Some winners ... and some losers ;)

Despite a lack of posts, there has not been a lack in baking. Not all the "adventures" from the last month or so were successful. But failure's are part of the fun. As per the scientific method, any result tells you more than you knew before, especially when it's not what you expected! So, in chronological order...

Saffron Cookies:
A friend sent me a recipe for Saffron Cookies. If you've never had saffron, you might have seen it before as a color. Saffron is the stigma from the saffron crocus, painstakingly picked by hand mostly in Iran, India and the Middle East. It is the most expensive spice on the market - the best price I found was $6/gram! But you only need a little to flavor a dish or for dye. The strands are a beautiful dark orange, and when steeped the liquid turns a lovely yellow to orange color depending on how long it is steeped. So, I'd never actually used saffron before, and though it is usually used in savory dishes, cookies are way more exciting! I deviated from the recipe my friend sent, and made a traditional shortbread cookie flavored with the saffron and crushed almonds. I wanted to used cardamom, or coconut, or orange, unfortunately none of those items were around, so I used the almonds. The end result was pretty disappointing, though. I figured it would be bitter, but, whew! The cookies were unpalatabley bitter! Laurel, if you read this, I'm going to try again with the recipe you actually gave me and maybe that will make all the difference!

Panna Cotta Torte:
Another failure! Panna cotta is a dessert from the Piemonte region of Italy, which means "cooked cream". And that's all it is! You cook cream, add sugar and geletin, and then refrigerate it like jello. Fabulous with a fudge or fruit sauce. The panna cotta itself was not the failure. And actually I was fairly pleased with it, but I'm getting ahead of myself. My church group had a cookoff for an activity, and I figured I could make chocolate chip cookies (boring!) or something off beat, but cool! So I decided to steep a tea bag (Mighty Leaf's "African Autumn") in the panna cotta, layer it with a vanilla cake, and drizzle lavender white chocolate on the top. It wasn't perfect (and silly me, I forgot to take a picture), but I was pleased with the outcome more or less. The failure came at the cookoff. People are so boring! Everyone thought it was "cool", ie, wierd. Anyways, guess what won: chocolate chip cookies! And I'm pretty sure they were from a tube!!!! Negative ten points for Salt Lake City. (I think that puts SLC at negative one bazillion points.)

Lemon Cream Tarts:
I went for a simple, yet elegant approach with this one. Really I just wanted this Lemon Cream (a previously tried recipe) and everyone else wanted pie. A sort of compromise. The lemon cream is just whipped cream mixed with sweetened condensed milk and lemon juice. Mmmmm.... I used an egg based pie dough recipe, which is nice because it's more sturdy, but the crust is more like a butter cookie than a pie crust. Still a good crust, though. So, put cream in the crust, add some berries, and tada! An easy, pretty dessert.Plum Upsidedown Spice Cake:
An amazing dessert a la Martha Stewart: http://www.pbs.org/everydayfood/baking/recipes/plum_upsidedown_cake.html. This is the perfect dessert for August/September. The spice cake feels like Autumn, and the plum feels like summer, so the mixture of both is wonderful. It's a lovely looking dessert, too. Add some whipped cream, and a cool afternoon, and it's one of my favorite desserts so far this year.

Ta da, Lena! This one was for you! :)

A New Direction

Since the discovery of googlepages, the existence of this blog seemed unnecessary. But a comment in a previous blog has inspired a new direction for my blog. As might be obvious to you faithful bloggers out there, I'm now going to post my adventures in baking and tea. Yes, yes. I know. There are about a bazillion (the physicist in me points out that a more accurate number is maybe hundreds of thousands... anyways), about a bazillion blogs about various adventures in baking. I probably can't claim to be very original in my love for both baking and tea, either. But nevertheless, since I always take pictures of the stuff I bake, I might as well let you see them and drool (or snicker and think 'I can do better than that!').
So here it is, googlepages for business, blog for fun...

Even though the Salt Lake City Downtown Farmers Market has been open since 14 June, I wasn't able to go until last week. It's really the most amazing farmers market I've ever been to. Not that I've been to tons, but believe me, it's big. According to their website (http://www.downtownslc.org/events/farmersmarket/farmersmarketinfo.htm) there are over 80 farmers, and near 100 crafters and artists. There is a family that sells berries, and in particular, red currants. If you've never had a currant, they're fabulous. Across the pond they are the flavor. Instead of grape Skittles, you get black currant Skittles. I don't know why they haven't caught on over here. So, the woman selling them gave me a recipe for currant pie. The recipe had more of crumble topping, but I can't resist a traditional lattice, so I did that instead. Currants are pretty sour, so you have to put a considerable amount of sugar in the filling. We also had homemade vanilla icecream to help, and it was pretty good. It also makes for a very pretty pie - red currants are just such a pretty fruit!
Tomorrow we're having a little birthday party for a coworker. I, of course, volunteered to make the cake. (They said they'd buy a cake - what a silly idea.) My coworker is in his 50's, and very male. So my usual habit of making "pretty" cakes didn't seem like the right approach. I figured chocolate is always a good plan, but what else? For all that I love fancy baked goods, at heart I love the simple, traditional stuff. Chocolate cake with vanilla butter cream - no filling, no nuthin', that's my favorite. But that's kindof boring. So I figured I'd go with a chocolate on chocolate, intense, but not girly. So in the end, I did a dense chocolate cake with cream cheese filling and light chocolate buttercream, and white chocolate shavings. Exciting without having to pull out the cake decorating tips and royal icing flowers. I was only going to make the one cake, but my family loudly protested, so I made them one, too. It came out like an Orea, my family said. Not exactly my intentions, but why not! A yummy, uncomplicated cake.
PS, in case you're wondering, the Art Market Afternoon Tea went perfectly. I had about 25 people sit down for tea. Not too few, not too many. I had wonderful help from my mom and my sister, so besides being a successful day, it was pretty fun, too. Kindof makes my desk job seem lame. ;)

A Website!

I now have a website! Check out tranquiliteaparty.googlepages.com

(My html, etc. skills are not so hot, so googlepages is perfect for me!)

More baking...

Well, I didn't mean for this to turn into a gallery of the baking I do on the weekend, but this time it's not all chocolate! Just some more ideas ...

Pricing

Finally, pricing!

A Tea Party

In January I had a tea party/Mary Kay party for some friends. Super girly, I assure you! Here are pictures of the party to give you an idea of what the set up looks like. :)

Proof I Can Bake

Here are some pictures of a couple of recent baking adventures to prove I'm actually a good baker, and give you an idea of some tea party options. They are, from top to bottom, a chocolate cake (obviously!), cream filled chocolate cup, chocolate coffee cupcakes with whipped cream and chocolate shavings, the other two are chocolate cupcakes with chocolate roses. I promise I do more than just chocolate, too!