Afternoon Tea

Afternoon Tea
Originally uploaded by watchjennybake.

This past weekend we stayed in, and I made afternoon tea. The menu:

Chocolate Buttermilk Pound Cake
Chopped Egg and Scallion Tea Triangles
Curried Spinach Rolls
Giverny Scones

All the recipes except the chopped egg sandwiches are from various cookbooks from the Elmwood Inn. I highly recommend these cookbooks for afternoon teas - they have recipes for all themes, including some creative ideas I didn't even have on my radar. I was hoping to hear back from them in order to post one of their recipes, but if I do I'll edit the post later. In the meantime, some of their recipes are also available online, although not the ones I chose.

I would like to criticize my menu slightly - if you notice, everything I made includes some form of a bread. Ideally I would have had something like stuffed tomatoes or something with eggs, just to make everything slightly lighter! Also making two recipes with buttermilk (this scone recipe called for it) seemed like overkill.

I have decided I should feature a favorite tea or tea company from time to time. For this afternoon tea, I used the Assam Mangalam tea from Scent by Spirit Teas. The tea was a nice black blend, malty but not overpowering.

I have enjoyed ordering from Scent by Spirit Teas - the business is a woman-owned company in the northwest; the owner is known as the "Head Genie" on the forums and throughout the web site. Visitors to the forums can read reviews of the teas, interact with other customers, get recommendations, and find out about special deals and new additions.

I am a frequent consumer of teas and what I like best about SBS Teas is the variety and creativity in the teas. Lately I tried the Chocolate Flame Chai, which is the best chai I have had. The other recent highlights are the green rooiboses (if that is plural for rooibos!), especially the Green Rooibos Haiku. Green rooibos teas are my favorite to make iced. I haven't nailed down a favorite yet, but if I had to pick one it would probably be the Mexican Spiced Rooibos. If you have a tea company you love, let me know!


Categories: Cake, Chocolate, Savory, Scones, Tea, Tea Sandwiches