The Making of a Teeny Tea...

Hello to you, Dear Friends of The Gossamer Tearoom!

Thank you so much for visiting with us here today!  Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is very excited to share with you the makings of our very first Teeny Tea, The Red & Black Tea!

As much fun as it is to eat all of the lovely sandwiches, scones and sweets for afternoon tea, we think that cooking all of these things is just as much fun!

The first thing we do is get our cooking equipment organized.  Please notice the beautiful little cookie/biscuit cutter on the left!  It's a tiny vintage piece and it perfectly cuts little 1-inch circles of dough!

"Sifting the flour is very important," instructs Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle demonstrates carefully stirring

the dry ingredients.  The use of a Betty Boop spoon

just makes it more fun!

I help Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle by cutting out the scones after 

briefly kneading the dough and patting it out on the

floured board.

Here are the scones, all ready to bake!

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle dons the hedgehog-shaped

hot mitts I made for her, ready to remove the delicious

hot scones from the oven!

Almost done!

Perfectly golden-brown...

...and served with tiniest pat of butter!!

Also, here are a couple of yummy marble cookies!

Here are the recipes for both!

Tiny Cheese Scones

2 cups flour

1 1/2 Tbls. sugar

3 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1 egg

1/2 cup sour cream

1/4 cup olive oil

3 Tbsp. milk

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Stir in cheese.  In a small bowl, whisk egg together with sour cream, olive oil and milk.  Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and put in the wet ingredients. Stir until just mixed.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Turn the dough onto a floured surface.  Knead the dough briefly (10 or 12 times), pat to 1/3 inch thickness.  Cut into 1-inch circles.  Place tiny scones onto greased baking sheet 1/2 inch apart and bake 12-15 minutes until golden (Since they are tiny, watch them carefully so they don't burn!)

Tiny Marble Cookies

3/4 cup softened butter

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 egg

1 3/4 cup sifted flour

1/2 tsp. of baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt (I like cooking with salted butter,

but if you use unsalted butter, increase the

salt to 1/2 tsp.)

1 oz. unsweetened chocolate

(Note: I will be instructing you to freeze the dough several times while constructing the cookies.  Because of the butter, it does soften quite quickly, making it difficult to handle.  The final freezing of the individual pieces is important if you want your final result to be square, otherwise they melt too fast in the oven and tend to spread more.  The process takes some patience, but they are worth it in the end result!)

Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy.  Beat in egg and vanilla extract.  Sift together flour, baking powder and salt.  Mix flour mixture into butter, sugar, egg and vanilla.  Divide into two parts.  Set one part aside and mix the chocolate into the second part.  Refrigerate both parts for several hours or overnight.

When dough is very cold and hard, place between two pieces of waxed paper and roll each piece until it is 5/8 inch thick.  Wrap each piece in waxed paper and freeze for several hours or overnight.

Unwrap each piece.  Lightly wet your hands with water and moisten the surface of one of the pieces of dough.  Top with the other piece of dough and press together firmly.  Wrap up the dough and freeze it again for several hours or overnight.

Unwrap the dough and using a large, sharp knife, dipped into hot water and then dried, cut the dough into slices which are 5/8 inch thick.  Starting with one slice of the dough, lightly pat water along one of the cut sides.  Take another of the dough slices and flip it so that when you press it into the first piece, the chocolate square is next to the vanilla square and vice versa, so that when you look at the end of the dough stick, it looks like a checkerboard pattern.  Wrap the dough and freeze it again.

Cut each stick into 1/4 inch slices.  Place the slices on a tray that you can put into the freezer one last time.   When hardened, remove the cookies from the freezer, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F, place the cookies on un-greased cookie sheets and bake for 8-9 minutes until golden. (Since they are tiny, watch carefully so they don't burn!)

I adapted the scone recipe from one given to me by a friend.  I adapted the cookie recipe from one that I was taught in 8th Grade cooking class.  I copied it out from the blackboard onto a piece of Mickey Mouse notebook paper.  Look!  Here's the Mickey on the bottom of the page!

Please keep watch for our next blog post,

The Red & Black Tea,

the first Teeny Tea, in the porch garden!