Today we’re going to be talking about some ideas for a fun high tea to have with your friends or your family. My mom just turned 80. She came to visit for a week, and we had a party for her with some of her friends from many years ago, ones who lived close to us. We had a fun high tea for her birthday. I’m going to tell you about some of the things we baked for that; what we served, and give you some ideas for what you can do in terms of decor to make a high tea special.
We hired some tables so that we could have people seated. That somehow makes it more elegant, and maybe a bit more formal. But it wasn’t like the people had to stay at their tables – we had the food in a different room on big tables so that people could help themselves.
We also hired other things like plates, but I chose the wrong size of those. They were giant square platters that were too heavy to carry, but they were supposed to be for each person to have their food on, so we scrapped that idea. Instead, we managed with some of our own plates. We used dinner sized plates, even though it was a tea party, because our side plates are so tiny, and there were quite a few items that people would’ve wanted to put on their plates.
Each person would take their plate to the food table, load it up, and then come back and sit. We did consider having food on the tables, but there was too much of it and not enough space on the tables because they were eight seaters. You can make elegant towers of food like they do at a hotel, where you have a few of each item on those three tiered trays on the table, or something like that.
So, what we did is we put all the food on the main table. I’ll put a couple of photos in the blog post. We used some towers for the macarons and cupcakes, and we used platters for the other food.
For the sweet items, my oldest daughter made macarons. She made lemon curd macarons with buttercream, and raspberry and white chocolate macarons with a little bit of white chocolate on the outside. Those aren’t always easy. I’m not one who could make macarons, so it was great that she could do that.
We also made cupcakes. We made some spelt cupcakes for those who don’t eat wheat, and we also made some ordinary cupcakes. They had lemon icing and sprinkles. The last sweet item we had was custard cookies, also known as “melting moments”. They’re made using custard powder and a few other things – I’ll put the recipe for them on the website. They have little cherries on top, and you dip them in sugar. My youngest daughter made those, and she enjoyed it. It was great to involve the kids in making the food for the party.
For the savory items, we decided to buy some mini quiches. We were going to make them, but we ran out of time and oven space, so we just bought mini quiches. We had spinach and feta ones, and the ones with bacon – quiche lorraine. Those went down very well. They were very small little ones that you could hold in your hand, so we didn’t really need knives and forks. I put out forks just to look nice.
We had the mini quiches, and we made puff pastry tarts. This is a recipe from my Elegant, Easy Appetizers cookbook, which is on our website here. They’re basically puff pastry, which is layered pastry, with butternut and feta on top. You can also make them with tomato and feta. Add a bit of salt and oregano or rosemary, and then bake them in a hot oven. Those are really yummy, and they went down well.
We also made tiny sandwiches with cucumber and cream cheese. We made some of them with cream cheese and something called biltong powder. That’s like taking a dry piece of jerky and grinding it up. It gives a nice, salty flavor.
The last savory item was chutney meatballs. Those are another recipe from the Elegant, Easy Appetizers cookbook. They’re basically ground beef with some chutney and other spices, rolled into small balls, and baked in the oven. That’s easier than frying them. That made tiny meatballs, and then we made little kebabs from those by putting two meatballs and a cherry tomato on a cocktail stick. There was a bowl of chutney to dip them into
We had platters of all of those things on the table. They were great finger foods, and people could come and take what they wanted at any time. We put candles on the cupcakes while we sang happy birthday, but we wanted to keep everything small because older people don’t generally eat as much, and also because it’s lovely to have single items that you can just eat with your fingers. It also looks elegant, and it’s fun to have all of those things on a plate.
For drinks, we wanted to do something elegant and easy. We didn’t want to make tea because we didn’t have a big urn or anything, so we thought we’d do cordials. We had a few jugs on each table. One jug was just water with lemon, and then there were the cordials. We had a watermelon cordial, a passion fruit cordial, and a lime cordial. We made them with soda water, and we added some mint leaves and lemon.
Cordial is something that you dilute, about one part to four, or one part to eight – the instructions are on the bottle. It’s a concentrated flavor. Each table had a jug of watermelon cordial and soda water, a jug of passion fruit cordial and soda water, and a lime and soda. Those were elegant drinks. They worked very well, and they were very simple.
The people were chatting at the tables, and then we had a time when everybody spoke about memories about granny, things that they remember happening in her life; things that they were involved in. It was lovely to hear all the special things that her friends remembered that I hadn’t heard before. For example, one friend told us about when she went to Switzerland with friends, and they were being very frugal. This is a very strange idea to me – she decided to put an ice cream container of butternut soup in her luggage. It was frozen, and it was sealed in a plastic bag.
I thought he was going to say it leaked all over the luggage, but apparently not. The container made it there fine, and the idea was to not have to go shopping on the first evening, not until the next day. They were going to have the butternut soup for dinner that night, but when they opened the container, it turned out that it was stewed apricots, not butternut soup. My mom said she’d peeped in the container to see if it was right, and it was orange. So, in the end, they didn’t have butternut soup – apparently they ate the stewed apricots with yogurt. That was a funny story.
Let me tell you about the rest of the table decor. We hired round tables, eight seaters, with white tablecloths that reached the floor. We put tall vases with a flower arrangement in the middle of each table. Then I took a piece of pink organza and gathered it around the vase. We had white plates with a gold fork across each of them, and we had some pretty napkins.
We were going to add twinkle lights, but you can’t see them as well during the day. We also had some lovely Tiffany chairs with cushions, and some elegant pieces that we had for the tables. So, I’m sure whatever you like to use to make it look elegant will work. The jugs with the colors of the cordial also added to that look.
We also printed elegant little place names for each person. It had their name on it in a gold font with some blue flowers, matching the invitation style. I also printed a menu with all the items that were available, and put one of those on each table.
It was a lovely event. I love doing things that are elegant with food items like that; things that are different to what you usually eat, bite-sized things. So, I’m going to mention a few more things that you could do for a high tea. Today will be a shorter episode because I’m just getting back into things after the visit, but hopefully it will give you some fun ideas.
Most of the recipes from our Elegant, Easy Appetizers book can be used. For example, there’s haloumi sticks wrapped in prosciutto. There’s camembert, and various other cheeses and breads. You can do charcuterie. There are lots of ideas in that book.
Let me give you some other ideas. You can do any kind of finger food, maybe smoked salmon on crostini, which is toasted bread. You can make pinwheels from puff pastry with cheese and something like chutney or jam. You can have any pieces of meat – maybe mini chicken kebabs. You can do salad kebabs with a small piece of cucumber, maybe a de-pipped olive, a baby tomato, and a cub of feta.
You can have things like scones – mini, savory, ones, or sweet ones with a bit of cream and jam. You can do a Victoria sponge cake, which is basically a sponge cake with a little bit of icing sugar sprinkled on, served in very small slices. You could have madeleines, chocolate dipped strawberries, or lemon slices. Petit fours are very popular, but I’d rather buy those than try to make them. You can have short bread cut into squares.
You could also have some elegant teas – maybe you could have a separate table with some interesting teas for those who like tea. You could do crudités and dip – baby carrots, pieces of cucumber, and maybe a hummus dip or a cream cheese dip. You could even do a cream cheese ball. There are so many different things you could do – maybe hard boiled eggs or deviled eggs. You can do anything that you’re good at making, and you think could be elegant.
So, let me know if you decide to do a high tea for somebody, or just for your family. It might be a fun event for your extended family one Sunday afternoon, or you can just have it with some friends that have over.
Custard Cookies Recipe Coming soon…
