Miller & Rhoads' Chocolate Silk Pie

There's not much better than a cold chocolate pie on a hot summer's day, if you ask me. The one I've made twice this summer is one of the recipes I came across while researching old department store tea rooms, the famous Chocolate Silk Pie from Miller & Rhoads in Richmond, Va.

The store closed in 1990, but lots of Virginians still have fond memories of going there. This vintage postcard I found is undated but says "English Tea Room, Miller & Rhoads, Richmond, Virginia, 'The Shopping Center.'" In addition to the pretty and feminine decor, I'm intrigued by what appears to be a horse-themed mural on the wall at back. Since this was the "English" Tea Room, do you think perhaps it was an English hunt scene?

I love that many of these old tea rooms apparently shared some of their most-requested recipes with customers. This Chocolate Silk Pie seems to have garnered quite a few fans. Try it, and you'll become one too!

Miller & Rhoads' Chocolate Silk Pie

Crust:

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 cups graham cracker crumbs

Filling:

1/2 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1 ounce unsweetened baking chocolate, melted according to package directions and cooled
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 pasteurized eggs (since this filling is uncooked, I thought it was important to use pasteurized eggs)

Garnish:

2 cups heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
Chocolate Jimmies

Chill a 9-inch pie plate in your refrigerator or freezer. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Using electric mixer, beat butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Slowly add just enough graham cracker crumbs to make a slightly crumbly mixture. Press evenly into pie plate and cook for 5 minutes. Let cool while you prepare the pie filling.

With electric mixer, beat butter and confectioners' sugar til light and fluffy. Add melted chocolate, salt and vanilla. Add one egg and -- this is very important! -- beat for no less than 5 minutes. Add second egg and beat for no less than 5 minutes. Add third egg and beat for -- any guesses? -- no less than 5 minutes. (I hummed Michael Jackson's "Beat It" while I made the filling, but that step is entirely optional.) Pour filling into cooled pie shell and refrigerate for 24 hours.

Before serving, prepare whipped cream by adding confectioners' sugar to the heavy whipping cream and beating with electric mixer until soft peaks form. Pipe or spread onto top of pie and garnish with chocolate Jimmies. Takes a little time but oh so worth it!

Tea Sandwich Saturday #29 - Benedictine Sandwiches

How have I gone this long without knowing about Benedictine Sandwiches? A popular and hardworking volunteer in my town called the office the other day for help with her latest project. We share a fondness for antiques and teatime, and before the conversation ended she happened to mention she is from Louisville, Kentucky where she said Benectine Sandwiches are popular. Attributed to a local caterer named Jennie Benedict, these legendary sandwiches are made with cream cheese, grated cucumber and a few other ingredients. I'm still amazed I'd never heard of them!

The sandwiches are super easy to make, and the pretty pistachio green color you see between the slices of bread comes from the single drop of green food coloring you add. I don't have a plain 2-inch round cutter, so I just used a glass. Cutting the bread this way made the soundwich rounds sort of puffy looking, and I liked that because the finished sandwich reminds me of a Moon Pie!

I'd never grated cucumber before, and sure enough it added a nice bit of texture and made for a different cucumber sandwich experience. Since our garden is brimming with cucumbers at the moment, this was a great recipe for me to try this week, and here's how I made it, based on a Kentucky cookbook's recipe I found online.

Benedictine Sandwiches

1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
3 tablespoons grated cucumber, drained on a paper towel
1 teaspoon chopped onion
1 drop of green food coloring

Mix all ingredients well, making sure the food coloring is evenly distributed. Yields filling for about ten 2-inch round sandwiches and can also be used as a dip.

I was curious if my tea friend Linda in Kentucky had ever mentioned Benedictine Sandwiches on her blog, and of course this proud Kentuckian had! In fact, her recipe is here, and because it calls for more cucumber (and I really love cucumber), I'll have to give it a try as well. I was intrigued to find that lots of her teatimes have included Benedictine Sandwiches, so I've apparently read the name but never questioned what that sandwich was. Clearly I wasn't paying close enough attention, but I certainly will from now on. Are there any more "regional" tea sandwiches I need to know about? Help me out here, friends!

Wegmans Peach Oolong Tea

Wegmans. I thought that New York-based grocery store chain was located only up north. Apparently there are now stores in a few states farther south, and somehow these bottles of their Peach Oolong Tea ended up at the co-op where my sister shops here in Georgia!

No matter. I'm just glad her family didn't care too much for this tea because I absolutely love it! The label says "slightly sweetened" and that is true. It's not the sugary sweetness I often find (and enjoy, but with guilt!) in bottled teas.

My sister pointed out that this tea gets it sweetness from cane sugar, which appealed to her -- if not the rest of the family. I've enjoyed this lightly fruity drink for lunch every day this week and I'm loving it!

Prettiest. Tea tin. Ever.

At a T.J. Maxx in Anniston, Ala. over the weekend, I came across what I believe is the prettiest tea tin I've ever seen!

This tin of English Breakfast tea is from the English Tea Shop. The soft pink coloring and the lush roses on the tin are just my speed. Even my husband said it looked like Rachel Ashwell herself could have designed it! (A little scary how much my man knows about tea and my favorite designers these days!)

When I opened it, I was pleasantly surprised to find the tin with an inner lid to keep the tea fresh. Nice!

I enjoyed one of the rare cups of hot tea I've prepared lately, and the English Breakfast blend, brewed for just about 4 minutes, had a pleasant black tea flavor with no astringency, just as I had hoped. But frankly, if the tea had been terrible I still would have loved this tin! (Also comes in blue. Sells for $5.99. Just in case you feel a T.J. Maxx shopping trip coming on ...)

A gift of Twinings Royal Wedding Tea

I never ordered the Twinings Royal Wedding commemorative tea, but Heidi in Connecticut did and she graciously offered to share some of it with me if I wanted to try it. Naturally I did, and when her package arrived I was astonished to see that she'd even included the box the teabags came in! The box was inside the Royal Wedding tea tin she had ordered, so she carefully disassembled it, packaged it flat, and when it arrived I was quickly able to glue it back into shape. Delightful!

The white tea with rose has a terrific rose scent and lightly rosy flavor, and it seemed so fitting to drink it out of my teacup from the Princess Diana exhibit of last year.

Heidi included several packets of the tea, which I am slowwwwwwly sharing with a few friends. I even save the teabag wrappers, and the one here is actually the one left over from the tea sipped above. So how do you get the teabag out without damaging the wrapper?

You use a small pair of scissors to *carefully* punch a hole in the back. Once you can see where the teabag is, you just cut a circle or a slit and remove it. Then, you still have a nice neat wrapper that can go in a scrapbook. Or in my case, in a memory box where I keep all the sweet cards and memorabilia shared with me by thoughtful blog readers!

"Iced Tea Melts Fat!"

Woman's World is a magazine I haven't purchased in ages, but the excited headline on the cover got my attention at the grocery store the other day. Basically there's a new book out whose author claims drinking lots of tea, hot or iced, in conjunction with eating certain foods can ramp up the weight loss. Interesting. But those kinds of diets wear me out to even think about. Besides, at the first of the year I went back to an "old" eating plan that has worked for me before -- eat what I want but only when physically hungry, stop when pleasantly full (not stuffed), exercise 5 times a week -- and have lost 26 pounds, about a pound a week. I do believe tea is obviously a great addition to one's diet, and I know the flavored teas for me often take the place of a snack or sweet, so for that I am grateful.

What I most liked in this magazine, ironically enough, is some of the recipes! I was pleasantly surprised to find several pages devoted to cooking with herbs, including this gorgeous Rosemary-Orange Bundt Cake.

I also loved the look of these Lavender Shortbread Sandwich Cookies. Since this magazine is a weekly, I wanted to go ahead and mention it early this week so any of you who are interested can find a copy before the next one replaces it on the stands!

The fabric giveaway winner is ...

Phyllis B. in Michigan! Since I already have your address I'll get this in the mail to you ASAP. Congrats!

Blueberry-Peach Cobbler with Earl Grey Streusel

My mother was clearing her freezer of frozen blueberries this weekend in preparation for the blueberry picking that is about to commence, so I was happy to help her out by bringing home a few bags of this fruity goodness. I looked online for a little baking inspiration, but the recipes I found were either too difficult (I don't want to read through endless computer screens for a recipe) or too easy (dump in blueberry pie filling and top with biscuit dough). I decided to experiment with my own recipe and here's what I came up with. My husband said "Bullseye!", and I have to say I rather like this myself!

Blueberry-Peach Cobbler with Earl Grey Streusel

2 cups frozen blueberries
2 fresh peaches, diced
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 Earl Grey teabags
1/2 stick butter or margarine, melted

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix fruit and pour into an 8 x 8-inch baking dish. Mix flour, sugar and egg until coarse and crumbly. Open teabags, add tea to the other streusel ingredients and mix well. Spoon streusel over fruit, then drizzle with butter. Bake for 30 minutes. Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream!

Tea Sandwich Saturday #28 - Cheesy Tomato Spread

Naturally I came home from Wisconsin with cheese on the brain after seeing so many dairy farms. I'm usually not very adventurous in my cheese selection, sticking to cheddar cheese on most occasions. This week, however, I went to the grocery store and bought mozzarella and Colby Jack as well. The Colby Jack, I decided, would be good to try in my Cheesy Tomato tea sandwiches.

This sandwich spread is so easy to make it's almost a crime to even call it a "recipe." You start with 1/2 cup of shredded cheese.

Then you dice about 1/4 cup of tomato. These are Romas fresh from our garden, but I would use whatever is handy. I left the skin on, but you may choose not to.

Because of the liquid from the tomatoes you need very little mayonnaise to bind these ingredients together. I used barely a teaspoon and this spread was just the consistency I like!

And I found a new type of bread at the grocery store this week, Five Grain Sourdough, which made for great tea sandwiches. So here's the recipe as I made it.


Cheesy Tomato Spread

1/2 cup grated cheese
1/4 cup diced tomato
1 teaspoon mayonnaise

Combine all ingredients. This recipe yields 1/2 cup spread, which is enough for six 2-inch round tea sandwiches. I would double or triple the amounts when planning for a tea party. Also, I don't add any salt or pepper because to me this spread is plenty tasty as-is!

A NOTE ABOUT RECIPES: A reader recently asked about looking up old recipes on this blog. While I don't have all my old recipes tagged (yet!), I do have all of these Tea Sandwich Saturday posts tagged and you can access them by going to the column at right, scrolling down to where it says "Labels" and clicking on "Tea Sandwiches." Hope that helps!

The chai giveaway winner is ...

Jemilyea! If you'll send me your snail mail address via the e-mail button at right, I'll get these headed your way. Congrats!

Good buys and goodbyes in Wisconsin

It's time to wrap up tales of my trip to Wisconsin, and of course I couldn't end without sharing a few of my "souvenir" finds related to teatime! At a thrift store in Sheboygan, I found this chintz sugar and creamer set. It's Japanese, not English as I generally prefer, but I've gotten interested in chintz again and thought this was a cute set.

Each piece had an *especially* cute price, I thought!

And while we were still in Door County, somewhere between Sister Bay and Egg Harbor I saw the prettiest little antiques shop, Shades of the Past.

With glass and china filling the windows, this cried out for a stop! Friends, you would have loved it here. Almost everything in this packed but tidy little store was silver, china or glass, and I would have to say this is one of the prettiest antique shops I've ever visited. Every item appeared to be lovingly selected and displayed. Prices were fair, and I'll bet almost every one of you would have left with something if you'd been there!

I'd been looking for a single pretty spoon with a mother of pearl handle, something to use when styling photos for this blog and other projects, and this spoon fit the bill. The bowl of the spoon is rather flat, and with a little research I learned it is a jam spoon. Tea lovers definitely need jam spoons, don't we!

The IE&S on the back indicates it was made by Isaac Ellis & Sons in Sheffield, England between 1897 and 1913.

I was passing by a bookstore in downtown Plymouth when I saw a rack of books marked $1. I've long been intrigued by the Duchess of Windsor, especially after seeing "The King's Speech," and I have not had a very favorable view of her. I was willing to invest a dollar in seeing if I could find a reason to like her.

And I haven't read the book yet, but the photos convinced me the Duchess couldn't have been *all* bad! I like knowing that she selected her own china when entertaining.

And here she and the Duke are apparently having tea. Interesting!

Finally, in the Quilter's Quest quilt shop in Sister Bay, I came across a bolt of clearance fabric with some nice teatime scenes. I won't have time to stitch again until later this fall, but I knew I had to add this to my stash of teatime fabrics.

I bought two yards - one for me, one for one of you - and if you'd like to win this fabric, just leave a comment by 7 a.m. EST Monday morning. Thanks so much for coming along on my travels this week!

The brush giveaway winner is ...

Loretta J.! If you'll send me your snail mail address via the e-mail button at right, I'll get this in the mail to you. Congratulations!

Experiencing new flavors in Door County

Today's souvenir bribe, I mean giveaway, is something else fun I found at the Door County Coffee & Tea Co. It's these two sample packets of chai, one each of the Green Tea Chai and the Chocolate Chai from Big Train, Inc. I'm usually a little nervous about chai powdered mixes since I've had some that were too watery, but these tasted nice and rich. I sampled the green tea flavor first and it was so delicious, I couldn't imagine the chocolate could taste any better. Well, it did, but just a bit! I absolutely loved these drinks and if you're a chai fan, I'll bet you will as well. So if you'd like to try them, just leave a comment to today's blog post before tomorrow at 7 a.m. EST and I'll have these headed your way!

I believe most people enjoy trying new food and drinks -- I say "most" because I do have a friend whose husband will hardly eat anywhere but Cracker Barrel on the road -- and when I'm on a trip I always prefer to eat somewhere new. During our visit to Door County, one morning we traveled up the peninsula to Sister Bay for a Swedish breakfast at the famous Al Johnson's Restaurant. I've never had Swedish meatballs and toast with lingonberry jam for breakfast before, and it was delicious! The meatballs were rich and thick, and the lingonberry jam reminded me of cranberries but with just a little something different. Fun! In addition to its Swedish menu, the restaurant is known for the grass growing on its roof and ...

... for the goats who like to graze there! The goats were camped out in this spot while we were there, and a waitress told us that overcast mornings like the one we experienced confuse the goats. They think when it gets dark they are supposed to go "home" to their housing behind the restaurant. After learning that, I was just glad to get proof they do indeed visit the roof!

One evening in Fish Creek, we experienced a meal Alex had been anticipating (me too, for that matter), a Door County Fish Boil. Have any of you northern friends (or travelers) ever been to a Fish Boil? I was quite intrigued! Here is my plate of Lake Michigan White Fish, boiled new potatoes, boiled Texas sweet onions, and cole slaw. I had tea to drink, of course, although I'm getting used to having it arrive unsweetened and then adding sweetener when up north.

Door County is also known for its cherries (who knew?), so everyone gets a piece of cherry pie with their Fish Boil meal at Pelletier's where we ate.

The white fish is obtained fresh locally and cooked over fire, a very unique fire!

Potatoes and then the fish are lowered into the kettle in wire baskets. Once the fish are in, the cook waits for the fish oils to rise to the top.

It all awaits the magic moment when the cook dramatically yells "Boilover!", throws kerosene or fuel oil on the fire and the massive flames appear, causing the fish oils to boil over the side of the pot. It is quite a sight to behold, and the result is the tasty meal shown above!

If any pyromaniacs, or the simply curious, are reading today and would like to see a brief video of the final moments of a Fish Boil, visit my YouTube video here!