Sights and Textures from the Zangvil Tea Party

For those of you who missed the Zangvil tea party - here are some photos that will I hope you will find inspiring for creating your own wintery tea party this holiday season!


The assembly of desserts (except for the whipping cream that joined the midst of the pears only later on).
You can also see snowballs (or Mexican wedding cakes), orange-ginger icebox cookies, halva, and barks of the new White Potion chocolate bar!


Setting up the desserts in eikcam's handcrafted and painted birch pottery. Get into the winter mood with rustic style bypassing cliches.


White chocolate brownies with sour cream frosting. I the background - CocoaNymph's ginger marshmallows that topped the steaming chai we cooked!
And the lovely tea tumblers by eikcam - each has a different emblem - so it's quite easy to remember which cup is yours!


Tea sandwiches:

Asian Pear + Cheddar + Quince Mustard tea sandwiches

Orange +Fennel + Tarragon Tea Sandwiches

Kabu + Yuzu Tea Sandwiches

The Carrot + Ginger proved to be unnecessary for this very full menu... We had enough ginger already anyway ;-)

I've also served freshly baked cheese & chive scones, but they were gone before I had a chance to snap a photo!

So excited about the new (4th) fragrant chocolate bar that we launched this weekend!

The White Potion white chocolate bar was created together with Rachel Sawatzky of CocoaNymph, and has white chocolate, vanilla beans, roasted almonds, toasted coconut, and... tuberose essence! It's amazing and not to sweet at all :-)

As for the Zangvil tea - it's the first time I'm launching that is all my doing. I've designed the tea, a perfumed tea which is so fragrant and can be infused up to 7 times!

Ingredients:
Silver needle jasmine white tea
Ambrette seeds
Sliced vanilla beans
Cryztallized ginger

I'm very happy with how the new labels turned out as well. All the tea labels are going to be re-done, and the teas will be relaunched in the springtime.

Zangvil tea demo - 3 types of white tea and the other ingredients that make my new Zangvil tea!

A word about the poached pears: I felt like a genius finding this underaged pears at the Winter Market. If it wasn't for their lack of desire to reach full pear size, I would have had to serve them cut into cubes (shame on their seductive shape!) or as spoon dessert (which defeats the whole purpose of a tea party). Little Asian pears also work well for the same purpose.


Handmade ginger marshmallows (by CocoaNymph, naturally!), that we served with the homemade chai. Already a winter favourite!


And last but not least - the birch vases, so wintery and festive in a twisted way... I think I might just need to keep them here at the studio - they are a perfect match to the pussy willows I keep year-around.