Wallpaper Wednesday: Aimee Wilder

Do you remember the Studio Ditte robot wallpaper I wrote about a little while back? I mentioned a certain Aimee Wilder, who has always been streets ahead in the world of wallpaper design, but I was struggling to find a UK stockist. Then I found Wall Library - the only UK distributor of Aimee's designs. Now you can see why I love her work so much.

These wallpaper has a little Japanese family all lined up. So cute.

ROCKETS! This wallpaper is a pretty good argument for having kids.

D'you remember mix tapes? Me too. Love this analogue paper.

Here's the robot wallpaper I mentioned. I absolutely love all robot wallpapers ever created.

You can't make me choose between squirrels and robots. That's just cruel. Obviously I want robot squirrels. (And then I'd like to take over the world with my robot squirrel army.)

Aimee Wilder's wallpaper isn't in the cheap category - it's about £130 a roll (granted if you hop across the pond, it's much cheaper) - but I think it's really special. I love the quirky designs and have basically repapered my entire house in my head. I'm sure my housemates want rockets and robots and squirrels on the walls.

Ask The Sluts: What's your favourite chocolate bar?

Everyone has a favourite chocolate bar (don't try and fight it, you can't like two bars equally). There's always a favourite. Here's a little run down of what chocolate you'll find in our desk drawers. If you want to bribe us to be our friends, these are the choccy bars you should buy us.

Siany: I go through fits and bursts with chocolate bars. One week I can be all over Twix bars, then I'll forgot they exist for ages. Then Bounty bars, then Kinder Bueno. Despite my lust for other chocolate, I always come back to Wispa bars. The day they reappeared was probably one of the best days of my life. Not Wispa Gold, though. They're crap.

Sara: Bounty bars, because I enjoy telling myself I'll just eat half and save the rest for later, then immediately forgetting and scarfing the whole lot. Dark chocolate only, mind.

Hazel: Wow to choose just one is REALLY tough. When I was little it was without doubt the blue Biscuit Boost, but then they went and made the caramel and chocolate layer all soft and ruined it (why do they keep doing that?) so my allegiance moved on to Caramels, although a Flake bar comes a very close second...

Elizabeth: As a self-proclaimed chocoholic this a really tough question. Am I allowed a top 5? Green & Black's Almond, Cadbury's Whole Nut, Ferrero Rocher, the Purple One and a plain old Snickers bar. So basically anything with nuts would make me happy.

Nick: My grandparents used to have a walk-in cupboard which was essentially a confectioner's Aladdin's cave. That was where I fell in love with Toffee Crisps, Penguins, Wispas and Trios. Unfortunately, my teenage years made me afraid of chocolate and its effects on the landscape of my pubescent face so now I only indulge in my absolute favourites. Williams-Sonoma Peppermint bark is my crack (white chocolate, dark chocolate and mint rock). My other weakness is Crunchies. Chocolate and honeycomb!?! It's essentially doubling-down on greatness, I'm saddened that no one else recognised its supremacy.

Laura: For me, without a doubt, it's Kinder Bueno. Unbelievably moreish hazelnut cream covered in wafer so you can pretend it's almost healthy. There was an advert for them about five years ago where two high pitched voices just sang the word 'Bueno' again and again, and I have to sing it whenever I see one. If you can't get Bueno, just buy me anything Swiss. Particularly if it has sea salt in it. But not dark chocolate, that would just be silly.


Caleigh: It has to be Cadbury's Flake. When I was 11, I played Charlie in an all-girl production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and my 'Wonka Bar', that I ate on stage every night, was really a Flake - I've loved them ever since. I love that the crumbly bits collect in the bottom of the wrapper and just when you think you've finished the bar, you've actually got another wee helping of chocolatey goodness lurking there.


So which is the best chocolate bar? Wispas? Crunchies? Bounty? FIGHT!

Flickr image from acme.

The boy and his poison: Hendrick's Gin Sorbet

Here's some life advice for you: don't shop online when you're drunk. Don't even entertain the idea. While I slowly passed out on Thursday night after an evening of vodka tasting (2-week home distilled Ukrainian vodka isn't a mid-week lifestyle choice I'd recommend) I was feeling pretty smug at the achievement of doing my weekly grocery shop and managing to eat leftovers simultaneously. Fast forward to Saturday morning and me surveying the shopping whims of a drunk-idiot-savant. However, there is a silver lining to this gloomy cloud.

One of my ill-conceived purchases was a job lot of cucumbers, sadly no BOGOF offer, no coupon, I'd just evidently decided the website probably wouldn’t have understood my initial click so I decided to keep hammering the mouse regardless... so what to do? Make a ton of tzatziki, distribute cucumber sandwiches to all my neighbours? It all seemed a bit of a wasted opportunity, especially when I’d seen a recipe for pimms jelly with cucumber sorbet earlier in the week. I’m not a massive jelly fan and I felt the sorbet could try that little bit harder, which was when I noticed alcohol could be used instead of an egg white to stop it setting solid. So I made the decision to reform my idiotic drunk shopping choices into gin sorbet, wrong and delicious on every level.

You'll need:

• 180g Sugar
• 25g Squeezable glucose (easy to pick up in good supermarket baking sections, promise)
• 200ml Water
• 100ml Hendrick's Gin
• A cucumber
• Juice of 1.5 Limes
• Handful of mint leaves

Make it:

1. Bring the sugar, water, glucose, and mint to the boil
2. Add the lime, stir till mixed and take off the heat
3. While the syrup is cooling blend the cucumber with a hand blender or better still pass it through a juicer. 
4. Allow the syrup to cool by either letting it rest for a few hours or popping it straight in the fridge
5. When cooled add the syrup and gin to the cucumber and blend again with a hand blender
6. Pass through a sieve into a resealable container ( I added a bit of the pulp for colour)
7. Place in the freezer and stir every hour or so to break apart the ice crystals (if you're lucky enough to have an ice cream maker, feel free to drop the mixture straight in it and let it do the hard work for you)
8. Serve it with a sprig of mint and some tart summer fruit, or put your feet up and spoon it straight out of the tub.

Baking for Beginners: Lemon and Elderflower Shortbread

Continuing my theory that baking summery food will coax summer out of hiding, this shortbread recipe uses the light, delicate flavours of lemon zest and elderflower cordial to make biscuits that taste of sunshine. Shortbread is a rich, buttery biscuit, and the generous pinch of salt in this recipe helps counter that.

Use your own elderflower and lavender syrup or just some elderflower cordial (which you can buy just about everywhere now, in the squash aisle of your supermarket).

Lemon and Elderflower Shortbread

You will need:

• 150g butter (at room temperature)
• 75g caster sugar 
• 225g plain flour
• Pinch of salt
• Zest of one lemon
• 2 tsp elderflower cordial

Make it!

1. Preheat the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2.
2. Cream together the butter and caster sugar using a food mixture or wooden spoon.
3. Add the flour, salt, lemon zest and elderflower cordial and mix until it resembles breadcrumbs.
4. Use your hands to bring it together into a crumbly dough, and gently press it out to 1cm thick. Don't use a rolling pin as you'll overwork it and make it tough.
5. Pop the biscuits in the fridge for 15 minutes. This stops the mixture spreading as much in the oven and will give you thicker shortbread.
6. Bake for 25-30 minutes until pale golden-brown. They should be firm round the edges but soft in the middle. Leave to cool for a few minutes on the tray before transferring to a cooling rack.

Shop in the Spotlight: Winberry & Antler

I love finding designers based in Shropshire. I'm from there! I know where that is! (Just on the border of Wales, an hour and a bit left of Birmingham.)  Whinberry & Antler like their animals countryside-y. Get very excited, you know that means HEDGEHOGS AND BADGERS!

Yep, this is soon to be part of my tea towel collection. You know the saying that I just made up - three badgers are always better than one.

I don't love hares as much as badgers, but I do like tote bags and I don't want to discriminate against animals for not being as awesome as badgers. It's not their fault. Still, what they lack in stripes, that make up for in massive ears.

There are deer, too! This time on lavender bags. The designs all appear on each of the products, so you could have badger everything if you wanted (I want).

The homeware prices are very reasonable indeed, starting at £8 for a tea towel and going up to £35 for a handmade cushion. If you fancy getting handy with badgers yourself, you'll soon be able to buy Whinberry & Anter fabric. I apologise in advance* if your entire home is soon covered in badgers.

* I don't.

Sluttishly Savoury: Pea Shooters

Garden peas are in season and they are one of my favourite summer treats, sadly they are also a favourite of the hordes of slugs who have completely destroyed any pea shoot that managed to make it through the soil. My fella told me he looks forward to the day I return from the veg patch and my first words aren't "bastard slugs!"

There are lots of bags of peas in their pods in the shops right now and as soothing as sitting in the garden with a glass of wine whilst podding peas is, I always feel a bit disappointed at the measly amount of peas I get from a big bag of pods. The pods are packed full of lovely pea flavour and so this recipe was created to get the most from your lovely bag of pods. I also added some frozen peas which I always have in my freezer just to boost it as the peas from my pods were tiny.

I really like this as a cold shooter, it's so cooling and refreshing with the fresh mint running through the summer pea flavour, and it can be made well in advance so it's perfect for a summer BBQ (and looks quite impressive!). My fella is not convinced by the idea of cold soup however and prefers it hot in a big bowl but it works beautifully either way.

You'll need:

• 1 bag of peas in their pods, mine weighed about 250g
• 400ml semi skimmed milk
• 200ml water
• 1 heaped teaspoon powdered chicken stock, or veg if you prefer
• knob of butter
• 2 chopped shallots or 1 small white onion
• 150g frozen peas (about 2 mugs full)
• a handful of chopped fresh mint
• salt and pepper

Make it!

1. Wash your pea pods and remove any nice big peas and set to one side, I like to save a few pea shoots for decoration later.
2. Grab a saucepan and gently sweat off the shallot until soft then add the milk, water, stock and your empty pods. Heat until just boiling then remove from the heat and leave to infuse for about 15 minutes. 
3. Using a hand blender (or processor if you have one) blitz the mixture up a bit then strain through a sieve into a clean saucepan. Check the taste and season with salt and pepper. Add your frozen peas (and any fresh that you had set aside) and heat just until the peas are cooked then add your mint.
4. Blitz again using your blender then strain one last time. If having the soup hot you really don't need to strain again if you like a thicker soup but for the cold soup to be really silky it needs to be done.
5. Pop your pea soup in the fridge to chill then serve in tall shot glasses and top with a pea shoot.

Book Geekery: White's Fine Editions

There's a little bookshop on Exmouth Market in London called Clerkenwell Tales. It's one of the most lovely bookshops I've ever been in. It's small, but it's eclectic. It feels like every single book has been chosen for the shop and there's a very curated feel to it.

They had a selection of White's Fine Editions and I nearly walked out with all of them (in a canvas tote bag, which comes free with your purchases).

The books are all hardback, but they're covered in gorgeous canvas illustrations. Canvas covered classics aren't particularly new, but these really blew me away.

It's a gorgeous range, this Sherlock Holmes design is very cool.

I thought these would be so much more expensive than they are, they certainly look very fancy. Actually, they're around £15. If you're not near Clerkwenwell, you can buy a whole bunch of White's Fine Editions on Amazon, and a couple are even cheaper at The Book Depository. These are the perfect gift. Find your best friend's favourite and send it to her in the post for absolutely no reason.

Want more book stuff? You can read about our brand new Sluttery book club or use the box in the sidebar sign up to our weekly newsletter (you get free wine!) - today's edition is inspired by all things bookish.