Mother's Day Tea

In case you're new here, or I just haven't mentioned it in a while... I work at a British-style tea shop. I'm the baker there, so I make all the scones, mini pastries, and assorted crusted-savory things. For some of the major restaurant holidays (Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day) we come up with a special menu that allows us to have a little fun and offer things we don't usually offer for tea. It tends to be a lot of prep work for the kitchen, but they're always fun to work because it's a set menu, which means we're serving the same thing all day (easy-peasy in the kitchen!). Everything is served on tiers, just like our usual tea, and people get their choice of beverage and scone, though I always come up with a special scone just for that day.

I rarely actually work any of the holiday teas, but this was my second year working the Mother's Day tea! It's a fun change up for me because my usual work day consists of prep, prep, and more prep. So when I get to work the actual line, it's, well, as Monty Python would say - "and now for something completely different!" I enjoy the change up every once in a while.

For this year's Mother's Day tea we served: waldorf chicken salad on croissants, truffled deviled eggs, crab cakes with ginger tomato jam, chilled cucumber mint soup, salted chocolate truffles, carrot cake, butterscotch blondies, key lime tarts, and lemon blueberry scones. Everything was a big hit!

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April Baking

Lemon drop cookies



Mini orange cranberry crumb muffins



Petit fours fit for spring!



Carrot cake cookies



Almond orange cloud cookies



Chocolate vanilla swirl cupcakes (they remind me of soft serve!)



Teapot sugar cookies



Mini chocolate salted caramel tarts

I thought April pastries were more colorful, but these photos don't seem to tell that story... regardless, I tried some new recipes that I think will work well for the shop and I'm excited to make them again. May is a whole new month (with hopefully more color!) and this week is all about prepping for mother's day tea. I'll be making some fun things, and I'll be working the tea on Sunday, so I'll actually get some photos of the tiers with everything on them! Can't wait to share :)

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You Ain't Seen Muffin Yet!

When I'm developing a recipe, I search for similar recipes online and piece together various aspects from my favorites until I have something that looks like what I'm envisioning. Of course, this works better for savory recipes than it does for baking (you know, the whole science thing and all...), but having 7+ years of baking experience under my belt, I feel pretty comfortable doing it. The recipes don't always turn out the way I hope, but it always gives me a good base that I can then tweak as needed.

I used this process when I set out to make a healthy banana chocolate chip muffin. I took a little from recipe A... a little from recipe B... mixed in a few elements that I knew I had in the pantry... and this recipe was born. Absolutely zero tweaking needed! It's always satisfying when things bake up exactly how I'm picturing on the first try.


These muffins are amazing! They're bonkers delicious! And they're healthy, I think. After all these years I'm still not really sure what qualifies something as truly healthy, but anything that's filled with whole wheat flour, bananas, oats, coconut oil, and millet can't be too bad for you.

Whole Wheat Banana Choc Chip Muffins

makes 8 jumbo-sized muffins
3 small ripe bananas
1 large egg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup coconut oil **
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup almond milk **
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons millet
1/2 cup chocolate chips

- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin pan with paper liners.
- In a medium bowl, combine the flours, oats, baking soda, salt, and millet. In a large bowl, mash up the bananas and mix in the egg, sugars, coconut oil, vanilla extract, and almond milk.
- Stir the dry ingredients into the wet until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips. Using a scoop or a spoon, fill the muffin liners 3/4 full. Bake for 25-30 minutes* and let cool completely. Enjoy!

* This bake time is for jumbo-sized muffins (the only proper way to eat a muffin, in my opinion!); if you're using a regular sized muffin pan they will probably need closer to 20 minutes. They are done baking when you press the center lightly and they spring right back up.

** If you don't have almond milk or coconut oil at home, feel free to replace with whatever milk you have and/or a different neutral oil, like canola. I just prefer coconut oil and almond milk!

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March Baking

Oatmeal cranberry cookies with macadamia nut butter



Raspberry coconut macaroons



Irish potatoes



Irish soda bread



Bailey's Irish cream cake



White chocolate macadamia nut cookies



Nanaimo bars



Petit fours fit for spring!



Chocolate mousse



Chocolate and vanilla cupcakes in pretty cake cups for a catering




Oatmeal raisin cookies with cinnamon cream cheese center
I love that the different holidays each month influence the things that I make. Obviously March was about all things Irish (or should I say - American-Irish). April is going to bring a lot of color back into pastries - I'm ready for spring! Lots of pinks and yellows, just like the flowers outside will soon be.

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February Baking

Lemon cupcakes




Linzer cookies



Shortbread hearts



Butterscotch blondies



Chocolate sandwich cookies




Chocolate chip coconut macaroons



Tart shell prep



Bridal shower cake



Petit fours (this particular combo makes me think of mermaids....)



Vanilla cupcakes

While I'm not a fan of Valentine's Day, I am a fan of any excuse to make themed pastries! So February was all about hearts and the color pink. We had Valentine's Day tea with a special menu, including a raspberry double chocolate scone, flourless chocolate cake, macadamia nut bark, fruit tarts... and other things I can't remember at this point because I didn't take any photos (!) and it was too long ago. We create special menus for all the major holidays, which means making treats that are a little 'fancier' than our usual goodies, or that use more expensive ingredients we don't normally get a chance to use. The only problem is that I'm rarely working on those days, since they're always on a weekend. So I hardly ever get photos of the finished product! And the prep photos are never as exciting. Boo! February was fun though; a great month to get all caught up again after the frenzy of the Christmas/New Years holidays of the months prior.

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I have some awesome cookies to share today! Well, I'm sharing the recipe... because cookies can't be shared through the internet... yet. (Perhaps they're working on that?!) My parents got me these amazing dinosaur cookie cutters for Christmas. I'm not sure where they bought them, but I tracked them down for you. (You're welcome.) Of course I had to find the perfect recipe...


...something that would puff up ever so slightly without spreading, at risk of losing the shape of the cutters. Something that would be solid enough to hold in your hand, and be topped with icing. My first thought was sugar cookies, but Shawn does not like sugar cookies, so even though I could easily eat a whole batch myself, I thought I'd be nice and make something to share. Then my mind went to gingerbread cookies, because those also fit the bill. But I wasn't in the mood for gingerbread...


...so I looked to the one person whose recipes have never failed me. More specifically, I looked in her book first. And there, in the sweets section, was just the recipe I needed! I would share that version here today, because that's the version pictured here... but I'm not going to, because Deb's book is awesome and I encourage you to buy a copy for yourself.

Instead, here's a tweaked version of the recipe that I came up with at Shawn's brilliant suggestion. He took one bite of a cookie and amidst eating it said something about "oohmneffghad key lime pie mmshnfgah...", and these iced key lime pie fossil cookies were born. Of course, you don't need dinosaur cookie cutters to make this recipe... but they're highly recommended if only for entertainment value!

Iced Key Lime Pie Fossil Cookies

adapted from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
for cookies:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
zest of one lime
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
3/4 cups sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

for icing:
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon lime juice

- Whisk the flour, cocoa powder, cinnamon, salt, baking powder, and lime zest in a bowl and set aside. Beat the butter and sugar together in a mixer or with hand beaters until light and fluffy. Add the egg and the vanilla extract. Add the dry ingredients in gradually, until combined. Gather the dough into a ball, flatten, and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until mostly firm; about an hour.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Roll the cookie dough out to about 1/4 inch thick on a lightly floured surface. Cut into desired shapes and bake on a parchment lined cookie sheet for approximately 10 minutes, until the edges are firm and the centers are slightly puffed. Let the pan cool on a wire rack.
- While the cookies are cooling, make your icing by whisking the powdered sugar and lime juice together until smooth. Add more liquid if the icing is too thick, or more powdered sugar if it's too loose. Once the cookies are cool, use a spoon to drizzle icing on top of the cookies.
- Enjoy!

Let me know if you make these, or if you know of any other awesome cookie cutters!

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January Baking

Mini lemon tarts



Chocolate and salted caramel scones



Pre/post bake



Petit fours, petit fours, and more petit fours



Double chocolate walnut cookies



Vanilla cupcakes for a pink themed party

This year, I thought it'd be fun to do a recap at the end of each month of things I've baked at work. Give the pastries their own posts! January was actually a slow baking month creativity-wise because I was busy catching up from November and December. Everything needed to be re-stocked, which meant I turned to my known and trusted recipes. Those chocolate walnut cookies are a new thing for me though... and THEY ARE AMAZING.

We're only a few days into February, but I've already been playing around with some new things... which I'll be excited to show you in a month or so!

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