Taste Tea

Our church held a Gourmet Potato Bar Fundraiser to benefit our Women's Ministry last Saturday, where they raffled off different items that had been donated. I told the coordinator that I would love to do a Tea Basket, if she was interested, filled with some homemade goodies. She said yes, and so I spent Friday and Saturday creating a basket filled with tea, scones and love. What I pictured in my head, turned out to be way better in reality. I LOVE it when that happens.

This post will be pretty long, because there are a ton of pictures. Go make yourself a cup of tea, grab a cozy chair and get comfy.

I used a yellow, brown and white color scheme that just seemed to say RELAX. I picked up these cute little containers quite a while back at our local Dollar Store. They came in packs of three and because the Dollar Store was running a promotion on Tuesdays, they were only $0.88 a pack. You get can't better deals than that. I bought something like 5 packages. Now I wish I had bought more! I filled each little jar with loose leaf tea from a cooking store downtown. I spilled them all over my crafting table, but it smelled divine as I worked!

I used my scallop circle punch and the Pocket Silhouette stamp from Stampin' Up to create all my tags.

I found these cute containers at Wal-Mart and bought a bunch to organize my spice/baking cupboard. Isn't it SO great filled with the Strawberry Freezer Jam?

The Shortbread Cookies were one of the first baked goodies I packaged up and they set the stage for everything else.

The ribbon going around the cellophane bag was the perfect touch!

Next were the Mini British Scones. I mistakenly wrote ENGLISH scones on the package, but who cares? They still taste delish! I have been making the scones for our daily tea time, but decided to make these bite size. They are the perfect size to smear on a bit of jam and then pop them in your mouth. They have a little bit of a crunch to them because before you bake them, you top them with some sugar in the raw.

I had never had Irish Soda Bread before, but have wanted to try it for years. I watched Ina Garten make this recipe on her T.V. show The Barefoot Contessa. It seemed so simple, I had to try it! It's to die for yummy. I think it looks sort of French tied with the knot and the label off to the right.

The last baked goodie that I added to the basket, were the first scones I ever learned how to bake and the ones I have been asked to make for the last 4 or 5 ladies teas at our church. They are a Whole Wheat Scone from the Taste of Home series of recipes. My stamping friend Shalyn gave me the recipe to try and every time I make it I think of her.  My friend, Lark, suggested the brown paper bag for packaging.  Can I just say, "genius"?

My mind often comes up with ideas that I really don't have time for.  While I was gathering things for the basket I had the idea to make a little book with some different facts about tea and a few recipes. I titled it Taste Tea...do you get it? No? Say it out loud, "Taste Tea", ahhh, see? Tasty! He-he-he, it took my family a little while too, and they were not nearly as impressed as I was. *sigh*, oh well.

In my opinion, this book is what sent this basket over the top. It turned out fabulous! I've never made anything like this before so I was a little nervous. My husband got me a Zutter Binding Machine for Christmas and it came with this huge stack of Chipboard Coasters. I had no idea what to do with them, but they seemed perfect for this project. Now I'm pretty sure I will find ALL sorts of uses for them.

When I put everything together and got it all arranged in the basket, I almost called and told Kim that I changed my mind. It was TOO adorable to give away! I did fill the Lemon Curd jar, but not until right before I left to take the basket to the church, by then I was done taking pictures. I'm sure you can picture the jar filled, it was yellow, and it was pretty!

  

I was so glad to hear that my friends the Graff family won the basket. They are another family with a passion for tea parties and all things pretty and yummy. From their Facebook posts, it sounds like it was much enjoyed! Mom and Oldest Daughter each have blogs for you to enjoy.

Creating gifts like this, is my absolute FAVORITE thing to do with all my paper and ink.  This makes me SUPER happy!

NOTE:  I rearrange the pictures in this post because I noticed some were stacked under others.

Customer Christmas Boxes

I have spent the last three days working on Customer Christmas Gifts for my husband. We started out talking about baking a few different kinds of cookies, but decided to settle on some thing we thought we be simpler and take less time.

We settled on Chocolate Dipped Pretzels with Sprinkles to start with. I had hoped to use the Pretzel Rods because they are so pretty in a cellophane bag, but the ones at Wal-mart were all broken up and they were completely out of them at Winco. I settled on the Snyder's of Hanover Olde Tyme. They are the BIG pretzel twists, not the little snack pretzels.

I love to use the Smooth and Melty Candies to do any dipping. You can buy them in bulk at Winco-they come in Milk, Dark and White Chocolate. I chose the Milk, but the Dark would have been beautiful as well. Smooth and Melty is very easy to work with. Just pour some in a microwave safe bowl and microwave it for 30 at a time and stir in between. After the first minute, stir every 15 seconds because they hold their shape even when they are melted. Once there are no lumps and it glossy, you're ready to start dipping.

I only dipped half the pretzel. Be sure to let the excess chocolate drain off. You can shake it a little to make it go faster. If you don't drain enough off, when you add the sprinkles the chocolate will be too heavy and begin dripping off.

I used three different sprinkles, but just one type per pretzel. The combination looked so pretty!

*NOTE* It's actually easier and neater to SPOON the sprinkles over the chocolate than to DIP them.

I laid them on foil to harden back up again. It doesn't take very long.

White Chocolate Peppermint Sticks were next on the list. I've made these before and I LOVE how beautiful they look. These were my WOW addition. They are super simple, but when packaged in a group they are stunning. Not to mention delicious.

You can do this with regular candy canes, but they are harder to package, in my opinion. I use these mint sticks I found at Cracker Barrel. They have a texture more like Butter Mints and a more mild peppermint flavor. We LOVE them! I used the Smooth and Melty White Chocolate and Wilton's white nonpareils from Michaels. Again, you just melt, dip, sprinkle and lay on foil until they are hard. Super simple, but check out how awesome they look!

Lastly I made Miss Lisa's Christmas Caramel Corn. This stuff is to DIE for. It's simple to make, but takes time and your attention. I will post the recipe at the end. We ate almost as much as we packaged (and that's A LOT)!








Everything got packaged up in cellophane bags I picked up at Zurchers. I like theirs because they have a gusseted bottom and are a heavier cellophane, so they are easier to work with for me.

I did two of each type of pretzel and tied the bag with a little bit of white cording and a hand stamped tag.






I made little toppers for the tops of the Peppermint Sticks and the Caramel Corn.















Over the last few weeks, I've bought two different size Martha Stewart snowflake punches at Michaels with my 40% Off coupon and I have been using them EVERY WHERE! Doesn't the smaller look great popped up on the Popcorn Topper?



Wal-mart had sets of gift boxes for $5 and I bought these to package all the goodies in. Each item got its own box and then I tied them all together with curling ribbon and tied on this aDorable gift tag.

I'm not sure that in the end these were EASIER, but they sure did turn out better than I imagined. I think our customers will feel appreciated-I know I would if someone dropped this off at my house! Here's a look at the whole package and the recipe for the Caramel Corn.
Miss Lisa's Caramel Corn

½ cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
¼ cup light corn syrup
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp baking soda
12 cups air popped popcorn (sift out the kernels that didn't pop)

In a medium sauce pan, heat the butter, sugar, corn syrup and salt on medium heat until it begins bubbling around the edges. Once it is bubbly, let it cook for 5 minutes WITHOUT stirring. Then remove from heat and stir in baking soda. Pour the mixture over the popcorn and stir in until the popcorn is evenly coated. This will take some patience and at first it will look like it's not enough caramel, keep working at it, there's enough! Divide the corn between 2 cookie sheets and bake at 250 for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Turn out onto wax paper to cool.

Happy Gifting!