The Tea Trolley

Since my posting was a bit different in December I have quite a few tea bits and pieces to share....

I think this was my birthday breakfast: a cup of my favorite decaf Earl Grey (Mighty Leaf seems to make the best here in the USA) and a slice of Dundee Cake, sufficiently dry to be the perfect accompaniment with tea.  Certainly one of the nicest treats.


I think this was my birthday lunch - a new crockpot recipe I love from Cooks Country (its not available online).


And I received a glass teapot for my birthday! yay! This tea ball was aptly named "Juliet's Kiss" since we actually had a Juliet sitting at the table!

Pecan pie was my dessert of choice for my birthday this year. So very good.

Thanks to Christina, I also had a birthday cake at our sister birthday celebration -- chocolate with caramel.

 And I even received a little teacup for my birthday! George and Martha Washington!

I brought the little table and two chairs in from my patio over the winter and it makes the perfect place to sit in the kitchen with a cup of tea. Too bad this doesn't happen daily.....

Tea with a friend -- see that teapot cookie? One of my favorites we made this year.

The fall cozy saw a lot of Christmas use - fortunately it didn't look too out of place! (Turns out I forgot about my Christmas cozies until after Christmas!)

Mince pies! Yum! Yum! We love them so much! I used my favorite gluten free pastry recipe and a mincemeat recipe very similar to this one (I used dried cranberries instead of currants, replaced the butter for suet, and left out the mixed peel).

For the very first time I found a gluten-free recipe that worked for Candy Cane Cookies -- they are one of my very favorites!!! We add crushed candy canes on top as soon as they come out of the oven.

This year all the baking had to be done pretty much in one day (Christmas Eve) since we had the stomach flu in the five days leading up to that!. Yikes. It was a full day!

Another wonderful first this year was actually having a gluten-free tea ring!!! (top ring in picture) I used a package of Bob's Red Mill Pizza Crust made up for the cinnamon roll dough on the back of the package and then just formed it into a ring in the same way I make the regular ring! It worked so well I'll probably make this throughout the year!

You can find my recipe for the regular tea ring in this post.

Let's see, I used this recipe for the sugar cookies and this recipe for the gingerbread men -- both gluten free and both wonderful! (The secret to getting creamy looking cookies is to add a few tablespoons of Birds Custard Powder to the dough in place of some of the cornstarch.)

I think the favorite cookie of all were the gluten free thumbprints which we ate the last of today. I used this recipe and jam in the middle before they were cooked. For a lot of my baking I have been resorting to using Costco's gluten free flour blend that they sell. It seems to work fine. Many of the recipes above actually have measurements for rice, tapioca and potato starch in them -- if they do, I use my individual ingredients to save money.

You will find my great-grandmother's recipe for shortbread in this post. I make it gluten free by using rice flour and just a bit of Bird's Custard Powder for the color and taste.

And for the incredibly delicious homemade sausage rolls? I used this recipe for gluten-free puff pastry. It is a labor of love to be done only once a year!

Homemade marshmallows thanks to Martha Stewart. I also bought and enjoyed using this little booklet for vegan and gluten-free recipes. It has a recipe for honey marshmallows which I would like to try sometime. I did love the stuffed mushrooms I made and the hot chocolate worked well too. Seems like I made a few more of the recipes....

Don't you love this picture of the tea cozy I sent a friend? It's what every guy wants to do when they open up a cozy -- stick it on their head!!!!

Got to include a picture of the Christmas Day tea!!!! So much fun!

 And the dollhouse has a new tea set. :)

Boxing Day lunch in my chair! It was perfect!

I got the idea from a friend to have a Hobbit Dinner after we went to see The Hobbit on Boxing Day. It was great fun! We had biscuits/scones, mince pies, eggs, sausages, mushrooms, and cider.

 And then just this past week my mom found and pulled out the Christmas tea cozies! Ha!

That's all for 2014 and the tea trolley! On to the new year next time!