T: Tea Party (Bonus Post)

Tea for…more than two…

It was quite a while back but my last birthday was certainly one to remember.  I had a wonderful time that was spent with friends and family.  I went to a concert on the night of my actual birthday so I decided to host a little tea party beforehand in order to celebrate with those who could not make it to the show, as well as an attempt to class things up a bit.   

I grew up with my mother throwing beautiful afternoon teas so I wanted to see if I could do hers any justice.  Alice in Wonderland was my theme since it seemed like the obvious choice for a birthday celebration.  Tea was certainly served, as well as a plethora of edible goodies (featured after the jump), however I think the sparkling wine was probably the most popular beverage of the evening!

I started preparing for the party about five days in advance, doing a little bit every day, while trying to juggle that with my work schedule. I prepared some of the food items in advance and then placed them in the freezer. I also tried to get an early start with making the decorations and purchasing the necessary party supplies.  

       

A taste of: Nicaragua

Cat Cakes: Arthur

I just wanted to share a picture of a cake I recently baked. It is of my old coworker's cat, Arthur, which I made for her goodbye party last week.  Arthur the Cake was a banana cake with bits of dark chocolate.  His fur was made from a stiff cream cheese icing.  My coworker was so moved by Arthur the Cake's resemblance to Arthur the Cat that she was unable to bring herself to slicing up and distributing the cake that night.  I did not have a chance to taste the cake myself but later reviews from my coworker and her boyfriend were very positive. Arthur the Cat did not comment. 

In order to make Arthur, I bought a Hello Kitty cake pan from my local Bulk Barn store.  I needed to do some reshaping once the cake had baked and cooled.  I cut away the Hello Kitty bow, restructured the sides of the face, and re-positioned the facial features once I started decorating.

In order to justify my purchase of the pan I am thinking that "Cat Cakes" might  become a regular thing and potentially a new segment on this blog...so, to all my friends and family members who are cat owners...BEWARE!

S: Scones With Strawberry Butter

This simple and delicious recipe for Scones with Strawberry Butter is from Out to Brunch: At Mildred Pierce Restaurant by Donna Dooher and Claire Stubbs. I got this book after going to Mildred Pierce Restaurant for brunch a few years ago.  The restaurant was named after the original movie which starred Joan Crawford and was recently remade for TV with Kate Winslet.  It was a beautiful and ornately decorated restaurant with an innovative menu. For brunch they served dishes with names that were inspired by characters from the film like, "Huevos Monty" and "Mrs. Beiderhof's Pancakes".  Shortly after my visit there, the restaurant closed. If I have my facts straight, I am pretty sure this was due to issues with releasing the space.  

It eventually reopened in a different neighbourhood, with a more modern and minimalist aesthetic in its decor and a new name: Mildred's Temple Kitchen. I have only been to the newer location for dinner which was great.  According to their website (www.templekitchen.com), their brunch menu seems to be similar from what I can recall. If you happen to be in the Liberty Village neighbourhood in Toronto, it is definitely worth checking out!

As for this particular recipe, the scones were crisp on the outside, with a fluffy interior.  They have a pleasant hint of lemon which makes this typically dense treat seem lighter. Combined with the strawberry butter, you have a refreshing teatime treat that would be ideal in the spring and summer months. The butter can be made with any kind of fruit that is in season. 

R: Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

Whoopie!!! We are back again!!! I have a backlog of blog-post drafts that I baked for and documented ages ago that I have been meaning to edit for about a year now (yikes!).  I will not make any excuses for the long hiatus but will just say that I am ready to put this blog back into full swing and will celebrate my intentional productivity with this Red Velvet Whoopie Pie recipe from Whoopie Pies by Viola Goren. 

Before making these whoopie pies, I had never made or tasted any red velvet recipe before.  For those who haven't either, it has a distinct cocoa flavour which I was a big fan of. They get their red colour from food colouring. I used food paste which is more saturated in colour and it doesn't take a lot to get a vibrant pigment. I found that the batter did not look as red as I thought it should, and so I used much more paste than the recipe called for. I find that the red pigment finally reveals itself  once the cakes are baked and that one really just needs to use the amount of paste that the recipe calls for. 

I used a special whoopie pie pan which gave the cakes a uniform shape since the batter is fairly runny, but you might be able to get away with not using one. I also found that the recipe for the filling made more than enough. I sandwiched a fair amount of it between the cakes and was left with quite a bit extra, so you might want to halve the recipe depending on your fondness for buttercream icing.

Enjoy!

A taste of Toronto (late summer and autumn)

Q: Queen Olive Cheese Balls

Wooaaaaaaaaah, time sure does fly! In exciting news, Alphabake recently celebrated its one year anniversary (and we still have not gotten through the entire alphabet--oops). The other thing that reflects time's quick passing is that I actually made this recipe and took the photos for this post last Christmas Eve (I think my style has changed a bit since). I realize that making a quiche or something with quinoa would have been a better match for the letter 'Q' but these Queen Olive cheese balls were  made in honour of my sister's dog, Olive. I felt that I needed to make letter 'Q' before I left for Scotland in order to get the puppy photo op.

The recipe comes from Hors D'Oeuvres by Eric Treuille and Vitctoria Blashford-Snell.  The main reason I decided to try this recipe was because it was one of the very few I had that started with 'Q'.  I did not expect them to be particularly tasty but I was pleasantly surprised and everyone at the dinner really liked them. HRH Queen Olive Cheese Ball herself tried to get her paws on a few!

A taste of Montreal

P: Portuguese Custard Pies

"Oh Blog, once again you have been neglected for far too long. I truly do apologize. Things have been so busy with school and work and moving. I have finally found a moment to myself, as I leisurely sit in front of the TV watching the Food Network ('Cupcake Wars', to be specific...aka TV gold)"...

Anyway, this week on Alphabake we are featuring two recipes that start with the letter 'P'. "Two recipes?!?," you ask? Yes, dear reader, and just to let you know, currently in my books the letter 'P' stands for "pain", "problematic", "pest", etc. Maybe I am being  a tad dramatic, but you get the idea.

So, the first attempt to complete a recipe for letter 'P' was in the form of Peanut Butter and Sweet Banana Cookies from Anna Olson's Sugar: Simple Sweets and Decadent Desserts. It is a sandwich cookie recipe and unfortunately something went horribly wrong with the filling.  It must have been something I did because I can't imagine anyone writing a recipe so that it would purposefully taste so horrid. Basically I had to caramalize some bananas and the sugar must have burned. I didn't have it cooking for very long at all but it turned dark so quickly. I used oil instead of butter because I didn't have any left and I think that might have lead to the rapid burning...but I'm not sure. Even though the filling was horrible, the actual peanut butter cookies were amazing on their own so I've posted the recipe at the end of this entry  in case you want to just try making them (or even battle with getting the filling right).

About a week later I decided to try and tackle a new recipe. For quite a long time I had been eyeing one for Portuguese custard pies in Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef Takes Off.  They reminded me of my trip to Lisbon. I also recently saw them featured on Jamie's 30-Minute Meals so they couldn't be too time consuming, right? WRONG!!!  Ok, they weren't too difficult but they definitely took way longer than thirty minutes to make--at least they were super tasty.

My main problem was with the pie shells. The recipe calls for store-bought puff pastry which was easy enough but it took me a while to figure out how to bake it. In the book he uses glass tumblers, turns them upside down, greases and flours their bases, and then stretches and places the dough on top. On his TV show he baked them in a muffin tin. Since I didn't have any tumbler glasses I started with the muffin tin method. It was hard to roll out the dough because it tends to shrink back, and after it baked it formed a very shallow pie shell that wouldn't hold a lot of custard. I happened to have another roll of puff pastry so I started over and this time I took the muffin tin and flipped it upside down and stretched the dough over the cup bases and that seemed to work pretty well.  A couple of other small alterations I made to the recipe were that instead of using vanilla pods and fresh nutmeg, I used vanilla extract and ground nutmeg since that is what I had.

Once I figured out a good technique for making the tart shells, things were pretty simple (although making the custard filling took a little while) and the results were great. The pastry turned out really crispy and delicious and the slight citrus notes in the custard was really pleasant.  They were slightly different than the traditional custard pies I tried in Portugal, but definitely caputured their essence. Enjoy!

A taste of Peru