Valentine Cream Tea Deluxe

Welcome, Dear Friends of The Tearoom,
It is so very nice to spend time with you again!! A Most Happy Valentine's Day to you all!

Won't you please have a seat? For a lot of us, it is still cold and for some of us, there's a lot of snow where you are (for others like me, a lot more!!). I have hung tapestries around the room to make it cozier for us!



And to remind us that spring is only around the corner, I have placed a fountain with a profusion of violets growing around it, in the middle of The Tearoom!


Today, we are having a traditional British cream tea (with just a few revisions of my own)!

Of course we start with lovely Devonshire scones,with clotted cream and jam. Traditionally, scones are served with either strawberry (or occasionally, raspberry) jam or lemon curd. But who can say no to a bit of Pierre Hermé's Ispahan Confiture instead, his beautifully passionate red jam made of two layers, rose-scented litchi and raspberry, which you mix upon opening the jar? What a romantic combination and entirely appropriate for our Valentine Tea, don't you think?


And we must not have a Valentine's tea that does not include some sort of macarons! Here are some very interesting ones from a patisserie in Paris called Acide. These are fraise/poivre (strawberry/pepper)! Just imagine that sweet, yet slightly hot flavor! I would definitely try these, should we find ourselves in the 17th Arr. in Paris!

From the House of Ladurée comes a religieuse griotte (sour cherry religieuse).

And you must try the Black Forest Cheesecake from the blog Tastes of Mine!

To pair with all of these beautiful red flavors of raspberry, rose, strawberry and cherry, I thought it best to have a black tea, which should also go well with the pepper in the macaron and the chocolate in the cheesecake, perhaps a Ceylon from Kusmi or an Earl Grey with Blue Flower Petals from Monsieur Hermé. Do you take yours with cream?



To end our lovely party, won't you please have some beautiful chocolates from Rococo Chocolates in London? They must be as yummy as they look. One of these must be the favorite you didn't know you had yet...

...Jasmine tea, Manjari Madagascar, lychee rose and raspberry, Irish coffee, sour cherry with dark chocolate, and Jivara marc de champagne, passionfruit and mango, crushed lemon praline with milk chocolate and these four very special flavors, invented just for this collection:

And, because I can never spoil you enough, I have added Acide in Paris and The Cake Opera of Toronto to the ever-growing list of beautiful sweets and teas to peruse in the "Tea and Sweets" links to the right!

Please keep checking back as I have many new projects coming up including the opening of my new vintage shop just down the rue d'Etsy from The Gossamer Tearoom, called Mirabella Morello and new collections of silk brooches just for spring!!


I wish you all A Most Happy Valentine's Day

For a really beautiful description of a proper cream tea, please read Nigel Slater's excellent description in The Guardian, complete with recipes for scones and plum jam.

Chocolates? Yes, Please!

Dearest Friends,
I must admit that when faced with choices for desserts, I will almost always choose something that is not chocolate. It's not that I don't like chocolate, but a lot of the time, the non-chocolate desserts seem more interesting to me. But when I saw these chocolates, I couldn't help but be interested! They speak the language of simplicity on one level, yet on other levels they are nothing but rococco!

Fauchon in Paris has a new line of chocolates called "Choc Made in F". Decorated only with numbers for the solid chocolates and the letter "F" for the ones with fillings, the new line includes the essential flavors one expects to see in chocolates, but of course done in Fauchon style, described by them this way:

Solid
Numbered 0-9, these morsels offer the ten simple tastes most desired by chocolate lovers, truly universal tastes: vanilla, creamy, coffee, full bodied, fruity, caramel. . .

Filled
A complementary line of ten sweets
Ultra gourmet for more sophisticated characters, multiple buds and notes.
This real range of fruit flavors combines nuggets of voluptuous aromas of flowers and spices to better reveal the facets of chocolate, ganache, praline, dark or milk.

All the simplicity of a praline revisited through the prism of coconut and hazelnut from Piedmont or associated with the more unexpected zest of lemon. Fragile aromas and seductive violet curve along the raspberry in an intense black blanket...

This collection can be enjoyed with eyes closed, a furtive trip to the sensual emotions while immediately-recognizable perfumes envelope textures, leave room for other notes and end on a pure taste of chocolate.

Until you can sample them in real life, please tempt yourself here.

Rococo Chocolates in London just goes out of their way to make sure that everything they make is beautiful! I am just afraid that if I visited, I would not be able to lift my own shopping bag! How could you resist anything they have to offer?

The chocolates above are their floral creams, topped with candied violets and rose petals. According to Kevin Gould writing in Waitrose Food Illustrated, "Rococo's chocolates simply sing in the mouth." and the floral creams are just a small example of the beautiful things they have!

Please let me know if any of you have tried any of these! Since I won't be able to visit either Paris or London for a bit, I would love a review!