A Birthday Tea

The Gastronomist Economist's Fabulous Pink Lady Cake

This past Saturday was the Gastronomist Economist's birthday, and we celebrated on Sunday with an afternoon tea. The GE made her own cake, which was a fabulous confection featuring cake layers made with strawberry puree swathed in rich buttercream.

Planning the tea party was a lot of fun in itself. Tea party food should be individualized, tidy, and require no utensils. Bonus points for bento-esque cuteness. Keeping these principles in mind, the GE and I settled on the following menu:

Sandwiches

Smoked Salmon Sandwiches with Capers and Dill on Rye-Sunflower Bread

Pear and Blue Cheese Sandwiches on Toasted Oat Bread

Classic Watercress Sandwiches (cut into dinosaur shapes)

Spinach Mini-Quiches (prepared by the Artist-Formerly-Known-As-PastryChick)

Earl Grey Madelines

Earl Grey Madelines, prepared using Dorie Greenspan's recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours. Greenspan uses the technique of infusing the Earl Grey tea leaves into the melted butter, which produces an aroma that knocked my socks off. I can't wait to try this using matcha!

White and Dark Hearted Brownies

White chocolate brownies with dark chocolate hearts and dark chocolate brownies with white chocolate hearts. Straight from Smitten Kitchen. These are possibly the cutest things to ever come out of my kitchen, dinosaur tea sandwiches notwithstanding.

Almond Biscotti

Almond Biscotti. I don't ordinarily bother with biscotti, but this recipe inspired a craving in me. I took one of these to go with my morning tea every day for a week. Deliciously dunkable. The recipe calls for cornmeal, though, any my stone-ground cornmeal delivers an occasional corn grit that is rather unpleasant to chew.

Blueberry Scones and Currant Scones

Scones. I used Smitten Kitchens Dreamy Cream Scone recipe, and it delivered. The scones were light and creamy and oh, so good. I had no idea that they were so easy to make. The dough whipped up in the food processor in less than two minutes, required an additional minute of light kneading and pressing into a pan, and then 12 minutes of baking. I was so blown away by the ease with which scones were coming out of my oven that I made a second batch.

Braided Lemon Bread

And my piece-de-resistance: Braided Lemon Bread, also from Smitten Kitchen. Okay, so mine doesn't look like hers because a) I didn't braid tightly enough over the filling, and b) we used sparkling sugar instead of pearl sugar. But it tasted wonderful with its sweetened cream cheese filling topped with tart lemon curd.

I prepared the dough through its first rise and shaping and then froze it. The GE monitored its defrosting and final proofing:

After defrosting comes the rising.

And gave it its final egg wash and sparkling sugar bling:

Wearing its fancy tea party attire.

All in all, a most enjoyable afternoon! Cheers to the birthday girl!