I made afternoon tea for 8 ladies on Sunday. We made mild fun of them all weekend, because they wanted their tea at 2:00 in the afternoon instead of the more traditional 4:00 p.m., and triple chocolate scones instead of more traditional, plainer scone flavors, eaten slathered with cream and jam. But they were a congenial group and it was a nice little party.
And who’s to say what’s authentic, anyways – I tried to make the food tasty, more than I worried about authentic.
They ate those all-American, certainly not British triple chocolate scones – I adapted Molly Wizenberg’s recipe. I also made lemon apricot scones, with apricot jam and creme frâiche to go with. Cucumber, pineapple cream cheese, and curried chicken salad sandwiches, each with its own flavor of butter spread thinly on a different bread. The cucumber had a creamed butter with mustard & lemon on white; pineapple cream cheese – pineapple tidbits mixed into cream cheese with toasted almonds – had honey butter, on thin rounds sliced from pretzel rolls; the curried chicken had plain whipped butter on whole wheat. And Victoria sponge, filled with the fresh tasting, uncooked, refrigerator strawberry jam from the farmers’ market. And two kinds of loose tea – Earl Grey and Darjeeling – in teapots, with milk and sugar, and a whole bunch of herbal teas in bags that no one touched.
I took all the pictures with my tiny camera, and I feel a little funny about that – no composing in the viewfinder. I did like some of the macro shots, the scone closeups, though. I am definitely going to relegate the tiny camera to restaurant food while traveling.
