A Christmas Tea

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You know when you walk up to the door that you're in for a good time.

 

Your table is personalized, just for you.

 

Your sparkling flavored water awaits.

 

You can start anticipating by perusing the soup choices for the day.

 

Then the tea comes, and it's time to get down to serious business. Cream and sugar? Yes, thank you.

 

Chocolate chip and white chocolate cranberry scones await clotted cream and jam. And more clotted cream.

 

Isn't this cup just the most gorgeous thing ever??

 

Pretty red beet soup looks very festive with a Christmas tree crouton.

 

Be sure to pause to admire the decorations around you. And, if you're lucky, the Winter birds outside the window.

 

 

 

Then the savories arrive. Cucumber and cream cheese Christmas trees, cranberry and pistachio chicken salad, onion and gruyere tarts and curried egg salad sandwiches.

 

But save room for the sweets!

 

JiffNotes
No one does tea like my sister! These pictures are from last year's tea, and I'm so excited she's doing another one in two weeks!!

Fall Tea

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The last Saturday in October, we had tea at my sister's house. My sister hosts fabulous teas, and this one was no exception. Michael and I were given a cute little love seat to sit on while we had tea. Perfect for snuggling together and enjoying tiny delicious treats.

 

The view from the love seat. Don't you adore the flowers? And the red fall leaf that is protecting our sparkling black cherry water? And yes, the pansies in the wee tussy mussies by our places are real!

 

First up, cream scones with chocolate chips and gingerbread cinnamon scones.

 

SO GOOD. And get a load of the teeny scoops of ginger butter in the pear dish! Also, my sister makes THE best clotted cream and lemon curd on the planet. I used to not like lemon curd because it tastes too "eggy" to me. But hers is perfect!

Next course was hot apple soup, replete with oak leaf crouton and little cinnamon muffin with crumbly topping, just perfect for nibbling between sips of soup.

 

Then, the Tower of Yummy Goodness came to the table.

 

It was hard to ignore the sweets on top and start with the savories, but we managed.

 

Clockwise from the top: pumpkin leek tart, Brunswick stew puff, curried egg salad moon, and pecan chicken salad shell. NOM.

Time to switch from black tea to herbal...and dive into the sweets. Not literally dive. But I wanted to.

 

Again from the top: pumpkin bread pudding with rum cream sauce (omigosh), rum-soaked acorn pound cakelet (zomigosh), fig jam thumbprint (best. cookie texture. EVER.), orange cream brownie petit four (OMIGOSH), and the classic Bakewell Tart.

Just take a look at the teensy layers in the orange cream petit four.

 

Yeaaaaahhhhhh....

JiffNotes
Nobody, but NOBODY, does tea like my sister! And hey, if you're in Atlanta, she has upcoming Christmas teas on December 3rd and 10th. Check out her blog for contact info. Scroll past the Fall tea menu and you'll see the invite with dates and prices.

Tea, Glorious Tea!

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Just before Mother's Day, my sister hosted a wonderful cream tea. I've been to tea at her place three times before...once, I forgot to take pictures, and the other two times, well...I just never got around to posting. I promise you that you have never been to a tea like the one my sister puts on.

First of all, the interior of her home is practically a Victorian wonderland.
In another post I'll have to show you pictures of her ceiling, which is papered with William Morris prints in her own custom layout. These lanterns greet you when you enter her front door.
Here's a closeup of the mantel you can see through the doorway.Back in the front hall, a forsythia branch on the way into the parlor......and more forsythia on the stairway to your left.And we haven't even gotten to the placesettings yet!!My sister tailors each table to its occupants; she at least finds out what your favorite color is, or what your favorite flower is, or your favorite memory, so that you feel special...
The china, teacups, tablecloths and glasses are different, creating little separate oases for each set of guests.
This was our table for two. I love the ruby colors!You can see our personalized "Welcome" card on the table. Check out my gorgeous teacup, and the menu, if you can make it out...
The first course is traditionally scones. Today, we had two kinds: Cinnamon Chip and Strawberry Lavender.
I douse mine with a generous helping of clotted cream (my sister is always experimenting, and this tea's recipe was OUTSTANDING!). The pretty yellow dollop is lemon curd, and the pink? Yeah, it's homemade violet jelly. That my sister made. With violets from her garden!! Can you believe it?? It was so yummy...sweet and very subtly flowery; not "perfumey" at all. And there's no artificial color in it. Apparently, it's more lavender until you add the lemon juice, then it turns that lovely shade of pink.

The next course was soup. I had the Potato Celery Root...
...Michael had the Old-Fashioned Chilled Strawberry. We had to run out early, so we didn't get to hang out afterward to try the Chilled Springtime Sweet Pea.
Here I am, about to happily devour my soup. Look at all the cute little ruby-colored dishes! Our ruby goblets hold sparkling black cherry water. Yum!
Next is the savory course.
Here we have (clockwise) a Cheese Calla Lily, Cornbread Cup with Sherried Chicken Salad, Roasted Lamb on Toast with English Mint Relish, and Chervil-dill Egg Salad. Hope you saved room for dessert...
Aren't these the cutest? These Chocolate Cakelets would melt in your mouth. If you've ever had Eclair Cake, you get the idea...but Eclair Cake never looked so elegant. But you still haven't seen anything yet.
Behold, the Hummingbird Cupcake, Madeleine, Frozen Black Cherry Cream, and Bakewell Tart! And yes, my sister made the crystallized pineapple topper for the Hummingbird Cupcake herself.

Every meal should finish with an after-dinner mint. Here's my sister's version:
A wee scoop of peppermint ice cream coated in pink mint chocolate. The purse cookies were our favors to take home.

One of the guests asked me if she could be an adopted sister. Can you blame her??

JiffNotes
Nobody does afternoon tea like my sister. Nobody.

Ritzy Tea

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A couple weeks ago, Michael and I went to tea at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead. This is actually where he proposed to me (at tea), after a morning of surprises (but that's another post for another day). The atmosphere would kind of remind you of an old English manor house. They currently serve Mighty Leaf (loose) tea. We're huge fans of their tea bags, since we are, as I may have mentioned, tea snobs and don't generally like bagged tea over loose.
The sandwiches were wonderful. From bottom to top, we had cucumber-cream cheese-topped pita with hummus and asparagus, a sun-dried tomato, feta and olive tart, salmon and egg on toast, a bacon and gruyere quiche and a dual-layer wheat sandwich filled with a pesto and curried chicken salad, separated by brioche. They were all good, but we raved over that last sandwich, so our server brought us each another! This may explain why we didn't quite make it through the pastry tower.... We had to take the entire bottom layer (all chocolate!) home! The best thing on that layer was the black forest cup: a chocolate cup filled with a brownie square and brandied cherries, topped with white chocolate mouse and chocolate shavings. *drool* I must also mention the seven-layer bars, because this is one of the places the Ritz goes above and beyond: You could tell the pecans in the bars were toasted. Sure, it might not make that much difference to some people, but I can totally taste the difference!

Even though the scones were not served warm (precious few tea rooms do this, although they should be served first, before the sandwich course, just out of the oven), they were very good. And the best part... The Ritz has Devonshire (clotted) cream!! When I was taking the half-jar that Michael left home with me (notice I did not have any left!), our server asked if I'd like a fresh jar (!!) to take with me. Yes, please! When she returned, she not only had a fresh jar of clotted cream, but also another jar of strawberry preserves...and another scone!! Yummmmmmm.....

JiffNotes
Even though the Ritz's tea service is somewhat pricey, it gives you a large volume of very, very good food. The strawberries and champagne add-on aren't worth it, in my opinion.

Tea Two

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Saturday Michael took me to the Roswell Tea House for the second stop on my tea passport. It's a fabulous tea house, with a huge, wonderful selection of loose teas (black, green, white, oolong and chai). You can get your choice of Afternoon Tea, High Tea (not true High Tea, but the Afternoon Tea plus soup), plain old lunch (the curry chicken salad looked to die for!) or even a Japanese tea ceremony.

We went for the Afternoon Tea. I started with the Blue Mango green tea (mango and pineapple), which was very yummy, and Michael started with the Monkey Picked Oolong. If you know Michael at all, you can see that it was impossible for him to resist this tea. Later, I switched to the Spring Blend (green tea with orange, hibiscus, rosehips, red peppercorns, and a host of other things I can't remember!) and Michael had Rose Chai.

Here's a closer look at the yummies:

Everything was good; I ended up not eating all the apple strudel (it's that flaky thing on the center tier), because I'm really picky about dishes with cooked apples and this just wasn't doing it for me. I think anyone but me would have liked it, but it needed more sugar for me! =) I was content, however, to eat possibly the best cream puff I've ever had. The curried chicken salad sandwich was to die for. The texture was like velvet, and it was so rich. The scones were a little bit of a disappointment, because they were overcooked (and done in muffin tins) and there was no Devonshire Cream!! The lemon curd was excellent, though...not "eggy" at all.

We were planning on going for a walk afterwards around Tech campus, which is just beautiful during the Spring. Unfortunately, it started pouring down rain about a minute before we left the tea house. We did drive through some very pretty neighborhoods and saw lots of blooming cherry trees, redbuds, dogwoods and some azaleas starting. We even saw some wisteria! It's not quite the same as last Spring, where everything literally burst into bloom all at once (who ever heard of Bradford pears and dogwoods blooming at the same time!) But all I have to show you is a shot of some urban Spring right down the street from us. I wish I knew the name of this vine...if you do, leave me a comment!

JiffNotes
Finally, Spring is here! And today, it's 45 degrees...stupid jet stream. =(