Roomie's Birthday Afternoon Tea.. The Process.

Dear Readers will kindly remember I am working on a selection of gluten free baked goodies suitable for a modern traditional Afternoon Tea for my Roomie's Birthday.

7:15 am I begin to assemble ingredients for Battenberg Cake. This is the most complex recipe, so I will start with it. Disaster Strikes! I just KNOW I have baking powder around here somewhere!
After a frantic search of every cabinet and pantry and cubbyhole in the kitchen, we establish that if we have baking powder, it will not be found today.

7:30 am Emergency run to the grocers.

8:00 am Ingredients assembled, I begin the Battenberg Cake.

9:00 am As the cake for the Battenberg Cake bakes, I begin the Unadorned Scones. I really like this recipe, though it's much more crumbly than I'd like.

9:25  As the Scones are baking, I take a breather to have some breakfast and update the loyal readers on FaceBook with photos.

9:45am Here we are with another challenge. One of the pink sections of cake collapsed. Well, one Battenburg cake and one Victoria cake it will be then. I'm not about to let a good cake go to waste.

10:00am As the honoree is getting her breakfast together, I begin the Salmon Corn cakes. I decide we'll make a double batch since we really like these a lot and don't make them often. Each batch makes 11 cakes that fill two large baking sheets. That's 20 minutes cooking time for each sheet and four sheets. We'll be at this awhile.

10:30 am As the salmon corn cakes are having a hot time in the oven, I flour the counter and prepare to assemble the Battenberg cake. I've not done rolled marzipan work before, so I prepared by watching videos. I learned how to do the neat roses too.  A quick caution, while marzipan would seem to be naturally gluten free, a few brands (including some from Odense, sold commonly here in the US) have some cross-contamination concerns. Make certain yours is labelled specifically gluten free.
The greatest challenge here was trimming the cake. The recipe was very moist and had the typical gluten free crumble, so it didn't slice well. Some apricot jam glued the pieces together.
My Battenburg Cake may not have been as pretty as a professional, but I think it came out very well.

11:40 am With the end of the salmon corn cake baking in sight, I put together the dough for the Cheddar Scones. I've already confessed this was a box mix, a really terrific box mix.

12:20 pm The oven is now ready for the cereal crusts for the tarts. Crushed cereal, butter, and sugar and then baked stiff... easy as pie.

1:00pm With only the sandwiches left, I take a break for a quick visit to furry friends.

2:30 pm Disaster number two strikes. I intended to layer the tarts with lemon curd, lemon pudding, and whipped cream. I bought cook-n-serve lemon pudding instead of instant and didn't have sufficient eggs to cook the pudding. Well, just lemon curd and whipped cream it is.

2:45 pm While peeling and slicing the cucumber for the sandwiches, I cut my finger on the mandolin slicer. Yep, fully expected to do this and here I did. Ouch!
The Sam's Choice Gluten Free Classic White Bread is kinda small, especially when trimmed up and the crusts removed. I used four pieces for two sandwiches. The sandwiches were very tasty and really hit the spot.

2:50 pm We set the tea water to boil while I put together the ham and havarti pinwheels. I used Mission Gluten Free Tortillas. They're fabulous when fresh, but gummy when they sit with toppings in them.

3:05 pm. With photos taken and plates assembled, we sit down to enjoy the eating of all this food. We're groaning about being over-stuffed and in a sugar coma in short order.  Success!

Looking down the spread

Impromptu Victoria Cake

Cheddar Scones

Unadorned Scones

Battenburg Cake

Lemon Tarts

Cucumber Sandwiches

Ham & Havarti Pinwheels

Salmon Corn Cakes

...and Tea, of course!

  

Roomie's Birthday Afternoon Tea...yes, it's gluten free

My Dear Readers will forgive me a quick trip into the modern era, I hope.
My Roomie enjoys the British tradition of Afternoon Tea. I suppose it makes her feel elegant and special. Every lady ought to feel elegant and special on her birthday. BUT... as a sufferer of Celiac disease on a gluten free diet, the baked goods of an Afternoon Tea leaves her drooling sadly at the bakery window. That will just not do for this special lady, so I'm turning my hand to some traditional afternoon tea components in gluten free recipes.

The Menu

Layer of Scones

Cheddar Scone

Unadorned Scone (cream and jam)

Layer of Sandwiches

Cucumber Sandwich

Ham, Havarti roll-up

Salmon Corn Cake

Layer of Cakes & Pastry

Battenburg Cake

Lemon Tart

Tea

For the Cheddar Scones, I'll be using LiveGFree's Cheddar Biscuits box mix. Roomie bought this Aldi's product in quantities and wrote the company begging for it to be made a permanently available item. That's high praise.

For the Unadorned Scones, I'll be baking. Here's the recipe:

2 cups all purpose flour (Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Flour)

1/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

4 tablespoons butter

2 large eggs

3/4 cup yogurt

Fills... 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 cup fruit (no fills for us, thanks)

Oven at 400*

Mix Flour, Sugar, Baking powder, Baking soda, spices

Add butter

Add eggs and yogurt

Add extras

Turn onto a floured surface and shape into a round 1" thick by 7" wide.

Cut into 8 triangles.

Transfer to baking sheet

Bake 8-10 minutes.

For the Cucumber Sandwich, we had to delve into which gluten free breads will stand up to such an august sandwich. Gluten Free breads are notorious for being crumbly, gritty, and coming across stale from the start. Roomie often solves this by toasting. I had to ruin the surprise to have her opinion. We agreed to give Sam's Choice a try.  Roomie prefers cream cheese to the traditional butter, so that's what I'll use.

For the Ham & Havarti Pinwheel, I'll use Mission's Gluten Free Tortillas. Knowing the Bread Issue, I wanted something else for a second sandwich offering. 

The Salmon Corn Cake is a family recipe that Roomie adores. I've made a few tweaks from Grandma's recipe.  Here is the recipe with gluten free tweaks:

1 can of responsibly caught salmon flaked, clear out the skin and bones

1 can of whole kernel sweet corn, drained of packing water

4 eggs

1 box of Lance Baked Original Crackers, crumbed into grainy pieces

Pre-heat the oven to 400*

Prepare the salmon and cracker crumbs.

Mix the salmon, corn, eggs, and cracker crumbs together in a large bowl.

Grease a baking sheet. 

Form the mixture into cakes and place on the greased sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes, flip, and bake another 10 minutes or until both sides are a light golden brown.

The Battenburg Cake required some British to American measurement conversions. Thanks to Traditional Oven, this task wasn't too difficult. This is Roomie's most dreamed of Tea goodie, so the pressure is really on. I'll do a separate post detailing this addition to our tea table.

The Lemon Tart gave me an excuse to try some fun recipes, including breakfast cereal pie crust. Here's a recipe for this:

2 1/2 Cups vanilla Chex cereal

1-4 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons melted butter

lemon pudding, lemon curd, whipped topping

Oven at 375*

Crush cereal.  Mix with sugar and butter

Bake-7-9 minutes.   Cool completely and fill.


And that's The Plan. What could possibly go wrong? Check back tomorrow and I'll tell ya.