Tidbits & Nuggets

A Fantabulous Tea

Creating tiny tidbits and nuggets for Deb's upcoming tea had my sister and I zipping around the kitchen in a creative frenzy. We had the best time playing. Here's what we made:

Savories (Artichoke Cheese and Pesto Cheese)
Chicken Salad in Cream Puff Shells
Bluberry Scones
Golden Almond Scones
Miniature Bete Noir
Strawberry Mini Cupcakes (with jam chamber!)
Key Lime Tartlets (the tangy version)
Lemon mini cakes

Most everything was from a tried and true recipe but after extensive testing a spinach filling for puff pastry savories and coming up with a really delicious recipe it was determined that it was not a good thing to even think about right now so I wound up with an artichoke and cheese and a pesto and cheese substitute. It was OK but neither of them really filled out the puff, not enough to it. Maybe I'll try adding an egg to the mixture next time and see if that helps add substance. Washing off the marinade from the artichokes, or using plain artichoke hearts, might also help allow more artichokes to be added to the mixture.

The pate choux for the chicken salad came out fine. I had used Alton Brown's recipe for an earlier tea and they fell flat! Trying to resuscitate them was useless. After consulting my Good Houskeeping recipe it seemed like either the time was wrong on Alton's (how can that be?) or I did something wrong. I cooked them for 30 minutes at 400 degrees and they puffed and stayed that way. Alton says to pipe them immediately and, as you can see from the picture, they are a bit flabby at first but stood up better after about a 10 minute rest before piping. The chicken salad was an old secret recipe - plain ol' chicken salad with a dollop of the ever elusive mango chutney.

The scones were a hit. I've learned through my biscuit adventures to handle with care. I used Martha Stewart's Blueberry Scone recipe, but I halved the amount of blueberries and considered myself lucky to get the fresh blueberries I needed.
My sis is a wiz with a pastry bag and created the snazziest decoration for cakes. Detail is her thing. She decorated the little chocolate cakes with tiny, itty bitty teapots and teacups and the mini pink cupcakes were festooned with little pink flowers. They were cute but more trouble than they were worth. The jam chamber alone took forever.

Miniature versions of the lemon cake I made for Deb earlier this summer were the the center piece for the desserts. Cooking with my sister is always fun. It's great to see what she comes up with.