Time for Tea....W Hotel London

This weekend Becca, Sheree and I decided to have a festive day in London - first we headed off to Harrods (because we're mad) for a spot of shopping and then onto the W Hotel in Leicester Square to enjoy their festive afternoon tea - Rock Around the Christmas Tea.

W Hotel usually offers guests a W Rock Tea, which is a traditional British afternoon tea with a Rock "n" Roll twist....but since its the festive season they have added a festive twist to their afternoon tea.

W Hotel is a modern, glamorous hotel situated on Leicester Square and the W Hotel Bar and Lounge is very contemporary. The hotel offers just ten teas with their afternoon tea, all appear to be bagged tea and are served in stainless steel teapots and white china teacups.

Modern teapots and china

Also on offer with the afternoon tea is a choice of three Christmas themed cocktails, they are priced at £10 each and Becca and I were both tempted to try one....

 

Festive cocktail anyone?

When the food arrives at our table it looked rather spectacular and was served on a bespoke three tier cake stand. Each tier of the stand was a record to fit in with the rock "n" roll theme....

 

Festive afternoon tea at W Hotel London

The food is well presented and looks very appealing and there is plenty of choice.

 

On the bottom tier there is a selection of savoury items including some controversial triple decker sandwiches! We could enjoy salmon and cream cheese and roast beef sandwiches, or small turkey and cranberry rolls or a veggie wrap. All were generously filled, but I would question how fresh they were as the bread on top of the sandwiches had turned a little hard already.

 

Controversial triple decker afternoon tea sandwiches!

Next we moved onto the scones, which were currant scones served with clotted cream and strawberry jam. Becca is unfortunately allergic to strawberries and when we mentioned this the waitress found some small jars of raspberry and apricot jam as an alternative for her.

 

The scones were the low point of this afternoon tea - they were over baked and not far off being rock cakes. Very disappointing.

 

After attempting (and failing) to eat the scones we quickly moved onto the sweet treats on offer, hoping these would be better......

 

Sweet treats galore!

On the next two layers we were treated to six different sweet treats...some were divine and some were not to our taste, but we definitely weren't disappointed with the amount of choice on offer.

 

The treats included "O Christmas Tree" which was a red velvet sponge topped with cream cheese frosting, "All I Want for Christmas is Choux" which was a choux pastry bun filled with eggnog crème patisserie and "Love This Angel Instead" which was a mascarpone mouse with cherry and chocolate.

 

But my favourite bits were the "Jingle Bell Rocky Road" a wonderful rocky road bite, topped with marshmallow and a candy cane and the "Holly and the Ivy" a very tasty gingerbread holly leaf, filled with a sparkly raspberry jam - I could have eaten loads of those!

My favourite sweet treats in the afternoon tea

The final sweet treat to be served was the "Mistletoe and Wine" which was a mulled wine jelly topped with Chantilly cream. Now I really enjoyed this, but if you're not a fan of mulled wine it will leave a bad taste in your mouth!

 

 

This tea is priced at £25 per person, which I think is reasonable due to the amount of choice on offer. However I am sad to report that despite the assistance with Becca's food allergy, the overall service wasn't up to scratch.

 

Admittedly there were only two waitresses working when we were there but it wasn't particularly busy in the lounge and yet no one came to see if we were happy with our tea or whether we needed anything else. We had to ask for more tea once we'd run out and we were never asked whether we wanted seconds of anything.

 

However, saying that we would give them the benefit of the doubt as we would like to try their normal W Rock Tea, as we enjoyed the concept of the tea and it is great value in terms of choice.

 

To finish our festive day we saw the famous Coca Cola truck that was paying a visit to nearby Covent Garden.....

 

The Holidays Are Coming!

If you've tried this festive offering, or any other festive afternoon tea, we'd love to hear about it - leave us a comment or send us an email!

 

Thanks for popping by today,

Rachel & Lorna

 

 





Tis the Season...to indulge in afternoon tea!

Hello there,

Well, with Christmas just around the corner we thought it would be fun to look at festive afternoon teas that you could make at home. As you'll know if you've popped by here before Lorna and I love indulging in afternoon teas in hotels and tearooms...but we also enjoy hosting our own afternoon tea at home with our friends.

Christmas time is a lovely time to get creative in the kitchen - whether you enjoy traditional food such as Christmas cake or Stollen or prefer something more contemporary, its a great time to host an afternoon tea of your own!

 

Our homemade festive afternoon tea

 For this tea we kept the sandwiches and scones quite traditionally, sticking with flavours that we knew our friends enjoyed such as egg mayonnaise and coronation chicken. But to get into the festive spirit you could have turkey and cranberry finger sandwiches, or how about some brie and grape?

Our scones were plain and served with cream and strawberry jam, but you could add seasonal flare with cranberry scones....or indulge your sweet tooth with chocolate chip scones.

Traditional afternoon tea finger sandwiches

Our festive spread did include some homemade mince pies....I like to make my mince pies with little stars on top rather than the full lids as this allows the mincemeat to ooze out a little. These were served warm with cream.....

 

Homemade mince pies and cream

We then got creative with our sweet baking and I opted for a contemporary feel rather than traditional with Christmas tree biscuits, melted snowmen cakes and Christmas tree cupcakes.

 

Christmas tree biscuits - perfect for an afternoon tea table!

 My butter biscuits were cut with a cutter, iced with green icing and then I added some decoration in red and white sprinkles.

Christmas afternoon tea cakes!

My melted snowmen cakes were topped with white icing and a marshmallow, and I added a little detail with some darker icing. The Christmas tree cakes are plain vanilla sponge topped with a swirl of green icing and an edible gold star.

 

Some of my guests were sad to see the snowmen melting!

 

Melted snowman cupcake

You could be more traditional with your sweet treats, offering small pieces of Christmas cake or slices of Stollen.

 

There are various different Christmas blends of black tea that you can serve at a festive afternoon tea, there are also some wonderful fruity teas. We opted to serve some bubbles at our tea too - well its a special occasion after all!

 

Finally, don't forget to decorate your festive tea-table! Obviously do this to your taste...but I think a little decoration is a must! As you can see Father Christmas joined us at our festive tea!

 

A Tea with Me and Friends Festive
Afternoon Tea!

If you host a Christmas afternoon tea over the next couple of weeks we'd love to hear about it and see photos!

 

We hope you have enjoyed this festive post - pop back over the festive period to see some more posts from us. We will be featuring a review of another Christmas afternoon tea and will have a special photo post featuring teas that our friends have indulged in recently. If you have a photo you'd like to see on the post please get in touch - you can leave a comment here or email us with the photo!

 

Thanks for popping by today,

Rachel & Lorna