idea of having a nice mix of brownies and blondies.

Scrumptious By Lucy offer around twenty flavours, including gluten free  and vegan varieties if you need them.  So you really are spoiled for choice. You can pick a chocolate focused brownie like the Signature Chocolate Brownie which offers all the chocolatey brownie goodness that you desire.  Or pick out a brownie with a flavouring like Chocolate Orange or Salted Caramel.  I’m a bit fan of chocolate orange as a flavour and that one certainly didn’t disappoint.  Both brownies that I selected were full of flavour and had that great moist, crumbly texture.  There are innovative flavours available like the Lotus Brownie Biscoff or the Oreo Brownie.

As well as brownies Scrumptious By Lucy offer a selection of blondies too.  These are great if you want something that tastes a bit lighter or has a more delicate flavour than chocolate.  I loved the lemon zing of the Lemon Blondie which is a packed full of lemon flavour.  The Bakewell Blondie is very moreish too and it is really difficult to pick out a favourite.

If you are buying a box of brownies as a gift, you can opt for a gift wrap.  It’s really easy to buy for those with restricted diets. Just pick out a vegan box or a gluten free one and all the work is done for you.

I have a box of Scrumptious By Lucy’s fabulous brownies to give away to one lucky reader.  Enter via the Gleam widget below.

Competition Terms and Conditions

1. No bulk, third-party or automated entries allowed.

2. Entrants must be aged 18 years or older and resident in the UK.

3. The winner or winners will be chosen by a random draw using the competition widget.

4. Promoter is responsible for fulfilling the prize and full contact details of the winner will be passed onto the promoter to enable prize fulfillment.

5. The winner’s name may be published on this site.

6. Competition closes at the end of Sunday 18th July 2021.
Scrumptious By Lucy Brownies

I’ve been thinking of trying a low carb diet for a while.  I eat a lot of carbs and I’m not sure I really should be.  I’d like to get out of the habit of being such a pasta fiend, but I’ve lacked the inspiration and the know-how to find the right meals to eat.  So when Love Yourself got in touch about their new low carb range, it seemed meant to be.

The new Low-Carb meal plan is available at LoveYourself.co.uk who prepare fresh food each day with the finest ingredients. With no additives, preservatives, or processed foods, each meal plan is available in a range of calorie options. All food is prepared by a gourmet Chef and Nutritionist to ensure each meal is balanced and tasty.

Love Yourself’s low carb diet is really easy to tailor to your needs.  They have four calorie options (1200, 1500, 2000 and 2500) depending on whether you want to lose weight, maintain or to allow for different calorific needs. There are loads of different ordering options, so you can buy a day’s worth of meals to try it out.  You can get a week’s worth (either 5 or 6 days) and you can buy for 1 week, 4 weeks, 8 weeks or subscribe. Each day’s worth of meals includes breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner.  It’s good to have eating healthily made so easy.

As I eat a lot of carbs normally the meals did seem on the small side, but because they contain plenty of protein you don’t feel hungry.  They are also packed full of good things, so you feel virtuous too.  There’s the snack too too keep you going if you feel peckish mid afternoon say.
The meals arrived by courier.  I had a few deliveries, as I had a few days of the plan to try out. A lot of effort went into keeping the meals cool whilst they were transported and the packages were well insulated. A lot of effort has gone into to making the packaging sustainable.   All the containers are biodegradable and 90 days compostable – I rinsed mine out and sent it off in our garden waste bin for the council to compost. The bags are made of paper and the bottles (I had a flaxseed and berry smoothie as my snack one day) are made from 100% recyclable plastics.

Generally the delivery went well, but on one occasion there was a bit of leaking from one of the meals.  It proved salvageable though. The other small problem was that the printing on the labels was a little faint (like the printer cartridge was running low).  I could still read it, but needed good light to be able to do so.

Just to give you a bit of an idea of the range of dishes, here are some of things I got to sample whilst I was trying the plan:

• baked beans & turkey with gluten free veggie bread
• lamb & feta meatballs
• shredded Vietnamese chicken salad
• Mediterranean frittata
• chocolate almond butter balls
• chicken with lemon and tarragon sauce

Every meal is scannable via the MyFitness app to help you keep track of calories and macro-nutrients. Meal plans start from just £15 per day from LoveYourself.co.uk

These meals arrived just as I was recovering from a minor operation.  It was great to have healthy meals ready to go to help me during my recovery.  If you lead a busy life this would be ideal too, as you can eat well without needing to do all the shopping and preparation that normally goes along with that.  The meals were extremely tasty and I really enjoyed eating them – I don’t think there was anything I didn’t like.  The low carb side of things worked well too, as I felt less bloated and had more energy.  I was really pleased with the meals and would happily order again.

Disclosure: I was sent a few days worth of Love Yourself low carb meals for the purposes of this review.