Ingredients:
1 Pack digestive biscuits
4 tablespoons Cafédirect San Cristobal Drinking Chocolate
160g butter
1 handful of raisins
2 tablespoons Fairtrade golden syrup or honey
300g Divine Dark Chocolate

Instructions:

John's Tiffin

1. Crush the digestives in a large bowl. Ideally you should have a mixture of crumbs and some small pieces.
2. Add the San Cristobal and mix the bowl well so that the digestives turn brown.
3. Melt the butter.
4. Add the butter to the mixture and stir in. This will help the mixture stick together.
5. Add the raisins and the golden syrup/honey and mix it all up.
6. Press the mixture into a shallow tray and try to make it as smooth as possible.
7. Melt the chocolate (in a bowl over some simmering water). You may want to add a little milk to think the mixture.
8. Pour on top and smooth over the mixture.

Put it in the fridge over night (or if you can’t wait, pop it in to the freezer!) and you’re done.
Enjoy!

There are only 2 more days left of Fairtrade Fortnight but, in the same spirit of a dog being life and not just for Christmas, there is still loads of stuff you can do to make your Big Swap to Cafédirect Tea!

* host your own Cafédirect Tea Party using one of our exciting kits

* tagging yourself and your friends on Facebook

* uploading your own photos or videos onto our Tea Party page for a chance to win a gourmet cupcake-making class

* send your friends a tea-greeting and get 50p off Cafédirect tea

* make the office tea-round fairer by persuading your workplace to go Cafédirect

* Swap your clothes for a pack of our delicious Everyday Tea at Oxfam shops

* and enter this week’s Friday Fun….

Here is a photo of Cafédirect Tea Lady Chrissie preparing for her Tea Party. We’d like to call this photo ‘One lump or two’ but realise that that’s a bit of a lame effort. So if you can come up with a better caption you could win some Fairtrade goodies!

The rules are simple:
Think of a creative caption for this photo and  post it to the comment box of this blog post.
You have until 5.30pm today to post your caption.
The winning caption will be chosen and announced on Monday on our blog. (Prizes can only be sent to a UK or Ireland postal address.)

The chosen caption will win some Cafédirect goodies, a Bodum cafétiere, two Cafédirect mugs and some gorgeous Divine chocolate with raspberries!

this week's prize!

FAIR Fairtrade quinoa vodka

For those of you that aren’t tea-totallers, the world of Faritrade is your oyster, and you can even join The Big Swap and round off the party with Fairtrade Vodka!

We’ve teamed up with our friends at Fair Vodka to bring you the Fair Espresso Martini, in a couple of simple steps…

What you’ll need (for each cocktail)
4 cl FAIR™ – Fairtrade quinoa vodka (available online here)
3 cl Cafédirect coffee

2 cl Fairtrade Vanilla infused sugar syrup (can be home made)
Dash of cream
Plenty of Ice!
Ideally cocktail shaker too!

Step 1
Prepare the vanilla syrup.
Add 500g Fairtrade golden sugar to 400 ml water, bring it to the boil, add the vanilla pod and allow to cool. You can keep it in a bottle for a while and reuse at your leisure.

Step 2
Prepare the coffee!

Ideally you’d use a 3cl shot of Cafédirect espresso coffee, but if you don’t have access to an espresso machine, don’t let this put you off – simply prepare some strong Rich Roast – our friend Theo knows all about this . Then allow to cool.

Step 3
Add all ingredients to the shaker
Shake vigorously (do not stir – if you want to create a stir go here)  Serve in a Martini glass and strain the ice off.
It you want to make it very fancy (like our delightful photo here) you can try to float a dash of cream on top and garnish with a few Machu Picchu coffee beans, or perhaps a sprinkle of Fairtrade cinnamon or San Cristobal drinking chocolate!

Fair Espresso Martini

Remember – Drink Responsibly!

This is a truly horrendous situation and we have been in touch with Gumutindo, our coffee grower partner in the area, to find out what is happening on the ground and how Cafédirect can best support them.  We will be providing an update as soon as we have more details.

Drop into an Oxfam shop and donate some unwanted (but good quality!) items, and in return you’ll get some Cafédirect Everyday Tea.

Donating quality items can help Oxfam to raise money to fight poverty and as donations to Oxfam have decreased by 15 per cent over the past 12 months – the steepest decline for years – this is the perfect time to do so.

To find your nearest participating shop, search for ‘food’ here, call 0300 2001 333 or look out for the poster displayed in shop windows.

Cafédirect Big Swap with Oxfam

While you’re in there pick up some crockery and you can make your own unique cake-stand to use at your Tea Party! We made some for our Office Tea Party with crockery we picked up at a local Oxfam- it really is easy!

Follow these instructions, and don’t forget to  share your Tea Party photos on Facebook for your chance to win a Fair Cake Cupcake class!

Cafédirect Tea Ladies at the Strictly Fairtrade Tea Dance

From salsa to Bollywood and swing to samba, there were dance workshops throughout the day for everyone to enjoy. In between dancing, there were lots of Fairtrade stalls to browse, and of course Cafédirect tea to drink!

Here’s a poem from Tea Lady Karen describing the day:

“Today there was a lot more prancing, today I learnt some real dancing!
To the Fairtrade fair they came, to show us how to be less tame!
So we waltzed and jitterbugged, and then the trolley we lugged
To hand out samples of tea, to the many who wanted to see
What Fairtrade’s all about.
They tasted nuts, chocolate and our tea – which was, of course, complimentary!
They felt cotton and smelt soaps: which brought smiles and future hopes:
Learning of Fairtraders adding might, to help growers grow right.
People chatted and shared, the ways that they cared
Talked of their swaps, between dancing ‘bops.’
After beautiful Bollywood moves, we really got into our grooves:
The teapot was left for the rumba, the strutting limbered my lumbar!
We shimmied in our salsa so fine, forgot rain made our own sunshine!
Spitalfields deserves three cheers, a fairtrade must for coming years!”

We took lots of photos of the event, which you can see on Flickr and Facebook. If you spot yourself in the Tea Dance photos tag yourself in, because on Monday 8th March, we’ll have a prize draw for anyone who tags themselves in these photos. The winner will receive a three month supply of tea!

Still feeling pretty full from overindulging at our Tea Party last week I have a lovely picture below to show us in action at Cafédirect HQ, doing what we do best; eating cake, drinking tea and having a good ol’ natter!

To win this week’s competition and receive a basket full of Cafédirect goodies, tell us what party games would be top on your agenda if you were the Gamesmaster like Alex was at our Tea Party?

Remember to post your entry in the comments box below. We’re looking for something fun and original! You have until 5.30pm today to enter.

The winner will be chosen from all entries received and announced on the blog on Monday. Prizes can only be sent to a UK or Republic of Ireland address.

Good luck!

Charlotte

Starting out at London Bridge and ending up at Trafalgar Square, via the Houses of Parliament, they gave out Cafédirect tea & coupons and cheered up gloomy looking commuters on their way to work…

The Tea Ladies had so much fun, Tea Lady Karen (above) even wrote a poem about it…

Tea-Ladies cause a storm with teabags!

Tea Ladies, Tea Ladies everywhere!
Some in blue and some in red
All of us so early out of bed!
There were curlers, and lippy
On London Bridge, so nippy!
With  our Cafédirect white aprons
We were unique tea matrons!
Commuters were greeted
Our tea samples depleted!
The tube was a laugh
Travellers cleared a path
To stare at the sight
Of Tea Lady might.
We made some of them smile
Brightened their day for a while!
The tourists beamed and clicked
As around Parliament Square we high kicked!
But you had to be at Traflagar Square
Watching our antics for all who were there!
Waltzing to ‘Tea for Two’
Whilst desperately needing the loo!
Voice of America filmed us with care
Said they had an interest in trade that was fair
Then thanked me for my prancing
And said it was good dancing!

The Tea Lady dance

If you didn’t get the chance to meet them this morning, drop by the Cafédirect stand at the Strictly Fairtrade Tea Dance in Spitalfields on Saturday.

We recently conducted a survey of 3,000 workers and found that each week, female workers make more than three times as many cups of tea for male colleagues as men make for them.

Two thirds of men (62 percent) regularly invent bogus reasons to avoid making workmates a brew, while over a quarter (28 percent) admit to sneaking off to make themselves a cuppa on the sly. But women aren’t entirely blameless. Almost half (46 percent) admit to using the office brew as a chance to bunk off  work, while a quarter (24 percent) reveal their apparent act of generosity is  a cover for sharing office gossip.

The survey also  showed that 91 percent of workers would like their company to offer Fairtrade tea. In response, we are aksing companies to make the Big Swap to Cafédirect.

Make the Big Swap to Cafédirect at work!

Anne MacCaig, Cafédirect CEO,  commented  “As office politics goes, the humble tea round would seem an unlikely cause of controversy. But with some making markedly more tea than others, workers are coming to blows over brews.

So to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight, we’re calling on businesses to make the company cuppa fairer, by asking bosses to make the Big Swap to Cafédirect tea. And while they’re at it, to put the kettle on for their staff!”

Is the tea round at your workplace unfair?  Make it fairer by asking for Cafédirect at work – we’ve made it easy for you to do so with our fun competition! Click here, ask your Office Manager to stock Cafédirect and enter our competition to win Afternoon Tea served by the Cafédirect Tea Ladies!

They will be busy over the next few weeks serving our delicious teas at events like the  Strictly Fairtrade Tea Dance at Spitalfields on Saturday,  joining fellow tea ladies on Thursday for the ‘Invasion of the Tea Ladies’ in London and if you’re lucky they could be serving Afternoon Tea to you and your team at work!

If you’d like to have tea served at your workplace by these lively ladies, all you have to do is ask your Office Manager to stock Cafédirect and enter your details in the competition here– easy! (Full terms & conditions here)

You can also have fun creating your very own Tea Lady postcards, and use the money off coupon next time you buy Cafédirect! Here’s some we made earlier….

….share yours with us on Flickr, Facebook or Twitter!