“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
– Henry James
Afternoon tea is one of those lovely pauses in a busy day – small wonder it’s become extraordinarily popular in our crazed modern world. And what better time to slow down and enjoy such a break than during the holiday season, when things are even more frenetic than usual.
You can certainly just book a tea sitting at a local tea shop or restaurant, but if you want to host something a little different, a Christmas Tea might be just the thing.
The Set-up
Since your house is already probably decorated for the holidays, there’s not going to be much you’ll need to do, but I do have a few tips:
- Do not burn scented candles. Their aroma will interfere with both the aroma and taste of the refreshments.
- The overall style is up to you. Be traditional, get a little funky/boho, serve the tea on a low table beside a dancing fire if you have a cozy fireplace…the possibilities are myriad. What matters most is that it fits you, and that your guests feel comfortable.
- Music should be light and in the background, which makes good ‘meal music’ for any occasion actually. Early 20th-century tea dances in London featured just such music, named after the hotel tea room where the dances originated: “Palm Court” music. For holiday atmosphere, anything themed and done in a light jazz would be perfect, or retro music if you’re into that.
- Alcoholic beverages? Sherry or champagne are traditional, but light cocktails or a punch would be okay as well if you have some extra time.
Recipes
Let’s keep this simple so that you can enjoy the experience as well.
The Tea
Here’s where you shouldn’t skimp. The type of tea you’ll serve depends on the type of food. A hearty Assam-based tea is a good all-purpose offering. However, if you’re going with a light theme like a Snowflake Tea, with more delicately flavoured savouries and desserts, a more refined tea like Darjeeling would be better, while something like a Nutcracker Tea, with richer flavours, would go well with a lightly smoked tea like Russian Caravan. It all depends on your taste preferences.
Twinings, which is readily available in grocery stores, makes a good medium-bodied all-purpose English or Irish Breakfast tea. For more gourmet teas, like a Golden Tippy Assam, or the two I mentioned above, you’ll need a good tea shop, either locally or online. The shop I order my teas from is based in Victoria, B.C., and is called Murchies.
To loose-leaf or bag it: Tea bags were invented as a marketing ploy by a merchant named Thomas Sullivan around 1908. He created little silk pouches to send samples of his tea to customers. The idea was for the leaves to be removed from the pouch and put into an infuser as usual, but some people just put their pouch straight into a tea pot. The convenience appealed, and customers requested more of the same but with a slightly heavier mesh than the silk; Sullivan complied using gauze, and the tea ‘bag’ was born.
Over the ensuing decades, some tea purveyors began saving money by putting lower-grade tea leaf bits in their bags. Tea leaves are graded by size, from the full, loose, curled leaves down to the dust or “fannings” left on the warehouse floor after the larger leaf pieces have been sorted over mesh. If you’ve ever had an insipid cup of tea from a bag, it was made with such poor-quality product.
However, reputable merchants (such as Murchies) put good-quality leaf pieces in their bags, and you can make a very good cup with their bags. The choice is up to you. One tip: if making loose-leaf tea for a crowd, you’ll need either more than one teapot, or a larger pot, and a larger infuser – but larger metal infusers won’t fit through the openings of the pots. My favourite solution is a Finum tea filter, an expandable paper sac that can hold a fair amount of leaves and easily go into any size of teapot. The nice thing about these sacs is that you can prep more than one in advance, either to make more pots of tea, or if serving a different tea with each ‘course’.
Flavoured teas, like Earl Grey or something fruity, are a bit chancy – they may not complement all of your food, and not everyone likes them – so I’d be careful there.
If you’d like to offer a decaffeinated tea, Twinings makes a decent decaf English Breakfast, but Rooibos tea is all natural and robust enough to stand up to whatever food you’ll be serving – you can serve it with all the same accompaniments listed below.
I always offer a number of accompaniments: organic unbleached sugar (I prefer the flavour), some artificial sweetener, and lemon slices, as well as light cream and perhaps a small pitcher of milk as well. I firmly believe that the ‘rules’ be damned: everyone should drink tea however they enjoy it most.
Savouries
Tea savouries are all bite-sized, i.e. nothing requires a fork to eat. I think it’s nice to have a mix of colours, textures and flavours: a couple of different sandwiches, made a little festive, along with some mini-quiches (easy to make with purchased frozen tart shells), perhaps some sausage rolls (very British).
But don’t hesitate to have a little fun with things, like serving a nice Camembert cheese with a festive topping paired with a good cracker (individual spreading knives would be included in each place setting). Here’s an easy version: buy a Camembert in a round wooden box. Carefully cut the top rind off the cheese and put back in the box. Crush a few pink peppercorns with a mallet or rolling pin and sprinkle on top of the cheese, along with a little bit of chopped fresh rosemary. Place the box on a cookie sheet and heat the cheese with toppings gently in a 350oF oven for a few minutes just until the top begins to soften. (Note: this recipe isn’t my own creation, but I’ve had it for so long I no longer know where I got it from.)
You could also serve some Cranberry Glazed Meatballs, quickly made with frozen cocktail meatballs and served with festive toothpicks in each one.
Small sips of a festive soup are also delicious, if you have appetizer-sized bowls or ramekins to serve them in. I’ve even seen it done in tea cups.
Scones
Scones are generally deemed de rigeur for an Afternoon Tea, and are even supposed to be a separate course after the savouries. While I do love a good scone with clotted cream and a fruit preserve, your tea will still be lovely if you decide to forgo them. If you do want to include, here are a few tips:
- Scones should be light and moist, not heavy, dense or stiff.
- Clotted, aka Devonshire, cream isn’t always easy to find; you’ll get the same texture and taste with crème fraiche, which is usually stocked in grocery stores (at least those in the area I live in).
- Find a good fruity jam that’s not overly stiff with pectin. Strawberry jam is classic, but for a festive tea you could switch it up with an orange marmalade (light on the peel), a nice cherry conserve, or something with spices in it.
- You could go with a fruity scone, with currants, dried cranberries or citrus peel and a sweet glaze, but be careful what jam you pair with it (if any) to avoid sugar overload.
The BBC Good Food website has a nice recipe for a basic scone, Easy fluffy scones.
Sweets
You need make only one sweet for this occasion: a luscious Trifle.
I was introduced to Trifle at my first boyfriend’s house. His father was Polish, but his mother was British, and for Christmas she made a classic raspberry and sherry Trifle for dessert. For me, Trifle (the lush dessert in the featured image at the start of this post) is the perfect celebration dessert: creamy, fluffy and boozy 😉 There are many variations on this dessert, which makes it completely customizable, but essentially there’s a light cake-type layer, a layer of boozy fruit/fruit jam over the cake that allows the juices to permeate the cake, a layer of rich custard, and clouds of whipped cream to top it all off. Flavour combinations, the organization of layers, substituting lady fingers or other kind of light pastry, even the type of booze – all can be played around with, but the basic dessert is easy to put together. Best of all, it’s a make-ahead dessert, put together a day in advance to allow all the flavours to blend, then stored in the refrigerator overnight. You can make the pastry base a couple of days ahead of that, or purchase lady fingers or a good quality sponge cake. Assemble it in a generous glass bowl to show off all the lovely layers.
Make your own; store-bought versions don’t really come close. This recipe on the BBC Good Food website is pretty classic with a couple of acceptable shortcuts to make your life easier.
If you feel you’d like to have additional sweets, you can put out a plate of Christmas cookies, but something else I’d like to suggest, if you can find them at a store that stocks British goods, are Eccles Cakes. These are not actually cakes, but buttery pastry shells stuffed with a wonderful mix of currants, chopped citrus peel, sugar and spices. The brand I like is Real Lancashire Eccles Cakes, 4 to a package – heat them very gently in the oven or microwave just before serving for the best texture and flavour.
For a little inspiration, check out the Chesterfield Mayfair Winter Wonderland Afternoon Tea – if I’m ever back in London, England during the holidays, I’d love to try it out myself.
I hope you enjoy your holiday tea, and that it provides just the break in the action that you need for a couple of hours. Feel free to send photos to this blog, or share them on my Facebook page!