Heart-shaped cake and tea bread

So here's the deal. Those lightweight copper-colored Jell-O molds are a fixture in every thrift store I've ever been in, and though I haven't made a Jell-O mold in, well, ever, I love these molds! I loved them even more when I discovered they can also be used as cake pans. That's why I have about a half dozen of them now, and I seem to find a new heart-shaped one every year around Valentine's Day.

This one was my latest find. Because it came from an antique mall and not a thrift store, it was a little pricier, $5 instead of $1, but was still quite affordable. What I wanted to know was this: Can you bake a loaf of tea bread in one of these things?

And the answer is yes, yes you can. I didn't overfill it, using three small heart-shaped pans to make mini tea breads with the excess batter, but I think it worked out well. The design would be more pronounced with a batter that didn't have so much stuff in it (this is my Christmas cranberry bread because I had leftover cranberries in the freezer), but I'm still impressed with the amount of the scalloped design you can see. So, have you ever used one of these molds to make a cake? Would you?

A Valentine's Day dessert — for anytime!

Last week, I was busy sharing vintage valentines, but before February is over, I wanted to share the recipe I featured in my column for this month's issue of The Coweta Shopper. It's such a quick and easy recipe to make. Also, I served it in tiny glass goblets as a "two-bite dessert" last week to my little neighbor friends, and they loved it (and asked for seconds), so I may be adding this to my next tea party menu as well!

Pie Filling Cobbler


1/2 cup butter, melted

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 cup milk

1 (15-ounce) can pie filling (any flavor)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in a 9 x 9-inch baking dish (I used a heart-shaped baking dish of a similar size). In a small bowl, mix sugar, flour, salt, and baking powder. Add milk to the dry ingredients and blend well. Pour batter over melted butter in pan. Add pie filling over the batter, dropping it by spoonfuls and evenly spacing it over the batter. Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour or until golden brown.

The gift card winner is …

 Susan in North Carolina! Congratulations!

The winner of the tea-themed napkins is …

 Mary Boley, via the Tea With Friends Facebook page! Congratulations!

Valentine's Week Giveaway #3

Happy Valentine's Day, friends! The final tea-themed valentine I'm sharing this week is technically a "flash card" I found at an antique mall last month, so the back is blank, but I still think this is a cute design. 

And for our final giveaway this week, I'm offering a $25 Amazon gift card so that you can buy whatever gift you like! (Tea-themed gifts are encouraged but not required!) If you'd like to win, just leave an "Enter me" to this post between now and 7 a.m. EST tomorrow, February 15, and you'll be entered to win. Good luck!

The winner of the tea infuser is …

 Natosha! I've just sent her an email and will soon have this headed her way. Congratulations!

Valentine's Week Giveaway #2

This is another of the tea-themed vintage valentines I've found since last year, and it's one I've never even seen before. It reads, "If you'd be my valentine, we'd have 'barrels' of fun!"

On the back, someone has helpfully noted that this card from Susan L. dates to 1953. Sweet!

For today's giveaway, I've got some of the same cute paper napkins I picked up for myself at Michaels a few weeks back! Would you like to have these for your text tea party or picnic? Just leave an "Enter me" to this post between now and 7 a.m. EST on Friday, February 14, and you'll be entered to win!

Valentine's Week Giveaway #1

As longtime readers of this blog know, Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays, so I like to share some of my vintage valentines *and* host a few small giveaways each year around this time. Today, I'm sharing one of my newest vintage valentines, and while it's not dated, I suspect this ship-shaped valentine is one of the older ones in my collection, maybe from the thirties or forties. I love that the young man is serving this passenger her tea from a teapot with a heart on it! It reads, "My heart is anchored fast. It's yours, Dear Valentine."

Maybe this was a card given from one classmate to another since it reads To Birkley Bush frome (sic) Bruce Smith. I think the brad on the back is supposed to make some of the pieces on the front jiggle, but I'm trying to be careful with that to avoid tearing them.

And for today's giveaway, I'm offering a hot-pink heart-shaped silicone tea infuser! I think it's a cute piece of décor even if you don't decide to use it! To be entered in the giveaway, just leave an "Enter me" comment to this post between now and 7 a.m. EST on Wednesday, February 12, making sure I have a way to contact you if you're the winner, and you'll be entered to win. You can also enter on the Tea With Friends Facebook page here if you like. Good luck!

The Pagoda Blue Tea Set

I guess you could say that a funny thing happened on the way to Wormsloe. I'd already breezed in and out of six state park gift shops by that point, but as a popular tourist stop, Wormsloe has a magnificent visitor center and gift shop, and this blue transferware tea set immediately caught my eye. I loved the shape of the teapot and that tray best of all but figured they would be too pricy for me. A teacup, maybe? I picked up one and it said $31.99, which seemed a little much for a single teacup. Then I looked again and realized it said $131.99. For a teacup? Have they lost their minds? But then I realized that was the price for the whole set! I stood there and dickered over it and decided I would make up my mind as I toured Wormsloe. And you can see what I decided, especially after finding that blue teapot in the Wormsloe museum.

Blue-and-white tea wares never go out of style, and every Fourth of July, I wish I had more. Plus, I'm planning to write a cookbook about all the patriotic holidays, and every piece in this set could make an appearance next to one of the vintage recipes I'll be including. I loved the shape of this sugar and creamer.

The teapot lid was a real "wow" item for me.

And my favorite piece is the tray. The full set is too small to display on the little skirted table where I set it for this photo, so after Valentine's Day, it may end up on a sturdy table in my living room. It's the perfect memento of my visit to Wormsloe, but more important, it's also something that will be quite useful in my work in the years ahead. And when I got home, I looked online and found the set available at several sites but never for as good a price as I got. So I'm choosing to see this not as a splurge but as an investment! (And a beautiful one.)

Finding tea wares at Wormsloe

I was in college when I first visited Wormsloe, a famous historic site in Savannah. I remember this because our journalism advisor on the trip, Joe Cumming, who had served as Atlanta bureau chief of Newsweek, made us go. Joe loved history and thought we should too. And he laughed when I told him I liked the name because I imagined those worms were low. (I've apparently been taking words literally for a long, long time.) So I remembered that incident when my friend Tammy and I took a tram to the property on Saturday morning. The gate here is an iconic Savannah image.

So is the avenue of live oaks, which is simply a spectacular view. You can get a nice hike in while exploring the area as well.

We drove to the museum on the property, and the first thing that caught my eye was … a blue teapot! Now that's my kind of historic artifact.

Of course I had to snap photos of that as well as the tea information.

I'm very drawn to tabby for some reason, and the home Noble Jones built at Wormsloe in 1793 was made of tabby. Its tabby ruins are said to be the oldest standing structure in Savannah. And if you're not familiar with it, tabby is "a cement made of lime, sand or gravel, and oyster shells and used chiefly along the coast of Georgia and South Carolina in the 17th and 18th centuries," according to Merriam-Webster.

As I checked out this display in the museum, I was delighted to learn that portions of blue china have been found in the tabby.

And check out this handleless teacup and saucer! I wasn't expecting to find tea wares at the Wormsloe State Historic Site, but surprise, I did! On Friday, I'll share why that blue teapot at Wormsloe influenced my decision to buy a new tea set while I was there.

Finding tea on a hiking trip to Savannah!

My hiking pal Tammy, an old high school and college chum, is trying to hike every state park in Georgia and lacked some of the ones in the southernmost part of the state. So, I just got back from joining her for three days of hiking at eight parks and historic sites. We had a great time, and the scenery was amazing. Even more amazing? We had sunny skies and seventy- and eighty-degree temps every single day. Yay!

I was praying I would be able to keep up with her, and I did, so let’s all take a moment and thank the Lord for answered prayer, else I wouldn’t be here today.

After our first full day of hiking, we were quite hungry and headed to the Pirate’s House in downtown Savannah, a place I last visited when I was in college, so it’s been a minute. The Pirate’s House is located seven blocks from where General Oglethorpe landed in 1733 and is a legendary historic site in Georgia. It is said to have been a meeting spot for pirates, and the servers dress in pirate costumes, which the little kids just love.

For dinner, I had a pasta dish featuring shrimp and alligator sausage (which is delicious, by the way), and I was happy they served Arnold Palmers.

I certainly did not expect to find any tea stuff on this trip, so I was delighted to come across Pirate’s Rum flavored black tea in the Pirate’s House gift shop.

It contains black tea, pineapple pieces, calendula and sunflower and safflower petals, and natural flavors. I was expecting it to taste like a rum cake, but if there’s rum flavoring, it was very mild. I did taste a nice brisk black tea and the pineapple, so I was quite happy with my Pirate’s Rum tea. On Wednesday, I’ll be sharing another unexpected tea find at the oldest standing structure in Savannah!

Harney's Strawberry Milkshake Oolong Tea

The other day, the line was awfully long at my Barnes & Noble, so I decided to go check out in the café area. And on the way to the café, I spotted a new Harney & Sons tea in a pretty pink tin, this Strawberry Milkshake Tea.

Check out the back of the tin!

When I got home and opened the tin, a lovely strawberry scent greeted me. This seemed like a bit of a novelty tea for Harney, so I was intrigued.

And I'm happy to report this is "Strawberry Milkshake for Grown-ups" tea! The oolong flavor is what I detected most, then the strawberry, and not much "milk." It was quite an unexpected pairing of flavors, and I'm a fan! Have any of you tried this one?

A tea talk, tea stories, and a new tearoom!

On Sunday afternoon, I had the great pleasure of speaking to a lovely group, the Atlanta Southern Crescent Alumnae Panhellenic Association (ASCAPA), which was celebrating its 24th Annual Founders Reception. They gathered at the Senoia Historical Society's headquarters in Senoia, Georgia. This town is very dear to me—I have ancestors in the city cemetery, and my great-great-grandfather was postmaster in the 1800s—so I am always honored to be invited to speak there. Here I am with Cele, the lovely woman who arranged my visit through a mutual friend. (The Whistle Stop sign is, I believe, a memento from the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, parts of which were filmed in Senoia.)

I was asked to speak about my books Dainty Dining and A Year of Teatime Tales, which is always great fun for me, and I was delighted to hear of the women's own department store tearoom memories. One woman actually worked at a branch of Bullocks Wilshire in California, and if I got the details right, another woman's ex-husband was related to Georgia's Rich family of Rich's Department Store fame. Another remembered the Lazarus Department Stores based in Ohio, and I so enjoyed hearing all of their stories.

The group raises money for women's scholarships, among other things, and they sold tickets for a raffle for some amazing teatime baskets like these two.

I loved the pink chintz tea-for-one set in this one.

But the granddaddy of them all was this basket with a vintage sterling silver teapot!

It was won by a recent college graduate, Anna, who I learned is a huge fan of tea. That gift basket included copies of my books, and when Anna asked me to sign them for her, I was happy to do so.

During the teatime, each woman got to choose her own teacup to use.

And the teatime food selection was amazing, from the sweets …

To the savories!

I had so much fun at this event, and the icing on the cake was when I overheard one woman mention that a new TEAROOM is coming to Senoia! I drove over to the spot where she said it will be located, and I am eagerly awaiting more news, so stay tuned, indeed—especially if you're within driving distance.

"Mary Poppins" and Teatime

It's been a busy weekend, but the highlight was undoubtedly traveling up to Buford on Saturday to see my granddaughter, Bella, perform the lead role in her school's production of "Mary Poppins," and I was ridiculously proud of her! She has a beautiful voice, and while I may be the teeniest bit biased, I thought her performance was outstanding. You won't be surprised to hear that I had asked her mom to alert me when the teatime scenes were coming up, like this one where Mary Poppins pulls a teapot out of her bag!

And here's another. (No flash photography was allowed, but an iPhone quietly held chest-high can still do a decent job of capturing things.)

I also liked this scene with Mary Poppins and Bert enjoying tea and cake.

During intermission, the high school's theatre boosters sold concessions, and I thought they were spot-on, from the decorative chocolate spoons …

To the cute sugar cookies.

I'll end today with a few more fun photos and say "thank you" for enduring a bit of proud-grandmother gushing!