Courtesan de Thé
Apartment café: tea-flavored high tea, an apartment café fit for royalty, Instagram royalty that is.
Ryan Nordheimer•
November 3, 2025
I’ve only ever had one afternoon tea in my life. I was studying abroad in London during the most fortuitous time possible: Spring 2020 (we never actually made it to the actual springtime if you can guess why). It was toward the end of February and my parents and brother decided to visit me for the weekend in London. I think we spent most of the time debating whether I would be packing my bags and heading back to “the States” due to something called the coronavirus that was just starting to spread from Asia to Europe.
Fortunately, this weekend with my family in London was maybe the last golden-hued, special moment of my college life. At least I got to experience it. I hadn’t been dining out much up until that point because the restaurants in London were so expensive. So it felt like the first time in months where I could actually enjoy the food scene. The first meal we had was this posh fish restaurant in Mayfair. I remember ordering some sort of white, thin flaky fish (perhaps sole), served with a luscious hollandaise and capers. For dinners we had Indian, Chinese, and Italian.
We also did an afternoon tea. Honestly, it was pretty underwhelming, at least the desserts were. I recall them being a) fashion-themed and b) tasting sort of like cardboard. The tea sandwiches on the other hand were fantastic, as was the tea. I don’t think I had ever drunken that much tea in my life. I was so hydrated, maybe a little too hydrated.
When Christine (my co-host) and I were debating to do an afternoon tea apartment cafe a couple weeks ago, I wasn't completely sold. Basically every apartment cafe is an afternoon tea except that we’ve never had a scone present. I had wanted to do a garden patch theme where every item looks or was inspired by a fruit or vegetable. But then I got a fortunate DM from someone suggesting that the next cafe was tea-themed. A lightbulb went off: a tea-themed afternoon tea where all the food was flavoured with different tea varieties. Now that’s brilliant.
My mind went specifically to the Grand Budapest Hotel. It’s always been one of my favourite movies. I would watch it every year with my cousins around Christmas time. There are a few scenes that feature this cream puff contraption of a dessert called Mendel’s Courtesan de Chocolat. They look other-worldly in the movie, and I knew it would be iconic to recreate them for my afternoon tea. The base puffs of the dessert happen to be purple and green in the movie. Why not flavour them respectively then with earl grey and matcha pastry cremes?
For the rest of the crew, this is what everyone made:
- me: courtesan de thé, thai tea boba
- Christine: cream cheese cucumber tea sandwiches on homemade sourdough, matcha biscotti
- Deepika Kalla-Paul: golden oat chai custard sandwich cookies, sencha milanos, chocolate assam rhubarb linzer cookies
- Erika: earl grey corn tea cakes
- Dana King: black tea canelé
- @bengingi & @chefzikki: chocolate chai rugelach & date-walnut ma’amoul. both recipes from their upcoming cookbook “Eat Small Plates” available for pre-order now!
- @atinykitchen: raspberry lamingtons (lammys)
I was so fortunate to have met Ben & Zikki this week while we were filming a separate collab for Instagram. Ben made 2 desserts from his upcoming first book which I’ve linked above if you’re interested in purchasing. Its publishing date is 9/9 and judging from the 12 recipes I’ve tasted from it just this week, I can assuredly say it’s a winner and a beautiful book to buy or gift.
Other very exciting news from my esteemed guests: Dana just started with the pastry team at Le Bernadine last week!
And the moment we’ve been waiting for, my top 3 rankings:
- Deepika’s chocolate assam rhubarb linzer cookies
- Dana’s black tea canelé
- Christine’s cream cheese cucumber tea sandwiches
Cheers,
Ryan
Hey! My name is Ryan Nordheimer. Welcome to my cooking and baking site. I’m a 25-year old home cook living in the East Village in New York City. Hopefully you enjoy my food through my own, tried-and-true recipes.
Ingredients (27)
Ingredients (27)
For the choux pastry
For the earl grey pastry creme
For the matcha pastry creme
(just halving the above ingredients and use matcha instead of earl grey)
For assembly
Instructions
For the choux pastry
Preheat oven to 425 °F with a rack in the upper and lower thirds.
In a medium saucepot, add the milk (1 cup), butter (7 Tbsp), sugar (1 Tbsp) and salt (¾ tsp). Set over medium heat, stirring occasionally, bring to a simmer.
Once there, dump in the flour (1 cup) all at once. Stir with a spatula to incorporate into a lump. Continue stirring for 3 minutes.
Dump dough into the bowl of stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Crank to medium-high speed and let mix for 1 minute to cool down the dough.
Reduce speed to medium. Crack in 4 eggs, 1 at a time, letting it mix for 30 seconds between each addition.
Check the consistency. Stick the paddle into the batter and pull it out. If it creates a V shape off the end of the paddle, it’s ready. If it’s too thick, scramble the last egg with a fork and add half to the dough and mix again and check. If still too thick, add all of the remaining egg. Transfer dough to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/4” round tip.
Line a half sheet pan and a quarter sheet pan with parchment paper. Using a little of the dough to hold the parchment down.
On the half sheet pan, pipe 2 long rows of 7-8 dough blobs around 1 1/2” in diameter. Next to those, pipe 2 rows of 7-8 dough blobs measuring around 1” in diameter.
On the quarter sheet pan, pipe 16 hazelnut size dough blobs.
Wet a finger, and use it to press down any peaks left from the piping bake.
Place the sheets in the oven with the smaller pan on top. Reduce temperature to 275 °F. Bake for 20 minutes.
Remove the smaller sheet from the oven and continue baking the larger puffs for another 10 minutes.
Turn off oven, prop oven open slightly with tongs, let larger puffs cool for an additional 10 minutes.
Then let puffs cool completely. Once cool, you can store the puffs for 1 day in a sealed large container at room temperature.
For the pastry creams
Start with the early grey. Add the corn starch (¼ cup), early grey (5 packets), and sugar (⅔ cup) to a medium saucepot. Whisk together.
Whisk in the egg yolks (6 large), followed by the salt (½ tsp) and milk (1 ½ cups). Bring pot over medium-high heat and whisk constantly. Once you see steam, lower heat to medium. Continue whisking until mixture thickens considerably. Turn heat off and continue whisking for 30 seconds.
Stir in butter (4 Tbsp) and food dye (1–2 dashes). Then dump onto a parchment-lined quarter sheet tray. Cover with plastic wrap and set in the fridge until cold.
Wash out pot and repeat with matcha pastry creme ingredients.
For the assembly
Transfer earl grey pastry creme to a pastry bag with a 1/4” round tip. Transfer matcha pastry creme to a pastry bag with a 1/8” round tip.
With a paring knife, make a small incision into the bottom of the large and medium puffs. Fill the larger puffs with earl grey creme. Fill the medium puffs with matcha creme. Set on a wire rack set inside a baking sheet.
Fill 2 medium bowls with powdered sugar. Add just enough milk to each to create a thick but drippable glaze. Dye one purple, dye the other green.
Dunk the large puffs into the purple glaze, shake off excess and set on the rack. Dunk the medium puffs into the green glaze. Let dry completely, about 30 minutes.
In a large bowl, beat the butter (2 sticks) with a decent amount of powdered sugar to create a thick frosting. Dye it light blue. Transfer to a pastry bag fitted with a floral tip of your choice, around 1/4”.
Pipe a small rosette onto the tops of each large puff, and a dollop onto the tops of each medium puff. Then stack the medium puffs onto the large puffs. On top of the medium puffs, place your small hazelnut-sized puffs. Courtesans de thé are best eaten day-of.
Subscribe to get my new recipes delivered to your inbox
Comments
Sign in to comment
