Tea at the Crown & Crumpet

On a recent visit to San Francisco, I made Sean take me to Crown & Crumpet, a fairly new yet very highly publicized tea "salon" in the famous Ghiradelli Square. It has a very fun menu, decor, retail shop and tea time experience. They blend their own teas and we tried the Paris tea (with a hint of vanilla) and their own house black tea blend. The tea was lovely, especially served in their customized cups and saucers with witty tea quotes. However, we were not that impressed with our meal. For a place with "crumpet" as a part of their name, our crumpets were so very dry and rubbery that I could barely cut it with my knife. And, while I do think my scone recipe is quite good, it was miles better than the scones they had that were very dry and crumbly (not to mention small). Crown & Crumpet did a great job of catching my eye and providing a good experience (as well as much inspiration for my future endeavour). But, it didn't do a very good job of pleasing my palette.

Cupcake Party

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For Audrey's 1st birthday, I decided to do a cupcake theme. Cupcakes are fun, kid size and allow you to provide several options. And, not only did we end up doing dessert cupcakes, but most of the entire meal was in cupcake form including meatloaf cupcakes with piped mashed potato, macaroni and cheese cupcakes and pizza cupcakes. The dessert options included roasted banana with honey cinnamon butter cream, vanilla with vanilla butter cream, chocolate with peanut butter frosting and cream cheese filled chocolate cupcakes. With all the different kinds, I was very thankful to have family to help with the frosting and decorating for the party. I've definitely been on a cupcake kick and have since made them for the cake walk at Audrey's Montessori school and have had fun decorating them in different ways. I love all the different cupcake papers you can get too. How did the birthday girl like her cupcake? She thoroughly enjoyed the roasted banana cupcake and didn't hold back one bit.