August 2009 Archives

All you pastry chefs out there, sit up and take note.

If yours is a dog-friendly establishment, Product Junkie has sniffed out just the recipe for you.

Hound Cake was created as a treat for man's best friend by dog trainer Louise Green, apparently described as the Nigella of the dog food world by family and friends.

As you might expect it's not your usual sweet and sugary cake, rather it's full of wholesome ingredients such as broccoli and pilchards for keeping pooches in tip top condition.

Green was asked to design the cake for World Animal Week (4-10 October) by the World Society for the Protection of Animals which is encouraging people to get baking and hold a 'pet party' to raise money for the organisation to help stray dogs around the world.

What represents good old English fare better than bangers and mash?

A pasty perhaps? How about a bangers and mash pasty?

Seriously, there is such a thing. At least there will be next month when Cornwall's award-winning Crantock Bakery launches its range of seasonal specials for autumn.

The bangers and mash pasty is complete with onion gravy and the bakery has used locally-sourced Cornish ingredients wherever possible, from the potatoes grown on local farms to the herby Cornish sausage.

Well, what do you make of this? Product Junkie was rather alarmed at first and thought we'd stumbled across some specialist equipment.

So we were relieved to hear that it is in fact a rock-themed special edition bottle of Absolut vodka and that the leather and studs pay tribute to the "vibrant, bold and irreverent world of rock".

The Absolut Rock Edition from brand owner Pernod Ricard follows on from the success of the limited edition Masquerade and Disco bottles in recent years and its launch comes ahead of the brand's new advertising campaign with the tag, 'In an Absolut World, You Rock'.

So, if vodka is your rider, get down to Selfridges on 1st September when the Absolut Rock Edition is being launched, priced at £19.99.

It's currently worshipped by Waitrose customers and now you can administer it to your own congregation - and not just on Sundays.

God Lager from the Nils Oscar Micro-brewery in Sweden is now available to the on-trade and the brewery is praying that UK beer lovers will be converted.

For those of you concerned about possible blasphemy, have faith. The divine drink gets its name from the Swedish word for good - god - which was deemed the obvious name for the company's best selling beer.

The heavenly 'dark' lager (5.3%ABV) is brewed on the Nils Oscar farm using four hop varieties to produce a pilsner-style beer described as 'well balanced with malty sweetness and a hoppy dryness to finish'.