Diamond Candles

Have you ever heard of Diamond Candles?  The company sells candles in all different scents, many seasonal offerings, and has one line of candles called "ring candles" that have a ring inside.  You're probably wondering what this has to do with tea.  Well, some of the fragrances are tea inspired!  The website today includes a candle that is cinnamon tea scented, and on this blog I am featuring this candle:

Pumpkin Chai!  The scent is wonderful and is just like some of the pumpkin spiced teas that I had last autumn.  The scent really spreads throughout the whole room.  I will admit, however, that I am cheating--the pumpkin chai candle is my sister's, she said I could borrow it for blogging purposes.  I actually got the candle below:

As I mentioned, each candle comes with a ring inside that is valued between $10 and $5,000.  So, for about $25.00 you get a wonderful smelling candle and a ring worth at least $10.  The gold sticker shown in the picture above tells you where the ring is in the candle and the candle has to be burned until the wax is melted to the point where the ring is.  So how is the ring in the candle?  Well, this

 

 

baggy has the ring inside and the whole thing is wrapped in gold foil.  I might have gotten impatient and went fishing for it with scissors when the wax was soft enough for me to pull it out.  Here is the ring I got:

 

 

 

 Beautiful and it's my birthstone!  The website says that the rings come in the "most common sizes" but our experience has been that the rings tend towards the bigger sizes, which is good for my family.  My sister got my mother a candle for Christmas and received a couple herself, and I think most of the rings were around a size 8.  Mine was definitely a size 8--which is good for me, just a bit big. 

I think that these candles are an extremely clever idea. The person receiving the gift gets one present, the candle, and gets a complete surprise gift inside that she has to wait for.  As I mentioned, the company even has tea fragrances for the tea lover in your life (or for you!)

Last of the Birthday spoils

My sister gave me the cute Royal Albert Old Country Roses salt and pepper shakers shown here:

 

Now I'm all set for a fancy dinner, or if I decide to have salt and pepper on the table during a tea party.  I haven't served anything yet where I would have them...but you never know!  Now I have an excuse to look for different recipes.  She also gave me a special candle, but we'll save that for another post.

 

This has been a great Birthday weekend!  Today a few of my friends took me to brunch at a local restaurant in a old church.  Having the snow storm worked in my favor to spread out the festivities extra long.

Birthday spoils

My mother really spoiled me this year with a couple of wonderful gifts--some of which involved tea!  She made the reversible tea cozy below that I am so excited to use with a pink themed party that I have been working on for awhile.  I'm planning on maybe serving different tea with different courses, and this will be perfect to let me make it ahead of time!

 

She also gave me the beautiful five piece set below, Cheeky Pink by Royal Albert.  I saw this for the first time in the Royal Albert/Royal Doulton Outlet in Williamsburg, Virginia last summer when I  joined my parents for a long weekend.  I stared at the set for about fifteen minutes but I didn't buy it because it was more than I wanted to pay.  My mom had apparently asked to be informed when they had a sale, and she went down special with my father to buy me it for me after the store contacted her!

 



Here is a close up of the teacup and saucer:

This set just looks happy and I love the name, it's so....cheeky!  Now I'm ready for spring...too bad I woke up to it snowing a bit more.  At least it didn't stick today!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I prepared my tea cart to serve a cup of Valentine's Blend tea to you today.

With the tea, I'm serving these cookies:

 

I found the recipe for these raspberry shortbread cookies here.  I used a seedless raspberry preserve (just Palmers All Fruit that I happened to already have) and they were delicious.  I did include white chocolate shavings as called for in the recipe, but I couldn't really taste them, so I don't think it's necessary.  The only other thing I did was add a 1/2 tsp of almond extract to the cookies to give them a slight almond taste reminiscent of a linzer cookie.  The shortbread cookie recipe worked extremely well with the cookie cutters and wasn't overly sweet, which made it a perfect pair to the jam. 

 

I hope you enjoy your Valentine's Day!

St. Valentine's Day Countdown (1)

Today I'm sharing a scone recipe that, while still a bit of a work in progress, I thought would be a good choice for our theme this week.  But first, I thought I would share about my day...today is my birthday!  For my present I got a snow day :).  I love snow, but I will admit, today's load was a bit much for me.  Here is the view from my front door after I shoveled:

I went out on my back deck to get some of the snow off, and here is the view out back:

So, what did I decide to do on my day off (post-shoveling)--try a new recipe for scones!

I was snowed in, so I used ingredients I had in the house, which did not include cream, and cream scones are my go to scone recipe.  I found the recipe below (though the recipe includes my tweaks) which was cream free.  Overall the recipe turned out really well, except I couldn't get the bake temperature/time perfect.

Chocolate Chip Orange Scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
heaping 1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick butter, chilled
2 large eggs
1/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp grated orange zest
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips*

Preheat oven to 400.  In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Cut in the butter until resembles course crumbs.  In a small bowl, stir together eggs, orange juice, vanilla extract, and orange zest.  Add egg mixture to flour mixture and stir to combine.  Flour hands and work in the chocolate chips and distribute evenly.

With lightly floured hands, take a portion of the batter.  Work flour into the batter until less sticky and able to use a floured cookie cutter.  Cut out with a heart shaped cutter (In my case, one of the ones from my post earlier this week!) and place on a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Cook for 10 minutes at 400.**  Serve with cherry jam.

*I might use milk chocolate chips next time I bake these because the scones were not as sweet as I like, but I will admit the semi-sweet chips give them more of a dark chocolate taste.
**As I mentioned before, I had a hard time with the bake time.  The scones with the cutter were much smaller than the recipe called for, and the recipe cooked them at 425.  I think next time I might try at 375 for 14 minutes and see how that turns out.

St. Valentine's Day Countdown (2)

I have one other Valentine's Day themed tea that I will review today.  This is a tea by Harney and Sons, my favorite tea blender.  This tea is called, simply enough, Valentine's Blend.

Harney and Sons' website describes the tea as follows:

"The lore and legend of Valentine's Day has inspired generations to love. We thought the marriage of chocolate and roses might help that cause. China black is the base of this tea so the leaves are dark brown.  It is then blended with rosebuds.  The liquor is light brown.  A romantic combination of chocolate and rosebuds give this tea a unique sweet floral aroma."

This is one of the few chocolate teas I enjoy.  You can definitely taste chocolate, but it isn't overpowering or fake tasting.  I enjoy this tea with just a little sweetener, but with a bit of milk, it tastes a little like a guilt-free hot chocolate.

 



The tea has the faint fragrance of roses and chocolate, which gives the tea an air of romance.  The tea is served in my Old Country Roses (of course) tea cup and saucer by Royal Albert.

St. Valentine's Day Countdown (3)

Today I'm posting a picture of a new garden flag I found at Michael's:

 

If you are near a Michaels, the flags were on sale for 40% off!  I was very excited when I saw it, the Valentine's Day flag I had before was boring and needed to be replaced with a teapot flag!  They will probably go on sale even more soon since Valentine's Day is so close.

 



Here it is in front of my portico.  "May your cup overflow with love"!