Tea parties benefit Lighthouse Mission

SOPHIA FISCHER/Acorn Newspapers ONE LUMP OR TWO?—Owner Candra Coogan, far left, poses with a tea party group from Oak Park at her Tranquility Tea Room in Thousand Oaks. Coogan recently opened the business to showcase her homemade baked goods, bring customers together and support the Lighthouse Women and Children's Mission in Oxnard. On a recent afternoon in Thousand Oaks a group of women donned feather boas, elbow-length gloves and lace- and straw-filled straw hats and paid a visit to the new Tranquility Tea Room to celebrate the birthday of their friend, Frieda Swedelson of Oak Park.

The eight women gathered around a table filled with tea cups and plates, roses and ribbon, in a room decorated with antiques and lace curtains. They drank teas with names like chocolate fantasy, coconut mango and spicy peach; dined on tiny homemade cucumber Provençal, caramel apple brie and smoked salmon sandwiches; and sampled cream puffs, truffles and cheesecake desserts.

"It's like having a tea party in your house. It's very comfortable," said Armin Bidgoli of Oak Park.

"I never had tea parties when I was growing up in Iran," Swedelson said. "I feel like a little girl getting all dressed up."

That's exactly the kind of reaction tearoom owner Candra Coogan wants.

"Everyone is so busy. It's very important to me for women to come and sit quietly together, connect and really bless each other," said Coogan, who views the tearoom as her calling, her ministry.

The tearoom has another purpose—to support the Lighthouse Women and Children's Mission in Oxnard. Coogan is working with Lighthouse administrators to create a program that will allow women who graduate from the mission's nine-month recovery program to work at the tearoom.

"The goal is to help the girls transition, help them learn what it means to be a good employee, support themselves, live on their own. They learn attendance, initiative and judgment skills, portable no matter what field they are going into," Lighthouse Director Cassie Sorenson said.

Coogan began a baking business seven years ago when her three daughters were little so that she could be at home with them. She rented a kitchen in Newbury Park and named her endeavor Tranquility Baking Company. She dressed in Victorian costume to deliver her goodies on trays decorated with nosegays she'd made herself. She donated 10 percent of her sales to Lighthouse.

"I wanted to use my interests to do something I love and support a charity," Coogan said. "I love the Victorian element, the style, the romanticism."

She always wanted to open a tearoom and found the opportunity when the upstairs space in a commercial center on Thousand Oaks Boulevard became available.

All of the food on the tearoom's menu is made from scratch using Coogan's family recipes. She is best known for her mom's raspberry cheesecake.

"My mother and grandmothers are all great bakers. It's kind of our love language," Coogan said.

The front part of the tearoom opened in December; the back of the space opened in July.

She made the hats herself with some help.

"I used to say I was craftchallenged, but now I can wield a mean glue gun. But my daughters and their friends are better at it," Coogan said.

A 20-year Moorpark resident, Coogan grew up in Agoura Hills and graduated from Agoura High. She married her high school sweetheart. Her parents live in Oak Park, and her in-laws are in Fillmore. The family is supportive of Coogan's endeavors, helping set up, decorate and run the tearoom.

"I've been gifted with so many wonderful things from so many people," Coogan said.

Coogan hopes to open a second tearoom in a Victorian home in Ventura if she can find the right space. For more information, please call (805) 517-1195 or visit www.tranquilitybaking.com