I Love A Tea Party

A friend came to visit yesterday.  That was my excuse to have a tea party.  You can never have too many tea parties!

I usually do a sweet, a savory and at least one thing baked. I settled on butterbrickle scones, chocolate dipped strawberries and cucumber sandwiches.

 

I bought VERY thin bread and spread it with whipped cream cheese.  I sprinkled the cream cheese with salt, pepper and dill weed.

 

The store was out of ENGLISH cucumbers, so I had to settle for the AMERICAN kind.  I peeled the cucumber and then cut slices all along the AMERICAN seeds and left the seeds on the cutting board.  The thinly sliced cucumbers went on top and then the icky, horrible CRUSTS were removed and the sammies were cut in wee triangles.

 

The tea was from my favorite tea shop, the White Oak Tea Tavern.  It was almost too hot to have hot tea on the screened porch, but we  turned the fans on and toughed it out.

 

It was great!
  

White Oak Tea Tavern

 

One of the places we love to take visitors is the White Oak Tea Tavern.

(http://www.whiteoakteas.com/

 

My friend Marcy from California is visiting and we met Diane from http://www.dianecaytonhakey.com/ for an afternoon tea party.

 

It is an old log cabin converted to a Tea House and gift shop.  The cabin was built around 1780.  Then it was dismantled and moved to the current location near Fincastle.  The front of the cabin has many interesting gifts, but the back is where the magic happens.

 

My favorites are the chicken salads.  One cold and a hot one in a freshly baked bread bowl with spinach and cheese.  The cold chicken salad, my favorite, is finely chopped with more ingredients than you can figure out, topped with sugared pecans and served with fresh baked bread.  The teas are all delicious and around Christmas you can get Wassail.  No, sadly, not the alcohol version.

 

The ambience of the old house, with the adz marks still in the timbers, is a large part of the charm.  You can also get bagel with flavored cream cheese and meats for a sandwich, but I go for the chicken salad and the tea.  And the friendly service.  Did I mention I love the tea?

   

Walnut Tarts

On a visit to the White Oak Tea Tavern, I purchased a magazine called Tea Time with wonderful recipes for an afternoon tea.  It has been sitting on my "to make someday" pile of recipes.  I don't dare put the ever growing pile away, because I will never remember to look for it.  Gotta see it to do it.

I had invited a fellow blogger to come up and have tea and had already made the chocolate macarons. ( She has one of my favorite blogs and you can follow her at www.theblueridgegal.com  or just click the link on the right side of my blog. ) Now I needed to make some walnut tarts.  I don't like to do two new recipes for one event, because of the danger of extreme failure.  One failure means you move things around to hide the issue.  Two failures mean a boring tea.

The macarons were made the day before to let the flavors meld and so I felt pretty confident about the tarts.  They turned out pretty good.  They could have used another minute in the oven to crisp the shells.

   


Walnut Tarts

1 package refrigerated pie dough, 2 sheets
1 large egg
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 Tablespoons light corn syrup
2 Tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts

   

Toast the walnuts.  I used a toaster oven on 300 for about 7 minutes.  Cool them and then chop them and measure out the 1/2 cup you need.  I saved the rest of the chopped nuts for oatmeal in some future morning.

(OK, my eagle eyed friend.  You saw the walnuts in a Ziploc bag.  I made them yesterday and used them today.  I had a lot of things to do this morning and wanted a head start.)

   

Set the dough out to come to room temperature.  Preheat the oven to 350.  Find the little tartlet pans you bought several years ago. : ) You can do this while you are waiting for the nuts.

Lightly sprinkle flour on a cutting surface.  Carefully unroll the dough.  I used the 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 diamond pans for a template and cut around them.  When I ran out of them I used the round ones.  Cut a bit bigger than the pan.

   

Lift the cut piece and place it in the pan.  Press it gently to the bottom of the pan and up the sides. 

   
   
Try not to stretch it or the tart won't hold together when you take it out.  The excess can be pressed off against the top edge making the crust fit perfectly.  Don't worry, you will have plenty of dough.

   

In fact you will have a lot of dough left over.  What you should do is wad it up and toss it.  What you should not do is cut it into squares ,sprinkle them generously with sugar and cinnamon and toast them on another pan while you make the filling.  Because then you will place the crispy cinnamon bits on a plate and snack on them.  This would be bad for a person on a diet, if they were to do such a thing.

Prepare 12 to 14 tart pans and then place them in the refrigerator to chill.

Combine the egg, brown sugar, corn syrup, maple syrup, melted butter, vanilla extract and salt in a medium bowl.  Whisk everything together.  Add the walnuts, stir and set aside.

   

Place the tart pans on a rimmed baking sheet.  Fill them about 3/4 full with the nut mixture.  Give it a good stir every time to make sure the nuts are divided evenly.  Try not to spill on the pan.  The drips will be hard to get off.  Don't ask me how I know this.

Bake until the filling is slightly set and puffed up.  This will take 13 to 14 minutes.  I pulled mine out a bit too soon.  Check to see that the top edges of the crust are LIGHTLY browned.  Don't over cook.  It is hard to see color in the oven and you might need to pull them out to check. 

The puffed filling will fall.  Don't panic.  It is supposed to do that.

Place them on a cooling rack.  When cooled you can remove the pans.  I gently pulled the edges open to loosen them and then used a fork to tease them out if they didn't pop into my hand.


The next time I make these, and I will because they were good and pretty easy, I will try to play around with the flavors.  Rather than maple syrup and vanilla, I am thinking of rum or bourbon.  The only thing I don't know is if I will need to increase the corn syrup.  I had better make a lot and decide!

   

Serve on a tiered server and have a delightful tea with an interesting new friend.

Tea Party Sandwiches

  

A friend invited me to meet her for coffee.  That sounded like fun, but I wanted to try out a new recipe and convinced her to come for a tea party.  You have to have sweet and savory, so I needed to make a few sandwiches.  I usually make cucumber sandwiches and then I wanted to try pineapple cream cheese sandwiches.  I had some tea from the White Oak Tea Tavern and a tea party was made!

Pineapple Cream Cheese Sandwiches

1/4 cup walnuts, finely chopped
1/4 cup pineapple tidbits, finely chopped and drained
1 or 2 Tablespoons butter, softened
cinnamon
1/2   cup whipped cream cheese
thin white bread

  

There were only going to be the three of us and I did not want a lot of left overs.  So I made small amounts.  There is no exact amount so don't let your OCD side take over.  The important part is the percentages.

  

I used a small lunch cup for the pineapple tidbits.  I drained out the juice and about 1/3 of the tidbits.  The rest I dumped on the cutting board and chopped until very small.  Then I let them drain a bit and added to the bowl with the chopped walnuts.  I added enough whipped cream cheese to make everything stick together.  Set aside

Cover the butter with cinnamon.  I didn't measure, so maybe 1/4 teaspoon.  Mix it well and set aside.

I bought some very thin white bread.  If you don't have any, use regular white bread, but it will be hard to spread on it as it will want to tear. 

Now set up an assembly line.  Lay out two slices of bread and open them up so that you can butter both sides.  Lay out as many sets of bread as you will need. At least one set per person.  I used 3 sets, or 6 slices of bread

 

Butter each side with the cinnamon butter.  Use it very sparingly.  You just want a thin coat to keep the pineapple cream cheese from making the sandwiches soggy.

  

Gently spread a scant amount of the pineapple cream cheese.  Try not to spread clear out to the edges.  This will make it more difficult to trim off the crusts. If you have extra, make another sandwich or save it for another time.

Place the tops on the sandwiches and trim off all the crusts.  Cut diagonally across the sandwich to make triangles. 

Moisten a paper towel and wring it mostly dry.  Cover the sandwiches.  This will keep them from drying out.  If it will be a long time before you eat, them place the plate in the refrigerator.

Now for the...

Cucumber Sandwiches

English Cucumber
whipped cream cheese
salt and pepper
thin white bread

You want the kind of cucumber that is wrapped in plastic.  I only needed half of it for the three of us.  Wrap up and save the rest.  I will add it to our salad tonight.  Yes, all we will get is a salad.  But we had a great tea party!

Peel the cucumber and slice it in half lengthwise.  Cut a wedge along the inside to take out most of the seeds.  They call these seedless, but they are liars 

  

As an aside, whenever I hear (or write) the word "liars" I think of the part in Princess Bride where the old woman calls Miracle Max a liar.  If you had girls in the 1980's you probably do, too.  If not go get the movie and watch it with your daughters...about 100 times.  Then you too, will quote from it and hear it in your head for life.  It's totally worth it.

Take the peeled and seedless cucumber and slice it in 1/4 inch slices.  Set aside.

Lay out the bread in pairs as you did above.  You still have some whipped cream cheese.  Start your assemble line again.

  

Spread the cream cheese on each slice.  Lay out the slices of cucumber on one side of the bread.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper. I made four of these, because I KNEW I liked them.

  

Place the tops on the sandwiches and gently cut of the crusts.  If you let the cucumbers be placed to the edges it may be more difficult to trim the edges.  The knife will try to pull out a slice or two. You may have to poke it back in.  Cut the sandwiches in half  diagonally to make triangles and place under the moist paper towel until just before serving.

For the sweet portion, I served this with Maple Bacon Scones and Chocolate Dipped Strawberries.