STARBUCKS SALTED CARAMEL MOCHA

Now I'm no fan of Starbucks' coffee, I'm a Nero girl myself (hark at me being all coffee connoisseur when I only starting drinking it a couple of years ago) but you've got to give it to them - they do seasonal drinks like no other. When I got an email shouting about the new Salted Caramel Mocha my eyes lit up like a glow worm in a cave. 

'Espresso and steamed milk, blended with mocha sauce and toffee nut flavoured syrup. Topped with sweetened whipped cream, caramel sauce and a mixture of turbinado sugar and sea salt', you say? 

I love salt. I love mocha. Surely I MUST LOVE THIS? So after spending much of today in a freezing cold studio I thought I'd tret (yes, 'tret') myself to a nice warm drink on the way home. 

Now I don't particularly like cream but seeing as the main point of this drink is the rock salt and caramel drizzle that perches on the whipped cream, I thought I ought to suck it up and have a little bit. So I got a "tall salted caramel mocha with skimmed milk. And just a little bit of cream." Such a palava ordering a drink in there, I always feel like I need to write it down and rehearse it first.

Didn't want to look like the type of loser who takes pictures of her coffee to blog it (OH HAI!) so I lovingly carried the drink home to take a picture there. And realised all the cream had melted. So it just looked like a regular coffee. Cool. So here's what Starbucks say it'll look like (when have you ever been given a coffee in a glass in there?!):

I'm sure it did look like that before the heat and walk got to it. With less cream, obvs. Look at all that salt! Deeeee-lish. I however, didn't get to experience the crunchy crunch of the salt crystals as they'd dissolved by the time I took my first sip, which I was kind of bummed about that seeing as I'm N16's biggest salt fiend. 

Despite weeping over spilt salt, the drink was still pretty damn good. The mocha sauce takes the overbearing nuttiness out of the toffee nut syrup and the dissolved salt can probably also take some credit for making the drink seem less sickly sweet and rich. Though I'm still glad I only got a small one. Give me a venti and I'll quite possibly hand it back to you with chunks of my vomit in it. Oh sorry, were you eating?

p.s. Kind of wish my name was Lissa.

Starbucks Salted Caramel Mocha, Tall, £2.95

BLENHEIM PALACE

So I've not blogged in a while, guess I was enjoying the hot summer we had (WHAT?), but I'm now back in the game. Task for the Autumn/Winter is to have more productive weekends, and this started last weekend when I went back to the parental cocoon and they took me to Blenheim Palace for a wholesome day out.

The word 'picnic' was bandied around so I went full throttle and made a Mediterranean Picnic Loaf to take with us. So delicious I almost cried. We picnic-ed in the freezing cold/blazing sun (a curious combo), took a look round a house that's too big for its own good and drank coffee that we queued half an hour for and drank in two minutes. We also got lost in a maze but I don't want to talk about it.

The day was concluded at a lovely little Turkish restaurant in Bicester where I ate haloumi and lasagne and taught the waitress how to do polka dot nails. Thanks parents.