Month: December 2020

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Thank You Gifts

Finished up the knitting-themed treat boxes (employee thank you gifts) and sent them off. They include:

– Rose & cedar soap (rose scent)
– Knit mitten soap (pomegranate & vanilla)
– Candy-coated fennel seeds
– Sri Lankan pistachio & cashew love cake (2 pieces)
– Sri Lankan gilded cashew milk toffee
– Dragonfruit chocolate bar (white chocolate with dragonfruit, citrus & white pepper)
– Knit dark chocolate bar with dried cranberry
– Pomegranate and cayenne chocolate (2 pieces)
– Cardamom & rose shortbread cookie (with sheepies)
– Jasmine & rose black tea in test tube (caffeinated)
– Thank you postcard (that they can mail)

– two little flower bookmarks

🙂

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Composing the Dragon Box

This was nice to put together — someone contacted me and asked about treat boxes for their employees; I put together 7 dragon-themed boxes and 4 knitting-themed boxes for them. I can’t scale up to doing this kind of thing in bulk (not without hiring a lot more staff), but doing a few orders like this is fine, and it’s fun composing the boxes.

This is what goes in the dragon box (I couldn’t figure out how to photograph it so you could actually see everything):

– Ice dragon soap (sweet orange & niaouli)

– Bronze dragon soap (cedar leather)

– Blood orange taffy (4 pieces)

– Sri Lankan pistachio & cashew love cake (2 pieces)

– Dragonfruit chocolate bar (white chocolate with dragonfruit, citrus & white pepper)

– Pomegranate and cayenne chocolate (2 pieces)

– Sri Lankan gilded cashew milk toffee

– Chocolate-gingerbread with a touch of cayenne gilded dragon egg

– thank you card (also a postcard they can mail)

– two little food bookmarks

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Not Completely Off-Base

Sometimes you have an idea, and you get all excited, like — oh my gosh, wouldn’t it be great to have a pumpkin curry tea towel to sell along with the Sri Lankan cookbook!!!

So you design it and Kavi draws you a pumpkin, and you get it printed, and you sew it up, and all the while, you’re wondering if anyone will actually think it’s as cool as you do. Cool enough that they’ll want to actually spend real money on one for a gift, along with a cookbook and maybe some curry powder?

And then yes, someone actually orders it. Whew.

I am not going to get rich off pumpkin curry tea towels, but it’s still rather nice to know I’m not completely off-base with the concept. 🙂

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Higher Tiers of Help

About a month ago, we added some higher tiers to the Patreon subscription boxes that go out once a quarter. If you’re stumped on what to get someone as a gift, maybe a Serendib House 2021 subscription box might be nice? 10% off for annual subscriptions!

We’re happy to customize the boxes to work with people’s allergies (although keep in mind that we do use nuts and gluten in the kitchen, so trace particulates may be present for those extremely sensitive; we don’t use peanuts at all, though). We can also accommodate scent sensitivities, either by skipping body & bath products entirely and substituting in other items, or by sending unscented versions.

The base level (“Earth”) is $10 / month (which works out to $30 / box). This is what’s going in the next level up (“Sol System”), $15 / month ($45 / box):

– eight servings South Asian-style spiced hot chocolate mix, with marshmallows
– one test tube jasmine & rose black tea
– two pistachio-rose dragon iced sugar cookies
– one cardamom-rose knitted textiles shortbread
– two chocolate-cayenne gingerbread dragon eggs
– one candied blood orange shortbread
– three kinds of homemade marshmallows (rose & strawberry, passionfruit & dragonfruit, mulled apple cider)
– a set of five confections (two pomegranate & cayenne dark chocolate, dragonfruit, citrus, and white pepper white chocolate, blood orange taffy, silver-gilt milk toffee
– one little jar of candy-coated fennel seeds
– one dragonheart soap (pettigrain & cassia cinnamon)
– one dragon’s blood egg soap (rosewood, clove, & cinnamon)
– one jasmine soap (not on theme, but I had some extra, so)
– one yarn ball candle (amber & cedar leather)
– two little bookmarks (not pictured)

– and a silver star, just for fun

These are shipping out today! The theme for the winter box was Dragons Knitting; the spring box will be Unicorns in the Garden.

Link to Patreon here. Quantities are very limited, as they kind of take over my life for two weeks, and that’s about all I can spare, time-wise. 🙂

What’s great about these boxes (and Patreon generally) is they give me a nice reliable income stream, small but steady, that helps me make sure I can make payroll for my part-time staff, Stephanie Bailey, Darius Vinesar, and Emmanuel Henderson, without whom none of this would be possible!

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South Asian-Style Spiced Hot Chocolate

(5 minutes, serves 2)

When I visited Paris, I got to try hot chocolate the way they make it, which is pretty much melted chocolate & cream — very different from the rather watery (and sometimes gritty) version Americans often encounter.

This recipe is a touch lighter than the French version, and inflected with spices you’d find in chai. The key to maximizing its deliciousness is to use high quality ingredients — dutch-process cocoa, excellent chocolate chips (I use Callebaut or Ghirardelli), and nutmeg grated fresh (your microplane grater will make this easy).

The end result is luxurious enough to serve at a dinner party, but is also just right for comforting your stressed out student facing exams, or for just indulging yourself at the end of a long week. And if you want to make it just a little more French and a little more indulgent, feel free to substitute in half a cup of heavy cream for half a cup of milk!

2 c. whole milk
2 T unsweetened cocoa
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. ground cardamom
1/8 t. ground cloves
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of cayenne (optional)
1-2 T granulated sugar (2 T is more American-style; 1 T a little more bitter & French-style)
1/2 c. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips

mini marshmallows for serving (optional)

1. Place milk, cocoa powder, spices, and sugar in a small saucepan. Heat over medium/medium-low heat, whisking frequently, until warm (but not boiling), and the cocoa and sugar have dissolved. Add chocolate chips and whisk constantly for another thirty seconds or so, until the chocolate chips melt and distribute evenly into the milk. Serve hot, ideally with a few mini marshmallows on top!

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Oddly Mixed Feelings

Yesterday, I shipped out all the Earth tier Patreon boxes ($10 / month), so that was a bit of a relief. I have oddly mixed feelings about these boxes — I love composing them, and for the most part, enjoy making them, but the little race up to get everything out the door in time for shipping deadlines can be a bit stressful.

Stephanie Bailey and I have been talking about whether she can take over some pieces of this; she can make soaps, for example, so if I can actually be precise about my recipe in terms of amount of mica and scent, then she should be able to do some of the production for me. She was a little concerned that people wouldn’t like them as much if she made them — I don’t think people care, do they? If it’s my hands making the milk toffee, or someone else’s, to my recipe, do you care?

I’m now collecting what I need for the next tiers up — there are 3 subscribers for Sol System, 2 for Milky Way, and 2 for Interstellar. In between grading and e-mail (which is the bulk of my life right now), I’m popping up occasionally to pour a yarn ball candle — four completed, one in progress, two more to go.

After that, I get to work on a spiced hot chocolate recipe, which will be fun. Dutch-process cocoa powder, but what spicing? One of my recipients can’t do cayenne, so while I can leave that out of hers, it means not doing a straight cayenne and cocoa recipe (which I do love). Cayenne, cocoa, and cinnamon? Maybe try chai spicing, so adding in nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon, maybe a bit of black pepper and ground ginger? Hm. Tasty experiments in my immediate future. 🙂

Reminder that if you want to get in on this for next year (only in U.S., sorry, food restrictions on shipping), you can now subscribe annually for a 10% discount. So for the Earth level, it’d be $110 for the year, which gets you 4 quarterly boxes — the spring box should go out in March, with the theme: Unicorns in the Garden. Link here.

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On the First Try

After yesterday’s frustration with the dragon candle and its many, many failed attempts, it was really a delight to have this one come out perfectly on the first try. So cute!

I can’t include it in the small Patreon boxes, because it’s just a little too big to fit into the small priority mail box, so it’ll be in the other tiers, and available for individual sale. I’ll ask Stephanie Bailey to add them to our Shopify site (once I try wrapping them in a padded envelope and weigh them, so she knows the shipping cost), and as always, we’re happy to offer porch pick-up. They’re lightly scented in cedar leather and amber, as part of the dragons knitting theme. Color may vary, depending on what mica powders I have on hand, but if you have a color request, let me know when you order, and I’ll try to oblige.

The next box will go out in March, and I’m thinking “unicorns in the garden” for the theme. I’ll also note that I’ve now enabled annual subscriptions on Patreon (a big commitment for me, but I think do-able). I think that means that instead of paying $10 / month for the first tier boxes, you’d pay for the whole year at once — it comes with a 10% discount, so a little bit of a deal. 🙂 The boxes will still arrive quarterly.

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Candied Blood Orange Shortbread

This particular shortbread isn’t for everyone. Because you’re including an entire caramelized slice of blood orange, that’s quite a bit of softened rind; I’d recommend this for people who don’t mind the rind in orange marmalade, for example (though this doesn’t end up bitter, as marmalade often does). I’d call this a pretty grown-up, sophisticated sort of shortbread.

It’s also something of a time commitment, since you have to plan ahead to give the candied slices a day to crystallize and dry thoroughly. But all that said, these were interesting and fun to make, and I find them delicious to eat. 🙂

Blood Orange and Jaggery Shortbread

(45 minutes + 15 minutes chilling time + 1 hr crystallizing time & 24 hrs drying time)

Ingredients:

4 blood oranges, sliced + 2 c. sugar and 2 c. water for crystallizing
3/4 pound unsalted butter at room temperature
1 c. jaggery or brown sugar
1 T vanilla
1 T blood orange extract or orange extract
3/4 t. salt
1/2 t. ground cloves

3 1/2 cups flour

Crystallize Blood Orange:

1. Add 2 c. water and 2 c. sugar to a large saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar has completely dissolved. Turned the heat to medium-low and add the orange slices. Simmer for 45-60 minutes until rinds are slightly translucent, stirring gently occasionally.

2. Transfer slices to a cooling rack set over a large baking sheet; let sit for 24 hours until dry; dip in candied sugar if desired. (At this point, you can store them in an airtight container in the fridge for up to one month.)

Bake Shortbread:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.

2. Cream together the butter and sugar; add the vanilla, blood orange extract, salt, and cloves. Then add flour and mix on low until dough forms.

3. Turn out dough onto floured board and shape into a firm ball. (If it’s not coming together into a dough, the heat of your hands will help.) NOTE: Can be kept chilled at this point for several days, covered in plastic wrap, and then rolled, cut, and baked fresh.

4. Firmly pat flat and roll smooth (to desired cookie height, usually about 1/2 inch). Cut out circles (about the same size as the orange slices), place on parchment-covered baking sheet, and press a blood orange slice into each cookie; chill for 15 minutes (to help hold shape).

5. Remove from fridge and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the edges begin to brown, then remove to wire rack to cool.

NOTE: Can be stored frozen for two months, or will keep fresh for a few weeks.