A perfect cake for tea time.

I notice that this chocolate biscuit cake recipe was called Fudge Cake in my mother’s recipe book probably because it does have a nice fudgy texture.

It's a great recipe because you don’t need to turn on the oven to cook it. I think some people call it fridge cake.

Fudge cake

5oz butter

1 beaten egg

3 tbsps sugar

1 tbsp cocoa

10 oz digestive biscuits, broken

Melt the butter, sugar, cocoa and beaten egg over a gentle heat until the mixture thickens.

Add the broken biscuits.

Press well into a well greased tin and chill.

Ice with chocolate glace icing. Sometimes I ice it with melted dark chocolate for a slightly more grown up taste.

At the Speciality and Fine Food show in the last few days there seemed to be no shortage of people who want to make a business out of the enduring love of the British for a cup of tea.

My love of tea really began 25 years ago when I met my tea trader husband to be in Calcutta. Ever since then tea has been central to our life together. A job in tea cannot be confined to the office. It spills out into your life. Nearly everyone wants to talk to an expert on the most universally interesting topic of tea and what makes a good cup of tea?

Bellevue tea was born out of a desire to have a business which would enable us to share with as many people as possible all that is fascinating and exciting about tea.

At around the time that our tea business was in the pipe line I was reading Cranford by Mrs Gaskell for my book group. In Cranford one of the ladies has fallen on hard times. Poor Miss Matty, a genteel spinster has lost her inheritance when a bank goes bust. This was nineteenth century when banks were allowed to fail. She needs to find a way to earn a living. It is decided that she should sell tea. This is how she gets on.....

‘When [it] came to the proposal that she should sell tea, I could see it was rather a shock to her[Miss Matty]; ..........One good thing about it was, she did not think men ever bought tea; and it was of men particularly she was afraid. They had such sharp loud ways with them; and did up accounts, and counted their change so quickly! ....

.....Before I left Miss Matty at Cranford everything had been comfortably arranged for her. Even Mrs Jamieson's approval of her selling tea had been gained. That oracle had taken a few days to consider whether by so doing Miss Matty would forfeit her right to the privileges of society in Cranford.

.... Miss Matty’s sales of tea during the first two days had surpassed my most sanguine expectations. The whole country round seemed to be all out of tea at once. The only alteration I could have desired in Miss Matty's way of doing business was, that she should not have so plaintively entreated some of her customers not to buy green tea - running it down as a slow poison, sure to destroy the nerves, and produce all manner of evil. Their pertinacity in taking it, in spite of all her warnings, distressed her so much that I really thought she would relinquish the sale of it, and so lose half her custom; and I was driven to my wits' end for instances of longevity entirely attributable to a persevering use of green tea.'

Luckily, when I decided to start a business selling tea it was no longer in question whether it is a suitable job for a woman to do. We also know that drinking green tea has great health benefits unlike Miss Matty who was convinced that drinking it could produce all manner of evils.

Not long after we read the book, it was dramatised on the BBC and here you can see Dame Judi Dench as Miss Matty talking about opening a tea shop.

If you would like to read a fuller version about Miss Matty and her exploits in tea and Cranford it can be read online here:

Has a new tea related business opened near you recently?

In June of this year we were invited by Cotswold Fayre to a supplier conference in mid September and the back message was ‘be there or be square’. We were pleased at Bellevue tea that this was being organised because the relationship of a supplier with their wholesalers and distributors is usually conducted from a distance with the occasional meeting. Although you meet distributors and fellow suppliers at trade shows while exhibiting, these meetings are often a bit short and sweet with snatched conversations. So to get a chance to meet other suppliers and the whole team behind a distributor is a very welcome experience.

Some of the suppliers at the conference had been dealing with Cotswold Fayre since Paul Hargreaves started the business in a garage in Reading not far from their fantastic new warehouse but we are relatively new to the world of fine food and were pleased to be listed with Cotswold Fayre in Dec 2007. I remember thinking at the time that our relationship was not very well defined.

Back then we had a meeting with the sales force and gave some samples and it was good to know that there was someone else out there pushing Bellevue tea but there was still a vagueness about the whole thing. The new stockists were their customers but were we allowed to have any contact with these outlets? At the very least, we need stockist information for our website so it would be slightly counterproductive not to give it. To be fair Cotswold Fayre has always told us, when prompted, who our stockists are but it has been quite difficult at times to get responses about other activities to increase sales.

The main message of the suppliers’ conference was that we should be working together for mutual growth. Now that this has been established as the foundation of our relationship we hope that communications will be better. From Bellevue tea’s point of view the more stockists we have using Cotswold Fayre the better so we welcome this green light for better cooperation to increase sales wholeheartedly.

How closely do you work with your distributor?

The fine leaf teas in our collection have been carefully chosen by Mike, tea trader husband of Clare Jones the owner of bellevue tea. He has 30 year's experience of the tea industry and it is his expertise and experience that allows Bellevue Tea to provide teas of exceptional quality and freshness to its customers. Mike has visited tea producing factories in countries all over the world and has selected a interesting collection of black, white, green, and oolong teas for you to experience as well as a selection of classic blends and herbal infusions.