Time for.....a tea-riffic afternoon tea launch at the Langham

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you've had a tea-riffic week!

Lorna and I were very lucky this week - we were invited to the launch of the new afternoon tea at the Langham London. You may have seen Head Pastry Chef Cherish Finden on the TV recently as she is one of the judges on Great British Bake Off Creme de la Creme. Well, it's an exciting time for Cherish as the Langham is launching a scrummy new afternoon tea on the 6th April.....

Afternoon tea - Langham London

Guests at the launch were treated to tea, soft drinks or bubbles, all served in the conservatory. As we mingled with other guests, trays of the savoury items were served...

Afternoon tea sandwiches - Langham London

The fillings included duck egg, cucumber, pastrami and coleslaw, salmon and coronation chicken - served on a variety of breads. The bread was all soft and fresh and as expected there wasn't a crust in sight.

My favourite filling was definitely the chicken, and Lorna really enjoyed the coleslaw and pastrami.....

Once we had enjoyed the savouries, Chrish joined us in the room to introduce the all important sweet treats. Cherish spoke with such passion about her creations, it was a real pleasure to listen to her talk. She described each pastry in turn, describing the flavour combinations and the textures that we would find when we bit into the pastry.

Head Pastry Chef Cherish Finden
describing her new afternoon tea creations

After Cherish had described each piece we were treated to something rather special, as the Duchess of Bedford joined us for tea.....

Just in case you're wondering .....the real Duchess of Bedford is best remembered as the first person to enjoy afternoon tea, as she requested tea and cake in the afternoon between lunch and dinner to help with the "sinking feeling" she used to experience.

Cherish then mingled with us as the pastries were served. As well as all the treats on the sweet plate, we were also offered scones with cream and preserve....

Afternoon tea sweets - Langham London

The most amazing Victoria sponge

Everything looked so pretty, each piece so detailed and unique. But even better than a pleasing plate of treats, everything tasted amazing too. From the well flavoured Opera Cake to the tiny strawberry and pistashio macaroon, everything was so scrummy!

Cherish spent time with all the guests, talking about the afternoon tea and also the GBBO Creme de la Creme. 

Cherish Finden with a plate of Opera Cake

We also got to meet Cherish's fabulous team....

We had a wonderful evening as guests of Cherish and the Langham and can't wait to see this scrummy new afternoon tea appear on the menu in early April. For more information about afternoon tea at The Langham please visit their website.

We'll leave you with one last look at those scrummy savouries and sweets....

Afternoon tea - Langham London

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel & Lorna

Time for....some tea inspired baking with Piacha tea

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you're having a tea-riffic day.

Today I am sharing with you a little recipe that made me very happy. You may remember that we discovered the fabulous tea from Piacha a while ago - Pia has so many delicious blends on offer, but Black and Cherry is one of my favourites. It's a sweet tea, that I find very refreshing. For ages now I have been trying to include this tea in my baking - always focusing on cakes. But they always fail - with hardly any flavour carrying through to the cake.

Tonight however I decided to try something different - I had seen teabag shaped biscuits all over the Internet (Ok - mainly on Pintrest....the place I seem to spend most of my time!!) and it struck me that maybe I could include Black and Cherry in a biscuit. A lot of the teabag biscuits I came across were flavoured with green tea (often using Matcha powder) but then I came across a couple of recipes which included earl grey tea. After doing a bit of research about whether you can actually eat tea leaves, I decided to give it a go and worked on a recipe using the Black and Cherry tea leaves.....and I'm so glad I did....

Black and Cherry tea bag biscuits
from Tea With Me and Friends

These biscuits are light and crisp and have a beautiful cherry flavour that will make you smile. Plus, they are super simple to make!

You will need:

1.5 heaped tablespoons of Piacha Black and Cherry loose leaf tea

130g plain flour

50g caster sugar

20g icing sugar

100g unsalted butter

splash of water

100g chocolate - optional

A straw for poking holes

Bakers twine (or other thread)

This will make: 16 teabag biscuits

Preheat your oven to:

200c or 180c (fan oven)

To make the biscuits:

• First you need to grind up the tea leaves as small as you can - either in a food processor, with a pestle and mortar or like me in a bowl with the back of a spoon.
• Now combine all your dry items (so that's the tea leaves, flour and both sugars) in a bowl, mixing them well
• Next you need to add the butter - rub this into your dry ingredients so you end up with a bread crumb like mixture. Don't worry if it starts to combine together at this stage,
• Now add a splash of water and carrying on combining the mixture to make a dough. At this stage less is definitely more - you don't want a sloppy dough
• It's time to chill your mixture - this is important to stop the dough expanding when baking in the oven. Roll your dough out, wrap in cling film and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
• Once chilled, we get to the fun part - making the teabags! First put flour on your clean work surface, then roll out the dough until its about 0.5cm and then cut out your little teabag shapes. I used a straw to make the hole at the top of each teabag.

Use a straw to poke holes in the top of your biscuits

• Once you've cut all your teabags, place them onto a cold baking tray and place in your preheated oven for 12 minutes or until the edges of your biscuits turn a golden colour.
• Remove your biscuits from the oven and allow to cool

Tea bag biscuits in the making!

• Once cool you can thread your twine through the holes in the top and dip your biscuits in melted chocolate. Don't forget if you go down the chocolate route you'll need to leave the biscuits to dry before you can tuck in.
• Enjoy with a cup of tea!

Teabag biscuits....perfect with a cup of tea!

To be really honest these biscuits don't really need the chocolate dip - the light cherry flavour is sweet enough. However, if you do add the chocolate it doesn't ruin them either!

These biscuits make a lovely gift for a tea loving friend.....or just gobble them all up yourself (like I did!).

I'm sure this simple recipe will work well with other tea leaves, so if you don't have any Piacha tea at home why not experiment with your favourite tea - just remember to grind up your leaves! If you try a different tea yourself, we'd love to hear what you baked - leave us a comment or send us a photo!

To find out more about Piacha teas and the fabulous tea bar in London pop by the Piacha website!

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel

Time for Tea....Godalming Vintage Tea Parties

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you're having tea-riffic weekend!

Last weekend Becca and I decided to pop by the  Home & Vintage Spring Brocante at Grayswood Village Hall in Surrey. I love vintage things nearly as much as I love afternoon tea.....so the opportunity to explore a new (to us) vintage fair is always a good thing! As we wondered around the various stalls we noticed a little sign pointing up to a tearoom.....this day was getting better and better!

Upstairs we discovered a pop-up tea room, which was being run by the ladies of Godalming Vintage Tea Parties - a catering company who put on vintage style tea parties.

Godalming Vintage Tea Parties create a quintessentially English tea time celebration with their delicious homemade sandwiches, scones, cakes and tea - all served on vintage china.

By the time we arrived at the tea room it was later in the afternoon and visitors to the tea room had been enjoying tea and cake all day....this meant that the lovely tea table wasn't as full as it normally is....however, there was still a great selection of treats to enjoy including chocolate cake, chili brownies, scones and carrot cake....

As to be expected at a vintage style tea room - there was plenty of vintage china to enjoy those scrummy cakes and tea on....just look at all those teacups.....

After lots of drooling over the cakes while we made up our minds what we wanted to indulge in, Becca opted for a gooey chili chocolate brownie and I decided to go for a scone with clotted cream and jam. And of course we needed tea....lots of tea...to wash it all down!

The ladies helped us to our treats over to the table....

This feast costs us just £5.00, which I thought was excellent value.....just look at the size of the portions (especially the scone!!). I think we managed to get six cups of tea out of that teapot too!

Let's start with Becca's sweet treat - the chili chocolate brownie...

This was rich, gooey and generous in size. The chili heat reminded me more of ginger than chili, but was extremely scrummy and went down well with a cup of tea.

My scone was HUGE....

I probably would have liked just a little bit more clotted cream with the scone as it was so big, but overall it made a lovely cream tea. The scone was firm in texture, but not claggy, it worked well with the clotted cream and strawberry jam.

The tea room was friendly and had a very pleasant atmosphere, vintage style music filled the air as we enjoyed our tea. The ladies of Godalming Vintage Tea Parties were friendly and professional. I imagine a personalised tea party put on by them would be great fun!

Here is the full table at the beginning of the day....

To find out more about Godalming Vintage Tea Parties pop by their Facebook page - and if you have a tea party with them we'd love to hear all about it.

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel

Time for....A Guest Post....Urban Retreat Lounge, Harrods

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you're well today!

This post we are joined by the lovely Melissa, who is sharing her recent afternoon tea adventure at the Urban Retreat Cafe at Harrods. The cafe is on the 5th floor of Harrods and is part of the Urban Retreat salon and spa. Melissa was enjoying her afternoon tea before heading off to see the Mariah Carey concert at the O2.

The Urban Retreat Cafe serves light refreshments from breakfasts to small plates, salads and sandwiches to full afternoon tea feasts or cream teas.

The afternoon tea menu includes:

Selection of open sandwiches

Spiced Coronation chicken 

Smoked salmon, lemon mayonnaise

English cucumber, cream cheese & herbs

Freshly Baked Scones

Cornish clotted cream & strawberry preserve

Miniature treats & fancies

Strawberry Eton mess "cheesecake" pot

Rich chocolate pot, salt caramel, hazelnuts & honeycomb

Mango & passion fruit slice 

The Chocolatier's truffles & macaroons 

Here are Melissa's thoughts: We had open sandwiches on nice rustic bread but there was only one of each variety. We also had one scone each, which was warm and fluffy and delicious - but there was only one tiny pot of jam and a dollop of cream between us. We asked for some butter which took about 10 mins to arrive and unfortunately we had to ask for it twice. 

The dessert pots, cake, macaroons and chocolate were all really gorgeous. 

We had a choice of tea from the menu, we both had Royal breakfast blend. However I asked for another pot and didn't realise we were charged an extra £5 for it. ( I've never had to pay for more tea at afternoon tea anywhere before!) 

I would go there again for an informal tea, it was enjoyable but definitely nothing special. Most customers were people who'd had treatments in the salon or staff on lunch. 

This afternoon tea is £20 per person, and so for the price offers a good, informal afternoon tea adventure - perfect for enjoying with friends on a shopping spree maybe?

For more information pop by the Urban Retreat website.

We'd like to thank Melissa for sharing her afternoon tea adventure with us - we always love to hear about the scrummy afternoon teas you've been enjoying!

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel & Lorna

Time for something a little different....a cup of coffee!

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends!

So, some of our regular readers might find this blog post a little shocking.....normally we feature tea on this blog....well tea, bubbles and the odd cocktail or two (ok maybe three or four), but today we're going to feature my other favourite hot beverage - coffee!

Yep, Lorna and I are partial to a cup of coffee...in fact we drink quite a bit of coffee during an average week! One of my work colleagues found this little fact very shocking when I requested a cup of coffee instead of tea recently - exclaiming "but you write a tea blog!".

So, when Purssells London contacted us recently, asking if we'd like to try their coffee....we thought...why not!

Purssells London Coffee

So who are Purssells London?

They are a contemporary coffee roaster , whose coffee is classified as Speciality Coffee. They are proud of the quality, provenance and taste of their coffee.

Their range includes seasonal espresso blends, as well as light and meduim roasts as well as a decaffeinated coffee.

We were sent the current seasonal espresso blend to try - Queen's India

Purssells London Coffee
Queen's India

This coffee is made with Brazilian, Colombian and Ethiopian coffees. It is roasted slightly darker to complement milk based drinks - it's supposed to be a refined and sophisticated espresso coffee. It is the most popular Purssells coffee.

As it's an espresso blend, the grind is very fine and the coffee smells amazing - I just love that burst of coffee aroma when you first open a new packet!

Purssells London coffee

When brewed the coffee is smooth and rich - a really enjoyable cup of coffee.

You can either buy the coffee in individual packets or as a monthly subscription. For more information pop by the Purssells London website.

I'd like to thank Purssells London for sending us thier coffee to try - but please remember that this has not affected our taste buds and all opinions expressed in this article are our own,

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel