Christmas Tea

In the lull between Christmas and New Years it is nice to just take an afternoon to relax with neighbours and visit. A little food always helps the conversation flow, and an afternoon tea fit the bill.

Christmas Teas of Comfort and Joy came into my book collection I think threw a gift exchange / yankee swap of some sort. It has little stories to go with the 6 different menus featured in the book.  Each menu is for a different type of occasion.  There are lots of victorian style pictures.  It is a cute little book to look through over the holidays.  

I have never made anything out of the book before,  it was kind of a coffee table book that I put out at Christmas.  Many of the recipes are based on using packaged mixes that are enhanced, but it can give someone any idea for a tea, though some sounded interesting.  It was more fun to look at the book than make anything, as I felt it was more of a novelty book than a cookbook.

I decided this year it would be one of my cookbook picks and rather than selecting my own menu, I picked one of the pre-set menus from the book.  When we typically think of an English Tea or a Victorian tea, we think of dainty sandwiches, small tarts (both sweet and savoury), scones with clotted cream and jam and one-bite sweets.   Though some menus fit more into this category I picked a menu that didn't match this concept.

I picked the Family Traditions Tea Party, which featured the following menu:

Fruit Salsa

Assorted Cheeses

Christmas Tree Bread

Ham Filled Sandwich Spread

It was an easy menu to put together,  I did add some of my Christmas sweets (which you have seen in other posts) to round out the selection.  People could eat as little or as much as they wanted. 

If I made the fruit salsa again I probably would cut out the brown sugar,  it also had apple jelly in it which I think would make it more than sweet enough.  

The dough for the bread required little kneading and only one rise before baking.  The recipe did call for icing but I skipped this step so you could have the buns either as a savoury or a sweet option depending on what you ate with it.  

Afternoon teas are a relaxing way to spend an afternoon with family and friends.  This menu and really all the menus in the book showed really you can offer anything you like for "Tea".