afternoon tea

Tasty Tuesday–Ideas for Afternoon Tea

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Today I finally got The Perfect Afternoon Tea Recipe Book, something I’ve been wanting to have for quite some time. Between the cost (being a nice, large hardcover with beautiful photographs, it’s was a little expensive), and a time when it appeared to be out of print, it took over a year for me to get it. I can’t wait to try out some of the recipes in it, but in the meantime, here’s some inspiration from the tea parties we’ve already had!

Our first real tea party was a very simple cream tea in celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee (although we had an even simpler tea a year earlier, for the Royal Wedding).

Recipes:

Birthday Teas:

Other Themed Parties:

I’m sure there will be many more tea parties in our future…next, I hope to do something fun for fall!

Tasty Tuesday–Orange Poppyseed Cake

I tried this recipe on a whim last week for our tea party, and I’m so glad I did. It’s delicious, not too heavy, and was enjoyed by everyone, which makes it the perfect addition to our tea party rotation. I’m sure you could turn this into a lemon poppyseed cake if you so desired…I could also see adding an extra tablespoon or so of poppy seeds to the batter, if you wanted it to be heavier on the poppy seeds!

  • 2 tablespoons poppyseeds
  • 1/4 cup whole milk, room temperature
  • 3 cups cake flour
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
  • 4 eggs, room temperature
  • 1 tablespoon grated orange zest
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice
  • Orange glaze (recipe below)

In a small bowl, soak poppyseeds in milk for 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 325. Generously grease and flour a 12-cup bundt pan.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
In a large bowl, cream butter until smooth, gradually stir in sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in orange zest, vanilla extract, and poppyseed mixture. Stir in flour mixture and orange juice alternately in three additions, beginning and ending with flour. Pour batter into prepared pan.
Bake 50 to 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Remove from oven and cool 15 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pan and invert onto a cake plate. Spoon orange glaze over warm cake.

Orange Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
2 to 3 tablespoons fresh-squeezed orange juice

In a small bowl, combine sugar and orange zest. Stir in orange juice until smooth. Spoon over warm cake.

A Tea Party for a Prince

I had promised the children that we’d have a tea party to celebrate the birth of Baby Cambridge (the future King George), but since Ryan was out-of-town last week, we decided to wait until he could join us for our celebration!

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I didn’t have as cohesive of a theme as usual…I threw in a little blue (for the baby boy), with the table runner, some Ghirardelli chocolates from Ryan’s trip, and the variety of tea (Bigelow English Teatime, in a lovely blue box), but I didn’t do anything with blue foods.

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For the most part, we just enjoyed some of our favorite tea party foods, with a new item thrown in (that was so popular, it will definitely become part of the permanent collection!)…an orange poppy-seed cake!

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We had our standard scones:

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And cucumber sandwiches:

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We had coronation chicken for dinner last night, so we enjoyed finger sandwiches made from the leftovers:

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Dried apricots and Cotswold cheese from England:

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Thumbprint cookies and shortbread:

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And, of course, finger jello:

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It was a fun way to celebrate the birth of the future King of England!

A Birthday Tea

Yesterday, we had a birthday tea party. Whose birthday was the cause for the celebration? Why, the Queen’s, of course! Her official birthday, marked by Trooping the Colour, was on Saturday, and we decided to make a long weekend of it, and keep the party going for tea!

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The them for the event was purple (the color of royalty), and crowns (obvious). I also threw in a little bit of green for an accent color, because it just looked so nice. For decorations on the table, we had purple Hershey’s kisses, candles, and purple carnations in a pretty English gin bottle that I’ve been saving for a few years to use as a vase. The tea of choice was Darjeeling, partly because it’s one of my favorite teas, and partly because it comes in a purple box!

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In addition to the tea, we had chocolate chip scones, sugar cookies, open-faced grape jelly sandwiches, and grape jello, all in the shape of crowns.

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We also had coronation chicken finger sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches and some nice reddish/purplish grapes.

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It all made for a very fun birthday celebration!

A Pentecost Tea

I know it’s a week late, but…we had our Pentecost tea party, that I had originally planned to actually have on Pentecost Sunday, a few days ago, but at least it was in the same week! I worked with a theme of red, and, since it’s spring, strawberries (which are conveniently also red!).

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We had lots of fresh strawberries we picked ourselves at Eckert’s:

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And strawberry muffins, made with more of the fruits of our labor (literally!):

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We also had red jello, not strawberry, but cherry, to mix things up:

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Since lemons go so well with strawberries, we had my favorite lemon shortbread:

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We also had chocolate chip scones, just because:

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Some English muffins:

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And a variety of toppings, including a special strawberry-peach jam:

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The tea of choice was Constant Comment, partly because it’s one of my favorites, and partly because it comes in red packets!

P1270165Next month, I’m hoping to have another tea party to coincide with the Queen’s “official” birthday!

2012-13 School Year–Week Thirty-Three

That’s a wrap!

After approximately 186 days of school (probably a few more…I sometimes forget to record field trip days!), we have finished the 2012-13 school year!

We did a lot of work this week (unlike, say, the public school, which appears to have been on vacation for the last two weeks of classes!). We had to finish up American history from Nixon to the present (a lot of fun stuff to explain in there!). We had math lessons to complete, and reading lessons for Ladybug, who finally made it through the whole alphabet, and all 27 of her “Fun Tales” readers! Turkey and Bunny also finished their spelling books, and one last writing assignment. We haven’t finished our read-aloud, but we can continue reading that for fun every day!

We also had some fun this week! On Thursday, Bunny, Ladybug, and I went strawberry-picking at Eckert’s, which seemed fitting since we went apple picking during our first week of the school year. Turkey, unfortunately, was sick, but he wanted us to go anyway, which was very kind of him. We had a fun time in the strawberry fields…it was the first time any of us had picked strawberries!

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Today, after our last two tests of the year, we had a tea party for Pentecost. We were supposed to have it on Pentecost itself, but I ran out of time, and since it’s still Pentecost week, I figured I could still use red as a theme!

P1270178We also built the Lego Brandenburg Gate, a special project to tie into our studies of WWII and the Cold War/fall of the Berlin Wall. Since we waited until this afternoon to work on it, Moose got to join in, too! I love the Lego Architecture series, and can’t wait to see what other Landmarks they may come up with that I can use for school!

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It’s been a great school year. There were tough times, trying to figure out how to balance three students in two grades, with an infant (and then toddler!), besides. There were challenges as I had to look for new materials to use for Ladybug when some of the things I used for Turkey and Bunny didn’t work for her. There was the difficulty of trying to teach long division! But the good times and the successes and fun events far outweighed any problems we came across. We’ve finished five years of homeschooling, and I’m already looking forward to year six…see you in August!

Tasty Tuesday–Irish Tea Cake

I tried this recipe for the first time a few week’s ago for our St. Patrick’s Day tea party, and it was a huge hit! It’s a nice, simple butter cake, delicious with a dusting of powdered sugar. You could easily double the recipe, though, and use it as a layer cake with frosting instead!

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  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup powdered sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a 9 inch round pan.
In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt; stir into the batter alternately with the milk. If the batter is too stiff, a tablespoon or two of milk may be added. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes in the preheated oven, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack, then turn out onto a serving plate. Dust with powdered sugar right before serving.

2012-13 School Year–Week Twenty-Seven

Back to work after a two-week vacation!

It’s always a little difficult to get back into a routine after a break, but this week’s transition went surprisingly well. On Monday, since Moose had the day off, we did things a little differently. We did our final Jesus tree reading in the morning, and had our regular math and spelling. Instead of our regular history and read-alouds, though, we read a few of our favorite Easter books. We also had an Easter Monday tea party…very fun!

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The rest of the week was business as usual. We learned about the church year in religion (specifically the Time of Easter), and then spent a few days learning about the prophet Elijah. Next week, we’ll be finishing up the Old Testament, and then I can pretend it’s Christmas for a few happy days!

We continued our study of WWII in history, and started a new read-aloud which takes place following the war–Miracles on Maple Hill. This is another new book for me, and so far, it’s pretty good! In math, Turkey and Bunny continued to work on fractions and decimals, while Ladybug kept practicing skip counting, as well as counting by 5s and 10s. She also got started on the letter “U,” and read a new story to go along with it, which she really enjoyed.

In science, we started the second-to-last chapter of our textbook, a unit on the lymphatic system. We’ll be spending two weeks on this lesson, to try to stretch out science a little bit closer to the end of the year. We also found a Magic School Bus episode to complement our studies, which is always fun!

Next week we’ll be finishing up the war, and continuing the rest of our subjects. This is the home stretch…we only have about six or seven weeks of this school year left!

A Tea Party for Easter Monday

To extend our Easter celebration, today we had an Easter Monday tea party. The table decorations were fairly simple: the runner we used on St. Patrick’s Day, the Paschal Candle we made on Holy Saturday, and some pretty Hershey’s kisses in pastel foils.

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We had some new items at our party, like deviled eggs:

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And old favorites like cucumber sandwiches:

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Sugar cookies in the shape of chicks and butterflies:

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Faux-linzer cookies, with spring-themed cutouts:

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Jell-O jigglers–both regular, and the creamy variation:

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And bunny-shaped jelly sandwiches:

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I chose a lemon tea for today’s party. Originally, I planned on getting Darjeeling, since it comes in such a pretty purple box (plus, it’s really good!), but I couldn’t get any at the store. I figured lemon fit the theme pretty well, though, so it worked out OK!

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I’m not sure when our next tea party will be. I’m thinking may a red-themed tea for Pentecost, but I’m still recovering from the month of March, so I’ll have to plan that out later!

St. Patrick’s Day Tea Party

Lots of “gold” coins, green, and shamrocks on our table for this tea party!

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Jelly sandwiches:

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Jell-O:

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Cucumber sandwiches (of course!):

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Irish tea cake:

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Sugar cookies:

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Our tea of choice for our St. Patrick’s Day party was Twinings Irish Breakfast. I was afraid that the children wouldn’t like it, because it wasn’t a flavored tea, but they all finished their cups, and some even had seconds!

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