Scones

I made four types of scones for the party: traditional, apricot-vanilla, cherry-vanilla, and cilantro-cheddar. The traditional scone recipe came from Baking Illustrated; the rest I kind of made up using the traditional recipe as a base. The scones turned out tasty, definitely an improvement over those hard, overly sweet "scones" featured in places like Starbucks. The cilantro scone did not bake well though. I suspect I added too much cheese.

If you are making scones, make sure the oven is super hot before you put them in there to bake. I baked mine at 425 for about 20 minutes since I froze the dough and baked them straight out of the freezer. Apparently the hot oven is necessary to create steam to make the scones rise up nice. I did not time the baking well at the party though. It takes about 20 minutes for my oven to heat up to 425 and I should have set the oven to preheat when the guests started to arrive, but I timed it late, so the scone course was delayed.

I think they froze OK (the scones were made about 3 weeks in advance). I cut the dough into circles using a biscuit cutter and froze the circles. I baked them straight from the freezer; there was no thawing. I just added on some time to the baking.

Baking Illustrated

I have been baking for a long time, to varying degrees of success. I like baking mainly because it is methodological- this ingredient is whisked then, these ingredients are then mixed for instance. I find cooking a little chaotic, but baking I get for some reason. Not that I am some sort of master baker, but I do quick breads, cookies, cakes, brownies, and a few other desserts (chocolate mousse for instance) fairly well. I also make meringue really well :) Now that I have a good food processor, I am probably going to move on to pie crusts.

I have found that baking recipes for the same item vary widely not necessarily in terms of ingredients, but rather actual instructions. The worst ones are the vaguest: "Beat eggs and sugar"; "Whisk ingredients"; and my favorite: "Bake until done". I was using mainly Better Homes and Garden cookbook for a while, but my salvation has been found recently in Baking Illustrated.

This book is incredible! It has everything one needs to be a decent baker from breads to cookies to pies, quiches, tarts, pizza, focaccia, muffins, biscuits, scones (of course), pastry, cakes, ... and the list goes on and on. This book is published by the same group that does Cooking Illustrated (which I also love). The test kitchen goes through dozens of recipes until they settle on the best way to make each item. So, everything I have made so far tastes great.

But, the real reason I love it is the detail of the instructions. Fantastic! No ambiguous "Mix well" instructions; they tell you what to look for (e.g., beat sugar and eggs until creamy, fluffy, and almost white). Baking requires that you pay attention to the details. Please, go buy this book if you are interested in baking in the least.

Tea Party Menu

Here is the full menu. Hope it inspires ideas for others who are putting together a party. If anyone wants any recipes, just let me know.

Prelude

Blood orange mimosa

Green tea lemonade

Delicious Baltimore tap water (filtered of course)

Vegetable crudite with red caviar dip

First course: Savory sandwiches and salad

Green teas: Arcadian Apple, Peach

Dijon chicken salad on butter croissant

Salmon with roasted red pepper and cilantro butter

Tomato-cucumber with feta butter

Spinach-artichoke with herb butter

Rose petal

Cherry-melon mint salad

Second course: Breads

Black teas: Ceylon Silver, Asia

Traditional cream scones

Apricot-vanilla scones

Cherry-vanilla scones

Cheddar-cilantro scones

Banana bread

Scones served with the following:

Double Devonshire cream

Clotted cream

Lisa’s own faux Devonshire cream

Strawberry preserves

Fresh lemon curd

Sweet unsalted butter

Third course: Sweets and pastries

Herbal tea: Lemon verbena

Butter pound cake petit fours with royal icing and buttercream garnish

Traditional colonial queen tea cakes with creamy sugar glaze

Lemon bars

Southern pecan pralines

Russia tea cakes

Fourth course

Dark chocolate mousse with vanilla whipped cream

Tea embellishments: Milk, Orange blossom honey, Citrus scented sugar, Sugar cubes

More on the Tea Party (Flowers)

Above are more pictures. The biggest splurge I made for the party was to buy lots of flowers. My sister sent me a beautiful arrangement and one of the guests brought a wonderful bouquet of orange roses.

The rest of the flowers came from Gordon's Florist in Baltimore. They did a great job and were very reasonably priced. I ended up ordering 1 large, 2 medium, and 5 small arrangements. They were all in a purple, green, yellow theme and are still looking pretty fresh almost a week later!

The Tea Party

This is the main reason I started this blog: to document the formal tea party I hosted last Sunday, August 29, 2010. I would like to share not just the picture of the final products, but also the preparation in case someone out there in the vast universe wishes to put together such an event. I will have to make several separate entries though since there were many components ranging from the essentials such as scones to last minute, but important, details like boarding Le Pooch.

But, the pictures above should provide a glimpse into what the set-up looked like before the guests started to arrive. The tea towels thrown over the dishes were not such a good idea to keep when taking pictures!

First Post:

Welcome! Believe it or not, I actually have a blog. The person who just barely decided to get a Facebook page (don't worry, I don't even have a picture up yet). Just wanted to give a brief intro to what I am envisioning for this. First, this blog will NOT be about graduate school, epidemiology, pubic health, or anything else I spend my days doing in relation to a career and/or education. I live and breathe that stuff too much to actually want to write about it even more than I already have to.

Instead, I want to write about entertaining things (well at least things I find entertaining): baking, cosmetics, art history, cleaning supplies, stationary, and a whole lot of random things I am sure will come up.

In case you are wondering about the name, "The Gulf Stream", it is the title of a master work by Winslow Homer, one of my favorite paintings from my favorite artist. It is currently residing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Alas, it was in visible storage when I visited this July. I'll have to return when the renovations to the American Wing are complete and it can be viewed in its full glory! The address of the blog also references a major Homer work that I love.

Many more entries about my Homer obsession (Winslow Homer and Homer Simpson) will appear in time.