Weekend Tea Parties
Posted on March 2, 2014
This past weekend has been jam-packed full of cake eating!
On Saturday I hosted a surprise tea for my mother in law’s birthday and on Sunday I went to Richoux in St John’s Wood for a very good friend’s birthday!
Preparing for Saturday involved a lot of baking and as I absolutely hate baking and freezing (sorry all those that do this) and as I was working on Saturday morning, I had to carefully plan what I was going to make.
I thought it may be useful to compile a list of Tea Party tips to help you when you are planning a get together with cake!
Tea Party Tips
1. Plan what you are going to make with the time you have available. This may seem obvious, but if you don’t have much time then think about preparing as much in advance as you can! Rocky road is great because you can make it a couple of days ahead and then store it in the fridge. Cookies are brilliant because you can make the dough the day before and then store it in the fridge to bake before your guests arrive. Some cakes, such as dark sticky gingerbread taste better the next day!
2. Pick how many things you want to bake and make sure you vary the flavours, unless you are doing a chocolate tea in which case everything HAS to include chocolate (this is my favourite kind of tea!)
3. Think about how you are going to present your bakes. I love vintage china and cake stands and I love to label everything with easy homemade cake signs (just a toothpick sellotaped to a piece of card!):
4. Pots of tea and jugs of squash will save you running around making lots of drinks. I also like to have a pot of herbal tea and a bunch of mint for refreshing fresh mint tea!
5. A tea does not just have to be about baking (believe it or not)! Fruit platters, mini sandwiches, retro jars of sweets, selection boxes of chocolates, crisps and even homemade popcorn drizzled with melted milk chocolate (my son’s idea) are all family favourites here:
And most importantly:
6. Enjoy yourself! What is not to love about sharing sweet treats with people you like?
Be back soon
Suzy xxx
P.S. As its International Women’s Day this Saturday, I will be joining the global children’s charity Plan UK (@planuk) for a live Twitter bake off tomorrow – Thursday 6th March 2014 from 6.30pm to 7.30pm to help raise awareness and celebrate inspirational women around the world!
So why not bake a cake, tweet & join in the conversation using the hashtag #IWDBakeOff! And then sell your cake creations on Friday 7th March to raise funds for planuk‘s work with girls around the world – giving them the future they deserve.
Cake is really magical isn’t it?