Time for a Little Christmas Cheer (part two).....

Hello there,

Welcome back to another Christmas themed afternoon tea post from Tea With Me and Friends.

Last time we featured the fab Christmas themed afternoon tea created by pastry chef Ji Sun Shin at the Ampersand Hotel in London. If you loved those pastries you can read all about Ji Sun's creative process in our interview with her that took place earlier this year.

Today, we are featuring another highly creative pastry chef - this time Zoe Wager from the Conrad London St James (previously known as the Intercontinental Westminster). We also met Zoe earlier this year when she showed us her amazing seaside themed afternoon tea. So we were really keen to see what Zoe would create for Christmas......

Christmas afternoon tea - Conrad London St James

Among the selection of festive savouries on offer are a turkey ballotine, a venison bite in puff pastry and a creamy brussel sprout salad with goat’s cheese (I'm not sure I like the sound of that!). There are also a variety of finger sandwiches. The savouries are of course followed by warm scones and preserves.

Once you have polished off the savouries and scones, you are presented with the most beautiful winter scene....complete with edible snow!

Festive snowman meringue
Conrad London St James afternoon tea

How cute is that snowman? 

The sweets that you can enjoy at this afternoon tea are so magical, you might not want to eat them! Presented in a glass frame and with plenty of that edible snow you will find mini battenburg slices, snowflake macaroons, snowmen and Christmas trees!

Christmas Afternoon Tea - Conrad London St James

Celebrate Christmas at the Conrad London St. James with a festive afternoon tea and free flowing champagne for just £45.00 per person, without Champagne is £37.00 per person. 

This beautiful afternoon tea is already available and can be booked until 24th December. For more information please visit the Conrad London St James website.

If you have enjoyed this magical afternoon tea we would love to hear from you and see your photos! Please get in touch!

Thank you 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