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Saturday's tea
Sep. 11th, 2016 11:22 amThere are six of us who get together for tea every couple of months. We call ourselves the Romance Exchange, because we used to swap Regency romance novels and other books, but in these days of ebooks, that's pretty much fallen by the wayside. But we still take turns making tea for each other.
This was a rather deconstructed tea, with a table full of materials that people could make into whatever sandwiches they like. Usually I have at least one hot item, but this time the Fabian Seafoods shrimp truck was in town, so instead I had a couple of pounds of fresh-never-frozen shrimp from Texas. For savories, I also had various vegetables, curried eggs (like deviled eggs, but with curry instead), chive cream cheese (my favorite base for cucumber sandwiches), horseradish hummus, artichoke tapenade, cheese, bread to put it all on, and vegan and regular scones with clotted cream and raspberry jam. I'm not sure why the scones and jam are considered part of the savory course, but it's traditionally what we do. There may
Sometimes we take a break between the savory and sweet course. This time it was a necessity, because I had taken a notion in my brain to make Queen of Puddings after seeing it made as part of a technical challenge on the Great British Bake Off. All the recipes say it should be served hot. There's a baked custard base that can be made earlier, and I did that, but I added the raspberry jam (an authorized substitute for the homemade berry jam the recipe calls for) over the custard and made the meringue (a French meringue, for anyone who cares about the distinction) just before putting it in the oven. I'm not sure if it was the fact that the custard had been in the refrigerator overnight, but that portion of the pudding was merely warm, not piping hot when it came out of the oven after half an hour. On the other hand, the meringue was nicely fluffy, with a crisp outer top, so I call it a success.
I also made![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrissa's fruit shortbread (with more of the raspberry jam) and Grasmere gingerbread. I had vegan chocolate truffle ice cream made with cashew milk for the non-milk-tolerant people, plus spelt gingersnaps that I'd bought as an impulse purchase because they were also vegan and very gingery (Whole Foods had them on sale, with samples). Oh, and beadslut brought some Japanese biscuits, so all in all there was enough to leave people groaning (pleasantly, I hope) by the time we were done.
This was a rather deconstructed tea, with a table full of materials that people could make into whatever sandwiches they like. Usually I have at least one hot item, but this time the Fabian Seafoods shrimp truck was in town, so instead I had a couple of pounds of fresh-never-frozen shrimp from Texas. For savories, I also had various vegetables, curried eggs (like deviled eggs, but with curry instead), chive cream cheese (my favorite base for cucumber sandwiches), horseradish hummus, artichoke tapenade, cheese, bread to put it all on, and vegan and regular scones with clotted cream and raspberry jam. I'm not sure why the scones and jam are considered part of the savory course, but it's traditionally what we do. There may
Sometimes we take a break between the savory and sweet course. This time it was a necessity, because I had taken a notion in my brain to make Queen of Puddings after seeing it made as part of a technical challenge on the Great British Bake Off. All the recipes say it should be served hot. There's a baked custard base that can be made earlier, and I did that, but I added the raspberry jam (an authorized substitute for the homemade berry jam the recipe calls for) over the custard and made the meringue (a French meringue, for anyone who cares about the distinction) just before putting it in the oven. I'm not sure if it was the fact that the custard had been in the refrigerator overnight, but that portion of the pudding was merely warm, not piping hot when it came out of the oven after half an hour. On the other hand, the meringue was nicely fluffy, with a crisp outer top, so I call it a success.
I also made
mrissa's fruit shortbread (with more of the raspberry jam) and Grasmere gingerbread. I had vegan chocolate truffle ice cream made with cashew milk for the non-milk-tolerant people, plus spelt gingersnaps that I'd bought as an impulse purchase because they were also vegan and very gingery (Whole Foods had them on sale, with samples). Oh, and beadslut brought some Japanese biscuits, so all in all there was enough to leave people groaning (pleasantly, I hope) by the time we were done.
