sugar

Chai Meringues

My friend Sue runs the Perennial Tea Room on Post Alley in Pike Place Market. I ran into her the other day on the bus and told her I had some ideas for tea-infused desserts, and could she point me towards some unique teas that would compliment my ideas? She would, so I wrote them up and stopped by the shop one Friday afternoon to have a sniff.

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Gateau de Crepes

I've only had this once, but the memory of it is like a dream. A cold night in New York, walking the Upper East Side with my best friend Tanarra - searching for a bakery whose name I was unsure of. I'd heard of this cake before - layers of crepes separated by vanilla pastry cream, and I heard this place had them. I think we got the last piece that night.

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Blueberry Dutch Baby

Maybe you need to grow up outside of Seattle to appreciate dutch babies. I had my first from a recipe I'd found in a grocery store flier in Texas, where I grew up. They called it a Blueberry Puff Pancake, and it was a wild hit with my extended family anytime I would make it. Nobody had ever eaten anything like it where I came from, so it was a real brunch novelty.

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Chocolate Shortbread

Sometimes monkeying with a good recipe is courting disaster. What could you possibly do to improve on a good shortbread, for example? Well, with the simple addition of some chopped herbs, you have a magnificent rosemary shortbread. Likewise, a smidgen of cocoa transforms this shortbread into a light, sandy wafer that practically dissolves on the tip of your tongue.

But be warned - these cookies have very little structure and are delicate to handle both raw and baked. The raw dough looks like wet sand, and just like a good dune, these disappear fast.

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