A little while ago, we had Jamie dedicated at our church. Afterwards, we hosted a small gathering with our family members to celebrate. I’ve been wanting to host an afternoon tea for awhile, so I was happy to have a great excuse! Today, I’m sharing how you can host a beautiful afternoon tea – including all the recipes you’d need to bake everything yourself!
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The Tea
I didn’t need to buy any new teas for this party, since I had no fewer than 12 different loose-leaf teas on hand. If that isn’t the case for you, my suggestion is to have a nice selection: some plain and some flavored, some with caffeine and some without. Although tea bags are fine (this sample pack would work well!), loose-leaf tends to be higher quality and is more authentic. We bought these compostable loose-leaf tea bags since we didn’t have enough infusers for everyone, and they were great!
If you want to buy a few kinds of tea, here are four teas that would work well. All these are pretty traditional, two have caffeine and two don’t; two are flavored and two plain – so there’s something for everyone!
- Irish Breakfast (Plain Caffeinated)
- Victorian London Fog (Flavored Caffeinated)
- Decaf Ceylon (Plain Decaf)
- Decaf Chocolate Tea (Flavored Decaf) – you could also go with an herbal like Lemon or Chamomile
These teas are all from Harney & Sons (one of my favorites!) If ordering from them, you can use this link to get $5 off your purchase!
Afternoon Tea: The Menu
Traditionally, afternoon tea has three courses: sandwiches, scones, and sweets! Here’s what we served for each one (including recipes).
Sandwiches
- Cucumber and Chive Butter (We used chives from our garden!)
- Chicken Salad
- Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese
- Peanut Butter & Jelly (Mostly just for Jamie, haha!)
This is a nice article on tea sandwiches and how to prepare them ahead of time.
Scones
- English-Style Scones (I took the advice of some of the Brits in the comments and rubbed in cold butter instead of using a food processor.)
- Blackberry Coriander Jam (Homemade with blackberries and coriander from our garden! I don’t have a recipe because it’s from one of my sister’s cookbooks.)
- Four Fruits Jam (One jar was more than enough for 10 people.)
- Clotted Cream (I ended up having to whip ours because I didn’t bake it quite long enough.)
Sweets
- Mini Custard Tarts
- Brownies (This is the BEST brownie recipe! We just cut small pieces and served them in mini cupcake liners.)
- Strawberries with Cheesecake Filling
- French Macarons (From a local bakery – I wasn’t quite ambitious enough to make my own.)
Prepping Ahead for an Afternoon Tea
Since we had Jamie’s dedication in the morning prior to the tea, we made as much ahead as possible. Our schedule went more or less like this:
- Monday: bake brownies
- Wednesday: bake mini custard tarts
- Thursday (overnight): make clotted cream
- Friday: make herb butter, cut brownies and put in mini cupcake liners, make iced tea
- Saturday: bake scones, make stuffed strawberries, make chicken salad
- Sunday AM: take brownies out of fridge, make all sandwiches, pick up macarons, set table
- Beginning of Tea: start water kettle, arrange all foods on server, serve clotted cream, set out milk and sugar for tea
Afternoon Tea: The Atmosphere
In a traditional afternoon tea, the three courses are served on a 3-tiered server (like this one). Since we had a lot of people at the table, we borrowed a large 4-tier server from my MIL and used two tiers for the desserts (since we had a lot!). The nice thing about this format is that you don’t need too much decor – the food on the server can act as your main piece of decor! We kept it very simple with some mismatched china and a table runner in addition to the tiered server.
I also created a menu and tea list for guests to look over when they arrived, which made the tea selecting process much easier! The menus and tea list were printed on card stock to give them a nicer feel. I have editable versions of the tea list and menu available as a free download (just click the image below to download the Word documents):
Our last piece of atmosphere was a playlist! Scott made it, since he’s much better at playlists than I am.
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