Here are the recipes for the foods that we serve at the New Mexico Tea Bar. All of the ingredients are straightforward. If you like to use organic ingredients (eggs, milk, sugar, butter), by all means do so. However, most recipes do not tolerate substituting Splenda, for instance, for sugar. If you make substitutions for ingredients (i.e., skim milk for whole milk, margarine for butter) you cannot expect the final product to taste the same or have the same appearance. 

We have found that one of the most important ingredients in baking is attention. Pay attention to your measurements, pay attention to the order in which ingredients are added and how, pay attention to your oven and the way it heats, pay attention to the weather and how it affects the dough (do I need to add more liquid today? a bit less?). A lesson learned through a cooking class with Edward Espe Brown, for many years the chef of Zen Tassajara Retreat Center in California:  keep your kitchen clean, keep your knives sharp, and use the freshest and best ingredients you can find.

Sing a little song, whistle a little tune, and go for it. Or, just come by the new Tea Bar and enjoy the fruits of our labors.

The February 2010 issue of New Mexico Magazine features some of these recipes in an article called "book circle tea time". You can read it in our "press" section.