Lockdown Baking

Hey There,

How are you today? Looking for a guilt free cake fix? If so, you've found the right place - grab a cup of tea and read on....

Banana and peanut butter cookies

For me baking is more than the act of making a cake or batch of biscuits. Of course I love the finished product as much as the next person....there is something wonderful about a cup of tea and freshly baked goods....but I also love the process of baking.

The combining of different ingredients, the stirring and mixing, folding and beating. Following a recipe or making it up as you go along (shock horror...I do that sometimes!). The smells as your bakes rise in the oven and the sight of the finished cake or biscuit. I love it all - it soothes my soul and makes me happy. Sharing the bakes with others is also pretty good, the widening smile when someone sees your cakes and sigh as they bite into a piece....alright, I'm a bit of a cake feeder!

The Covid-19 pandemic has meant we're all staying at home to slow the spread and I know we've all been coping with the social distancing in different ways. Some people are learning new skills via the internet, some cleaning their cupboards and garages from top to bottom. Some are making their way through their "to read" book pile and others are watching the whole of Netfix! For me I'm part of the baking tribe that is sharing their bakes on social media, although I have to say I haven't made a single banana loaf (I manage to eat all my bananas before they go brown). 

Easter Sunday pancakes!

I've tried lots of new recipes, enjoying taking the time to read my recipe books to pick bakes that I have the ingredients for (no longer having the luxury of nipping to the shops for missing items). I've also enjoyed a virtual baking session with a friend via video call - she baked banana brownies and I made a coffee crumb cake, it was great fun and we both had cake to enjoy at the end.

Since I've been so busy baking I thought I would share what I've made and why I've upped my exercise levels!

The coffee crumb cake I mentioned above was really good, a lovey light vanilla sponge topped with a coffee and mixed spice flavoured crumb. The crumb has a streusel-like quality to it, giving the bake a pleasing combination of textures. I also enjoyed how well the mixed spice paired with the coffee flavour. The cake was nice served with a dollop of clotted cream and a hot drink! 

I've tried my hand at several different biscuit recipes recently and found that I really enjoy biscuit making. Most of my bakes previously would be in cake form or using very basic biscuit recipes, so I enjoyed learning new techniques. 

I've made some delicious Viennese butter biscuits, dipped in chocolate and slightly fiery ginger custard creams. The butter biscuits are a pipped biscuit and incredibly light and buttery. The custard creams were a completely new bake for me and I struggled a little with the biscuit dough. I'm glad I finished them though because they were delicious.

I also made a batch of crunchy ginger biscuits which I enjoyed with a cup of super sweet Dalgona coffee (I felt like I was in a coffee shop with this luxurious homemade coffee!).

I also made slightly bizarre millionaire shortbread....the reason they were a bit bizarre in the flavour department was because I had run out of normal milk chocolate for the topping and only had Cadburys limited edition Christmas gingerbread chocolate to melt! Slightly odd flavour to mix with the dreamy caramel, but I enjoyed them anyway! Millionaire shortbread always hits the spot with its combination of shortbread, caramel and chocolate.

I hope you've enjoyed taking a peek at my latest baking creations. As our government has announced that the lock down will last at least another three weeks I'm sure there will be lots more bakes to follow so watch this space! If you have any recipes you think I should try, leave me a message in the comments below!

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel

Afternoon Tea Baking - Pret a Portea high fashion bakes

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends.

I hope you're well today. Have you made any baking related New Year's Resolutions this year? Maybe you'd like to try baking the sweet treats that you try at afternoon tea? Already love baking, but want to try something new? I might just have the book for you!

Pret a Portea - High Fashion bakes and biscuits

Before we go any further I want to assure you that this isn't an ad, I'm not being paid or rewarded for this blog post in anyway. I bought the book when I enjoyed afternoon tea at The Berkeley last year and was so impressed with the recipes that I wanted to share it with you.

'Prêt-à-Portea: High-Fashion Bakes and Biscuits' was published to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the iconic fashion inspired afternoon tea served at The Berkeley and includes 20 recipes and baking techniques from the hotel’s Head Pastry Chef Mourad Khiat. 

I'm a home baker, I follow simple recipes and enjoy what I make but I have wanted to stretch myself a little and this book was perfect. The recipes are really easy to follow and the book contains lots of photos of the process as well as the finished items so you can see what you are supposed to be doing. 

Pret a Portea - High Fashion bakes and biscuits

Inside the book you'll find 20 iconic sweet treats that have been served as part of the Pret a Portea afternoon tea experience at some point in the last ten years. You'll also see what fashion item inspired the sweet treat. 

From the Blueberry sponge handbag inspired by Anya Hindmarch to the rainbow meringue summer mousse inspired by Mulberry, or the red sole and sparkle biscuit inspired by Christian Louboutin....you'll find all of these and more in the book!

My baking from Pret a Portea 

One of the items I decided to try was the pearl pump Sachertorte inspired by Nicholas Kirkwood, which featured a Chocolate Miroir finish. Having not attempted Sachertorte previously I was a little apprehensive when I started.

The recipe was broken down into easy to follow sections, making the chocolate sponge and jam filling first, followed by the chocolate Miroir. The recipe also includes styling details to help you finish your bake in the same way as The Berkeley. As you can see from the images I didn't quite follow the styling details, but I was still very impressed with my wonky finished cakes!

They were so shiny that even Niffler was impressed....

A bit wonky, but very shiny! 

This book also contains the best chocolate Brownie recipe I have ever come across. The recipe is very simple, but results in rich and gooey brownies that you will love!

I might have made these once or twice since buying the book....

The book is jam packed with scrummy photos, so even if you don't want to bake the cakes you'll probably spend several blissful hours drooling over the cakes!

As I said, this isn't an ad....but if you are looking for an easy to follow book which will up your baking game then you might enjoy this one!

Do you have a favourite baking book? I'd love to hear all about it - leave me a comment!

Thanks for popping by today,

Rachel

Time for.....tea and biscuits....pretty biscuit recipes

Hello there,

Hope you're having a tea-riffic day wherever you are in the world!

Here at Tea With Me and Friends towers we've been baking biscuits. There is something about the colder days that sees me heading into the kitchen to whip up something sweet and scrummy! If you've stopped by our Facebook page recently you'll have seen what we've been up to, baking biscuits that taste scrummy and look really pretty too!

I've enjoyed my baking so much that I thought I would share one of the recipes that we've been working on. Inspired by one of my favourite retro puddings, I've been creating some black forest gateau biscuits combining scrummy chocolate and cherry flavours. I've had the pleasure of enjoying real black forest gateau in the Black Forest in Germany (its far from the frozen version of my childhood) and you can't beat the flavours!

The best thing about these scrummy biscuits is that they are really simple to make. The base is a light chocolate biscuit, topped with a layer of cherry preserve and decorated with a cherry flavoured butter cream. 

To make six biscuits you will need.....

125g softened butter

75g icing sugar

115g plain flour

40g cocoa powder

Your oven needs to be preheated to 160 degrees.

To make the biscuits, first beat the butter and icing sugar together until light and fluffy (using a large bowl helps with icing sugar spills). Then sift in the flour and cocoa powder and combine to make a dough. If you find the dough a bit sticky, add a little more flour.

Next roll our your dough out and cut out your desired shapes. I went for scalloped circles - each biscuit has a base and a top, the top has a small centre cut out to reveal the pink butter cream.

Your biscuits need to be baked in the preheated oven for approximately 15 minutes (during this time you kitchen will smell amazing!).

Once baked, transfer to a cooling rack and leave until cold before decorating......then you can get creative! I decided I wanted to combine preserve and flavoured butter cream to really add cherry flavour to the chocolate biscuits. 

On the base biscuit I first spread a thin layer of the cherry preserve across the whole biscuit (be careful doing this as the biscuit can be a little fragile), then I piped cherry flavoured butter cream on top - again cover the whole of the biscuit.

Next I added the top biscuit with the centre missing, adding some red and white sparkles to the centre for a little extra sparkle. Finally pipe some more buttercream around the top biscuit. 

I'm really pleased with how these biscuits turned out - a scrummy light chocolate base, topped with lashings of cherriness! Perfect with a good cup of tea on a cold afternoon!

Over the last couple of weeks I've also experimented with other flavours too, combining other fruit flavours with chocolate biscuits.

I've baked chocolate and orange fingers and chocolate and raspberry stars....

The stars were my favourites...the dark chocolate and tangy raspberry were a perfect match. They were so good that they vanished very quickly....in fact the photo above is the only one I have of the stars! 

I hope you've enjoyed this post - if you make the biscuits yourself we'd love to see the results!

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel

Time for a spot of spooky afternoon tea!

Hello there!

Wow, it's been a long time! It's been a rather busy year for me personally, so I hope you excuse the lack of scrummy afternoon tea posts from me.

As some of you know, I love Halloween baking and always host a Halloween afternoon tea for my friends. So I thought I would break my silence by sharing with you this year's Halloween baking!

This year we had a selection of cakes and hand-iced biscuits, as well as a tower of egg mayonnaise finger sandwiches, mini coronation chicken rolls and handmade quiches to enjoy.

Over the years I have collected lots of Halloween themed table decorations and I love covering the table with skulls and handmade felt bats. I also love getting out my collection of vintage china to serve everything on and this year Becca made us cute little ghostly name tags for everyone.

Anika loves nothing better than a vanilla cupcake, so you will always find them as part of my afternoon tea spread. The monster cupcakes in my Halloween tea are vanilla sponge which I coloured green, topped with lashings of vanilla buttercream (with more food colouring) and some edibles eyes.....lots of edible eyes! 

Becca and I had great fun baking and icing the biscuits, we had pumpkins and bats with lime flavoured icing and tombstones and ghosts with lemon flavoured icing.

We used the flooding technique to ice the biscuits, outlining the biscuits first with a slightly thicker icing and then filling in the shape with a thinner icing. Finally details were added with the thicker icing. 

Among the other treats was a chocolate loaf cake which contained a cherry flavoured secret ghost in the middle! I love making cakes with hidden shapes in the middle, especially when the flavour isn't quite as expected! This cake went down especially well with a dollop of clotted cream!

Altogether we enjoyed a very spooky afternoon, watching movies as we enjoyed the treats! 

And the best thing about hosting an afternoon tea at your house.....you get to enjoy the leftovers the next day!

I hope you enjoyed seeing our afternoon tea spread and I promise to return soon with more scrummy posts! In the meantime if you enjoy a wonderful afternoon tea let us know all about it - we'd love to hear about your afternoon tea adventures.

Thanks for popping by today,

Rachel

Time for....some baking...this time with Twinnings!

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you're keeping well today.

Remember last week when I shared that scrummy Piacha Black and Cherry biscuit recipe and I mentioned that you could probably use any tea in this recipe....well guess what....I've been back in the kitchen experimenting again! And I can confirm that this recipe works well with other teas too!

Twinings Lady Grey teabag biscuits
from Tea With Me and Friends

This time I have used Lady Grey tea from Twinings. 

If you haven't tried Lady Grey yet, it's a black tea combined with oranges and lemons to give a fresh and zesty tea. For this recipe I have used a Twinings teabag, and I found that the leaves were the perfect consistency for the biscuits.

Apart from a different tea, the recipe for these biscuits is exactly the same as before.....

You will need:

1 Twinings Lady Grey tea bag

130g plain flour

50g caster sugar

20g icing sugar

100g unsalted butter

splash of water

100g chocolate - optional

A straw for poking holes

Bakers twine (or other thread)

This will make: 16 teabag biscuits

Preheat your oven to:

200c or 180c (fan oven)

To make the biscuits:

• No need to grind your leaves this time - just tear open the teabag!

We flavoured our biscuits with a Lady Grey teabag

• Combine all your dry items (so that's the tea leaves, flour and both sugars) in a bowl, mixing them well
• Next you need to add the butter - rub this into your dry ingredients so you end up with a bread crumb like mixture. Don't worry if it starts to combine together at this stage,
• Now add a splash of water and carrying on combining the mixture to make a dough. At this stage less is definitely more - you don't want a sloppy dough
• It's time to chill your mixture - this is important to stop the dough expanding when baking in the oven. Roll your dough out, wrap in cling film and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

• Once chilled, we get to the fun part - making the teabags! First put flour on your clean work surface, then roll out the dough until its about 0.5cm and then cut out your little teabag shapes. I used a straw to make the hole at the top of each teabag.
• Once you've cut all your teabags, place them onto a cold baking tray and place in your preheated oven for 12 minutes or until the edges of your biscuits turn a golden colour.
• Remove your biscuits from the oven and allow to cool
• Once cool you can thread your twine through the holes in the top and dip your biscuits in melted chocolate. Don't forget if you go down the chocolate route you'll need to leave the biscuits to dry before you can tuck in.
• Enjoy with a cup of tea!

Twinings Lady Grey teabag biscuits

These biscuits are crisp, light and fruity - the zesty flavour really comes through well. Again, you don't really need the optional chocolate, but the teabags look cute if you use it.

We hope you've enjoyed our second recipe for teabag biscuits - if you give this recipe a go we'd love to see the results!

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel

Time for....some tea inspired baking with Piacha tea

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you're having a tea-riffic day.

Today I am sharing with you a little recipe that made me very happy. You may remember that we discovered the fabulous tea from Piacha a while ago - Pia has so many delicious blends on offer, but Black and Cherry is one of my favourites. It's a sweet tea, that I find very refreshing. For ages now I have been trying to include this tea in my baking - always focusing on cakes. But they always fail - with hardly any flavour carrying through to the cake.

Tonight however I decided to try something different - I had seen teabag shaped biscuits all over the Internet (Ok - mainly on Pintrest....the place I seem to spend most of my time!!) and it struck me that maybe I could include Black and Cherry in a biscuit. A lot of the teabag biscuits I came across were flavoured with green tea (often using Matcha powder) but then I came across a couple of recipes which included earl grey tea. After doing a bit of research about whether you can actually eat tea leaves, I decided to give it a go and worked on a recipe using the Black and Cherry tea leaves.....and I'm so glad I did....

Black and Cherry tea bag biscuits
from Tea With Me and Friends

These biscuits are light and crisp and have a beautiful cherry flavour that will make you smile. Plus, they are super simple to make!

You will need:

1.5 heaped tablespoons of Piacha Black and Cherry loose leaf tea

130g plain flour

50g caster sugar

20g icing sugar

100g unsalted butter

splash of water

100g chocolate - optional

A straw for poking holes

Bakers twine (or other thread)

This will make: 16 teabag biscuits

Preheat your oven to:

200c or 180c (fan oven)

To make the biscuits:

• First you need to grind up the tea leaves as small as you can - either in a food processor, with a pestle and mortar or like me in a bowl with the back of a spoon.
• Now combine all your dry items (so that's the tea leaves, flour and both sugars) in a bowl, mixing them well
• Next you need to add the butter - rub this into your dry ingredients so you end up with a bread crumb like mixture. Don't worry if it starts to combine together at this stage,
• Now add a splash of water and carrying on combining the mixture to make a dough. At this stage less is definitely more - you don't want a sloppy dough
• It's time to chill your mixture - this is important to stop the dough expanding when baking in the oven. Roll your dough out, wrap in cling film and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
• Once chilled, we get to the fun part - making the teabags! First put flour on your clean work surface, then roll out the dough until its about 0.5cm and then cut out your little teabag shapes. I used a straw to make the hole at the top of each teabag.

Use a straw to poke holes in the top of your biscuits

• Once you've cut all your teabags, place them onto a cold baking tray and place in your preheated oven for 12 minutes or until the edges of your biscuits turn a golden colour.
• Remove your biscuits from the oven and allow to cool

Tea bag biscuits in the making!

• Once cool you can thread your twine through the holes in the top and dip your biscuits in melted chocolate. Don't forget if you go down the chocolate route you'll need to leave the biscuits to dry before you can tuck in.
• Enjoy with a cup of tea!

Teabag biscuits....perfect with a cup of tea!

To be really honest these biscuits don't really need the chocolate dip - the light cherry flavour is sweet enough. However, if you do add the chocolate it doesn't ruin them either!

These biscuits make a lovely gift for a tea loving friend.....or just gobble them all up yourself (like I did!).

I'm sure this simple recipe will work well with other tea leaves, so if you don't have any Piacha tea at home why not experiment with your favourite tea - just remember to grind up your leaves! If you try a different tea yourself, we'd love to hear what you baked - leave us a comment or send us a photo!

To find out more about Piacha teas and the fabulous tea bar in London pop by the Piacha website!

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel

Something Beau-tea-ful....green tea body scrub!

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you've had a tea-riffic Christmas!

We've been a little bit quiet here at Tea Towers over the last week, but never fear...we're back with lots of of scrummy afternoon tea photos and tea articles!

Today, I thought I would share something a little bit different with you....we all know that tea is brilliant and we drink a lot of it here at Tea Towers...we've also been known to bake with it and even tried it in our sandwiches when we visited Piacha earlier this year. That got me thinking about how else we could use tea and I started researching homemade beauty products.

Beau-tea-ful body scrub

Now I love a good body scrub and so when I found recipes for green tea body scrubs I thought I would give them a try. We all know the benefits of green tea when we drink it...full of antioxidants and good stuff.....but apparently its also beneficial if used in skin care too.

This recipe is really simple, with only four ingredients....

Green tea body scrub ingredients

To fill one 10oz jar you will need...

200g brown sugar (you can use white if you prefer)

100g coconut oil (that's 100g whilst it's still solid)

2 green tea bags

2 tsp matcha powder

I used Lucy Bee raw coconut oil as that's what I happened to have in my kitchen cupboard, I measured out 100g and then melted it.

For the matcha powder I didn't have any pure powder at home (shock horror) but I did have some Pukka tea supreme matcha green, which is a combination of green tea leaves and matcha powder. I used two of these bags for this pot of scrub.

To make the scrub, pour the coconut oil into the brown sugar and combine until all the sugar has been coated - make sure you mix well. Then simply add in the tea leaves and powder and combine.

This will give you quite a dry looking scrub....

Green tea body scrub

However, once combined with water the scrub worked well. If however you prefer something a bit wetter, add a little more coconut oil. Once happy with your scrub put it in an air tight container.

The scrub works well, the sugar is courser than I thought it would be, but is well balanced by the coconut oil. Once rinsed you are left with really smooth skin, with a light coconut fragrance.

All in all I was rather pleased with my first homemade beau-tea-ful product!

Tea With Me and Friends and the
beau-tea-ful green tea body scrub!

UPDATE.....

When I returned to my body scrub a little later it was rather dry and hard to handle - it still worked as a brilliant scrub, but it was a bit crumbly and hard to pick out of the jar. I would therefore add a little more coconut oil to my mix next time!

Have you got any tea beauty products that you've tried - we'd love to hear about them! Leave a comment below.....

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel

Christmas tea at home...featuring The Tea Chest

Hello there,

We hope you are well and are looking forward to the festive season! Have you put your tree up yet - we have!

Last weekend Lorna and I enjoyed a Christmas afternoon tea feast at home with our friends. As regular readers know.....Lorna and I usually bake our own afternoon tea treats when we enjoy a spot of tea at home. This time Lorna kept up the tradition.....but I have been so busy at work that I ran out of time to bake and decided to rely on shop bought goodies instead! I know - shock horror!

Another new addition to the afternoon tea feast were the actual teas we drank during with the food. We were lucky enough to be sent some brand new teas to showcase from Tea Chest , the bespoke blend tea subscription company. The guys at Tea Chest kindly put together two brand new Christmas blends for us to try! But more about that later....lets start with some of the sweet treats.....

Christmas afternoon tea with Tea With Me and Friends

Our feast included a selection of Christmas inspired sandwiches, spiced scones, chocolate cookie Christmas puds, mini mince pies, pieces of stollen, mini gingerbread men and of course Christmas cake. Quite a selection!

The sandwich fillings included traditional afternoon tea fillings such as egg mayonnaise as well as more Christmassey fillings such as turkey and cranberry sauce. Lorna even parted with tradition slightly and built a tower of sandwiches....

Lorna's sandwich tower!

We also added an extra savoury element to the spread from the Sainsbury's Taste the Difference range in the form of vol au vents....

First of the shop bought treats - vol au vent cases from Sainsbury's

These all butter cases were simply divine - bite sized and so buttery! I filled them with prawns and topped with a little paprika....

Prawn vol-au-vents - very retro!

These proved to be very popular, I'll definitely buy the cases again.

Lorna's Christmas scones were also a triumph...she took her basic scone recipe and added some Christmassey spices. I'm not sure what she added, but they smelt and tasted wonderful....

Afternoon tea scones with a Christmas twist

....especially when covered in clotted cream....

Scones served the Tea With Me and Friends way!

When it came to the sweet treats we enjoyed during the feast, there were a mixture of shop bought and homemade treats on offer. Fresh from the shelves of Sainsbury's came mini mince pies and stollen bites....

More shop bought treats from Sainsbury's

Unfortunately we were slightly more disappointed with these shop bought items.

 The mini mince pies were ok, but the bigger version of them avaliable in the shops is much better (maybe because there is more of them??). The stollen bites I didn't enjoy at all....I'm usually a big stollen fan but there was something a little odd about the texture.

The homemade treats were much more pleasing...with Becca making the most scrummy chocolate cookies which looked like Christmas puddings. 

These were rich and dense and the white chocolate topping complimented the biscuit really well....plus they looked super cute....

Becca's chocolate cookie Christmas puddings - amazing!

Lorna made the most gorgeous mini gingerbread men...and ladies. They were bite sized and flavoured well with ginger, plus Lorna decorated them with icing which made them really cute. 

She also made a mini Christmas cake by taking a shop bought fruit cake and wrapping it with marzipan and icing...

Lorna's gingerbread men and women

As we enjoyed our Christmas feast we watched Christmas movies and drank the Christmas tea sent to us by Tea Chest.....

Tea from Tea Chest
Santa's Sleigh and Christmas Pudding blends

The blends were called Santa's Sleigh and Christmas Pudding.

Santa's Sleigh is a smokey black tea, based on the original black tea that was carried on caravans from China to St Petersburg. This tea is smokey, just like Santa would be after making all his trips down chimneys on Christmas Eve. The tea is enjoyable, it has a light smokey taste - not too over powering. We enjoyed it black without any milk or sugar.

The Christmas Pudding blend is a combination of black tea, festive spices, real fruit pieces, vanilla and rose essences. This tea can be enjoyed with or without milk and it is recommended that you add a little sugar to bring out the flavours. This tea wasn't as popular with our guests, as the rose is a little strong in flavour, but we liked the idea of the tea.

Christmas tea blends from Tea Chest

To find out more about Tea Chest and the tea subscriptions they offer, which are delivered directly to your door please visit their website.

A tea delivery from Tea Chest - fits through the letterbox!

We've enjoyed sharing our Christmas afternoon tea with you....we hope you've enjoyed drooling over the photos! We'd like to thank Tea Chest for sharing their new blends with us - its always exciting to try new teas!

If you enjoy a Christmas afternoon tea this festive season we'd love to hear all about it - let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

Christmas afternoon tea stand
Tea With Me and Friends

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel & Lorna

Tea With Me and Friends at Christmas!