Get Ready for an (EASY) Tea Party! | Make Ahead Scones | Sandwiches | Setting the Scene

Welcome back, so happy to have you. My daughters are coming over today for a tea party in remembrance of my sweet mom. She passed away recently after battling Alzheimer's. She lived a wonderful life. I've been thinking a lot lately about her and one of the things is she found great pleasure over a cup of tea. Always wanted to know every detail of my life and she did this for everybody. She also taught me the art of setting a beautiful table. It's as a form of caring for others and it was her way of honoring her mother and her mother's mother and so on all the way back. She knew how to savor the moments with those that she loved most and so that's what we're going to do today. We're having a high tea, we're having champagne, hot tea, wonderful food, fresh scones, clotted cream, and a beautiful table setting. So let me show you how it was done. So a tea party is not really a tea party without scones and having scones is the easiest part for me in that I make scones in bulk all the way down to cutting them into shapes and I freeze them and that they're so easy to to pull out one or two or three or five great for breakfast but perfect for a tea party and so these are four scones that I pulled out last night. They needed to thaw in the refrigerator and they're thawed ready to bake off 350 about 20 minutes. I also made a clotted cream or a mock clotted cream which is 50 percent heavy whipping cream 50 percent or equal parts mascarpone and whipping cream and you whip it just the way you would whip a whipped whipped cream with a little bit of sugar and it's gorgeous. It's perfect for the scones. For the tea sandwiches we're going to make three types one is an egg salad the other is a chicken salad and the third is standard English cucumber and radish sandwich and I have some fun little I have these arugula microgreens which are kind of fun and I don't have watercress, fresh dill, chives so let's get started. The sandwiches can dry out really fast so I've got a a wet paper paper towel that I wrung out really well and it goes right over the sandwiches. Just while I make the next sandwich. We have all the sandwiches done. I want to put a little bit of this micro arugula on the egg salad which I forgot but it's okay to kind of have it hanging over the edge. Beautiful. Then I'm going to put the towel back on and saran wrap and into the fridge. Next I'm going to set up the dessert and do a couple of little crackers and then we'll be finished with the food portion. So far everything that I've used and made I pretty much had in the house other than this I saw this blueberry vanilla goat cheese and I just thought it sounded fabulous and I bought these little these tiny little crisps so I'm going to just spread I'm just going to make four of these and they just look pretty and they just add a little something fresh and different so just a little spread on the top of each little crisp and it doesn't have to be perfect and then three little pistachios in the design of a little flower so I'm going to make three of these or three more. Assembly is the fun part for the dessert portion of the of the dessert stand. I'm putting in store-bought these are little tarts just going to assemble to make them beautiful and then I have these sea salt caramel chocolates that'll go right in between yum and some little chocolate chip shortbreads. Traditional tea typically you start at the bottom with the sandwiches and then the second layer some fruits and then we'll work our way up to the desserts with our tea and champagne. There we go. Flower. Last but certainly not least is the tea. I warm up the teapot in the oven because the oven's warm after making the scones. It's a nice very hot teapot actually this is a coffee pot but and then I also save a lot of steps here because I don't like doing things that take too much time. This is five this is a five cup pot so a tablespoon is three teaspoons so that's three and then I'm going to do a total of six that's one teaspoon for every cup plus a teaspoon for the pot stir it around this is earl grey tea by the way it has a little bergamot oil in it it's delicious and as far as steeping for me personally I've learned that I like tea that's not as heavily steeped because it can get bitter and then I just have a really fine mesh screen here my pot has a little core spout so in it goes into the hot pot easy peasy all right tea party's ready to go my daughter has just shown up the other one behind the camera is already here she does such a great job hot tea we're ready for the tea party once again this has been really fun wishing you a great day