This week we’ve been cooking from The Vintage Tea Party Book by Angel Adoree. This is a fun book of recipes and techniques such as candle making, making bunting, how to make aprons, how to do your hair/makeup so that you can throw the best vintage tea part – I suppose the clue is in the question. We decided we’d have a tea party and make a bunch of tea-time treats.

We tried – Irish Soda bread, Jam Lollypops, Cream Cheese and Cucumber Hearts, Scones, “The British Potato,” and a Teatini from the book accompanied by Ham and beef sandwiches and cake pops for good measure. Both the recipes for the soda bread and scones made really sloppy mixtures that both needed some extra flour to get close to a mixture that could be worked into a dough. That said, both recipes were good. The soda bread was dense but tasted wonderful with smoked mackerel or smoked salmon. The scones were light and didn’t have that strong taste of bicarbonate of soda so often associated with some scones recipes. Our son made the jam pinwheels which were really good and a bit of a kid’s tea time treat. The Cream Cheese and Cucumber hearts were fun and pretty tasty. I indulged in a Teatini – a martini made with tea. I used a ginger tea brewed with sugar, left to cool, and then combined with Vodka and Vermouth – it was excellent. Overall, the Teatini was a refreshing change on a Saturday night.

Next up was Sunday lunch, where the book was more of an inspiration for the main course rather than the recipe in its entirety. One of the main course suggestions was a Crown of Lamb. The recipe in the book was just the lamb racks tied into a crown and then simply roasted. I searched for something more inventive and found a really interesting Hairy Biker’s recipe that stuffs the crown with a Moroccan-influenced stuffing of onions, almonds, pears, spices, and dried fruit. Tying the Crown of Lamb was much simpler than I’d expected, and following a YouTube video here: was pretty easy. On reflection, I think two racks would have been sufficient, but three made for a nice shape. My daughter and I made the little “chef’s” hats as a craft activity on Sunday morning.

For dessert, we had Apple Crumble Cake. I had high hopes for this cake which was essentially a Genoese sponge topped with sliced apple and crumble. Unfortunately, the cake batter was a touch liquid which meant not all the crumble stayed on top. We served it warm with vanilla ice cream. The cake was good – especially where you got a nice balance between cake and crumble. It got better on day two.

All in all, The Vintage Tea Party Book was a fun bit of escapism for a week; not sure we’ll run back to it in a hurry, but when there is a celebration for royalty with street parties/garden tea parties that might be the right thing for this book.