I know I’ve run pretty far afield of what constitutes afternoon tea, but I wanted to do something special for St. Louis’ 250th birthday. I decided to go with some famous St. Louis foods, and a lot of fleurs-de-lis to celebrate St. Louis’ French heritage. Our soundtrack for tea was also a nod to St. Louis: Chuck Berry’s The Great Twenty-Eight.

The tea of choice for today was French Vanilla. It was the best I could do in tying it in to the theme somehow, just because it has the word “French” in the title. I did consider using the 1904 World’s Fair connection with iced tea, but it is November, after all!

I made a Gooey Butter cake, which is one of St. Louis’ most well-known baked goods:

And toasted ravioli, another St. Louis favorite:

We also had provel cheese, a St. Louis anomaly that I actually kind of like, and Volpi Roltini, which is prosciutto wrapped around mozzarella, from the meat market on The Hill:

I made finger Jell-O in the colors of the St. Louis city flag (red, yellow, and blue, although I ended up with a cool rainbow effect where the colors blended), and shaped like fleurs-de-lis:

And our favorite chocolate chip scones, also shaped like fleurs-de-lis:

We also had finger sandwiches, shaped like, you guessed it, fleurs-de-lis:

This was a kind of challenging tea party, because the theme was so different, but it was also really fun finding another way to celebrate St. Louis’ birthday that’s also unique to our family!